PARIS – Somewhere between the croissants and the contempt, another piece of paper has fluttered out of the Jeffrey Epstein file and landed, like a soiled feather, at Donald Trump’s expensively shod feet. The “Trump-Epstein letter” – a single page, undated, signed with the unmistakable Sharpie scrawl of the former US president – has triggered…
Joanna Lumley: The Accidental Diplomat Who Weaponised Charm Against the World Order By Our Correspondent in a Hotel Bar Where the Ice Has Already Melted PARIS—Across the river from Notre-Dame, a gaggle of European finance ministers once waited half an hour to take a selfie with a woman who once played a drunken heiress on…
Steven Lenhart: The Man Who Turned MLS Fouls Into Performance Art and Accidentally Forecasted the End of the American Century By A Correspondent Who Once Watched a Friendly in Pyongyang and Still Has the Whistle Marks PARIS—Somewhere between the croissants and the existential dread, the name Steven Lenhart still surfaces in bars along the Boulevard…
Weatherford-on-the-Med, Tuesday, 3:47 a.m.—Somewhere between a NATO summit in Vilnius and the latest BRICS currency pow-wow in Johannesburg, a far more seismic tremor is rattling the tectonic plates of soft-power diplomacy: the rumor, denied, confirmed, denied again, and finally upgraded to “pretty much certain” that Tyrone Dobbs is packing his spanners and quitting Coronation Street….
Charlie Ming, the Man Who Outsourced Apocalypse GENEVA—While the rest of us spent the pandemic arguing over sourdough starters and which Netflix series most accurately predicted the collapse of Western civilization, Charlie Ming quietly built the algorithm that now decides whether your next shipment of baby formula leaves the port of Rotterdam. If that sounds…
William Shatner, the 93-year-old Canadian export who once sold discount airline tickets on late-night television, has now transcended Earthly kitsch to become the first nonagenarian space tourist. While the world’s attention remains glued to whatever fresh geopolitical dumpster fire is trending, Shatner’s 2021 sub-orbital hop aboard Jeff Bezos’s phallic hobby rocket quietly achieved something diplomats,…
Moise Kean and the Global Transfer Carousel: How a Striker’s Career Became a Metaphor for Everything Wrong (and Right) with International Football By the time Moise Kean turned 24, the Italian striker had collected more passport stamps than most foreign correspondents. Born near Turin to Ivorian parents, fast-tracked by Juventus, dispatched to Everton, loaned to…
The Ballad of Alec Bohm, or How a Routine Error Became a Global Metaphor by Our Man in the Dugout Trenches From the vantage point of a crumbling press box in Philadelphia—where the hot dogs taste of existential dread and the Wi-Fi wheezes like a dying air conditioner—Alec Bohm’s three-step stumble around third base last…
Coronation Street Spoilers: A Microcosm of Geopolitical Meltdown, but with Better Biscuits By Dave’s International Affairs Desk (and the intern who still thinks Weatherfield is a UN observer state) GENEVA — While the Security Council spent the week arguing over whose turn it is to veto human rights, a far more consequential power struggle unfolded…
Bermuda: The Atlantic’s Hand-Painted Mirage of Money, Moss, and Mild Existential Panic By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the jet-stream and the 401(k) statements of hedge-fund divorcees floats Bermuda, a 21-square-mile pastel hallucination that insists—politely, in a crisp accent—on being taken seriously. To global capital, it’s a PO Box with a navy blazer; to…
Switzerland vs Slovenia: A Tale of Two Alp-Mates and the Quiet Collapse of European Exceptionalism By Dave’s Locker International Desk ZURICH—On paper, the match-up is almost charmingly lopsided: Switzerland, the planet’s discreet banker, pitted against Slovenia, a country whose greatest export is probably “postcard envy.” Yet this week’s Alpine face-off—part Euro qualifier, part existential audit—has…
Delta Air Lines: When a Georgia Peach Tries to Fly the Whole World By Our Man in Seat 24B, Somewhere over the Doldrums There are airlines that merely move people; then there is Delta Air Lines, an Atlanta-born overachiever that appears determined to drag the entire planet through Hartsfield-Jackson whether it wants to go or…
