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…
Benin vs Zimbabwe: A Tale of Two Economies, One Currency Crisis, and the Global Circus That Watches By the time the final whistle blows in Cotonou this weekend, the real score won’t be on the pitch—it’ll be in the IMF’s inbox. Benin versus Zimbabwe isn’t just an Africa Cup of Nations qualifier; it’s a geopolitical…
Peter Kyle and the Great British Firewall: How One Minister Accidentally Became the World’s Most Reluctant Cyber-Czar By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the second flat white and the third existential crisis of a Wednesday, Peter Kyle—the UK’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology—found himself promoted from obscure MP for Hove to…
Steve Reed and the Curious Resilience of the Provincial Everyman on the World Stage By Our Cynical Correspondent, Somewhere Between Gatwick and Gatling If you mention “Steve Reed” in a bar in Brooklyn, a bodega in Bogotá, or a boardroom in Beijing, the reaction is a blank stare followed by polite nodding—the universal sign for…
Victoria Falls rumbles like an overworked espresso machine while the rest of the planet argues about whose currency is collapsing fastest. Downstream, Zambia—population 20 million, GDP roughly the cost of a Silicon Valley parking lot—keeps calm and carries on, which is what you do when carrying on is the only option left on the menu….
Justice Secretary: A Title That Travels Poorly By Our Correspondent Somewhere Slightly Safer Than Where You Are The phrase “Justice Secretary” sounds like a job invented by a wishful-thinking focus group: a bureaucrat who keeps justice in a filing cabinet, dusts it off for photo-ops, and quietly mails it to the wrong address when no…
UFC 321: A Global Punchline in a Fractured World by Marcello “The Guillotine” Ghirga Abu Dhabi, 04:30 local—somewhere between the falafel stands and the $17 mojitos, the planet’s most profitable fistfight just ended, and the International Monetary Fund barely noticed. UFC 321, officially christened “Worlds Collide (Visa Fees Not Included),” rolled out the red carpet…
The Curious Case of Hugo Hernández-Méndez: How One Man’s Misfortune Became the World’s Favorite Schadenfreude By the time Hugo Hernández-Méndez’s name started trending in five languages and three alphabets, the poor man had already missed his own funeral—twice. First, when a premature death notice circulated on a Mexican state-run website; second, when the same government…
When the name Zach Mitchell first crackled across the encrypted WhatsApp group of Nairobi-based stringers, nobody reached for the atlas. In 2024, a random Anglo-Saxon handle might be a crypto fugitive, a TikTok propagandist, or a private-jet mercenary en route to rearrange borders. Turned out he was merely the latest American to discover that the…
Egypt: Still the World’s Favorite Cautionary Tale with Pyramids ————————————————————- Cairo—If history were a sitcom, Egypt would be the character who peaked in the pilot episode and now spends every season reminding the rest of the cast, “I used to run prime time.” Five millennia after inventing civilization, the country still tops bucket lists and…
The S&P 500: America’s Favorite Slot Machine, Now With Global Side-Bets By Matteo “Machiavelli” Mwangi, Dave’s Locker International Correspondent ZURICH—On a rainy Tuesday, while the rest of us mortals queued for overpriced coffee, the S&P 500 quietly added another 0.7 %, reminding the planet that 500 U.S. companies remain the unofficial referee of world self-esteem….
Tokyo traders were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes when Frankfurt decided Tuesday was the perfect morning to panic-sell European banks, thereby gifting Wall Street a pre-dawn anxiety attack that ricocheted through Mumbai before Sydney had even finished its flat white. Welcome to the planetary pinball machine we politely call the global stock market:…
