ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN SOUTH YORKSHIRE, the planet’s attention briefly pivoted from proxy wars and supply-chain meltdowns to a more ancient conflict: Sheffield United versus Sunderland, two former industrial citadels now reduced to arguing over second-tier bragging rights like divorced aristocrats squabbling over the good china. From a safe remove—say, a rooftop bar in…
Lesotho vs. South Africa: A David-and-Goliath Match Nobody Asked For By Our Man in Maseru Who’s Learned to Never Order a Steak in Either Country If you squint at the map long enough, Lesotho looks like South Africa’s kidney stone—small, painful, and lodged precisely where Pretoria can’t ignore it. This week, however, the two countries…
Tesco’s Plastic Fork Recall: A Global Fork-Up in the Age of Infinite Choice Dave’s Locker – International Desk, 23 April 2024 Somewhere between the war in Ukraine, a crypto-exchange implosion, and the latest TikTok of a cat playing the xylophone, Britain’s biggest grocer has decided to upend the planet’s cutlery supply by recalling 400,000 plastic…
Paris Jackson, Heir of the Moonwalk, Walks a Tightrope of Global Expectation By Our Correspondent, Somewhere between Neverland and the Gare du Nord Paris Jackson—yes, that Paris, the one whose godmother is Elizabeth Taylor and whose bedtime lullabies were apparently Grammy-winning—turned 26 in April. While most quarter-lifers are busy Googling “how to fold a fitted…
Minimum Wage 2026: A Planet-Wide Race to the Bottom That Somehow Still Points Up By the time the Gregorian calendar flips to 2026, the phrase “minimum wage” will sound quaint—like “chivalry” or “fax machine.” Yet governments from Lagos to Ljubljana are busy pretending the concept still matters, announcing tidy round numbers that fit neatly into…
Postcode Roulette: How Your Street Address Became the World’s Least Fun Lottery Ticket By Dave’s Foreign Desk In 2019, a baby born on the north side of the River Liffey in Dublin had a 94 % chance of reaching primary school without contracting tuberculosis. Had the same infant emerged from a womb three kilometres south—still…
Vadim Kruglov: The Name Nobody Knew They Needed to Fear (But Will Anyway) By the time the New York Times’ push alert finally caught up, Vadim Kruglov had already cost roughly 38 % of the planet a decent night’s sleep. From his modest office in a Yekaterinburg suburb—decorated, if that’s the word, with a dying…
Rivian Stock: A Global Vanity Mirror on Four Wheels By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the Arctic Circle and the Singapore Strait, investors are staring at the same flickering green-red ticker that spells RIVN and wondering what it says about their own national neuroses. The electric-truck startup, born in a converted Illinois Mitsubishi plant,…
