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:…
Dacara Thompson Found: The Global Circus Packs Up Its Tents Byline: Geneva, Switzerland – Dave’s Locker International Desk For three weeks the planet’s most renewable resource—idle curiosity—has been burning at full wattage. From Lagos to Lima, office printers coughed up pixelated flyers; WhatsApp groups from Manila to Manchester traded the same grainy CCTV still as…
Bethenny Frankel and the Geopolitics of a Skinny-Girl Empire By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine’s gently bobbing wine barges and the neon glare of a nearby McDonald’s, a French sommelier is quietly weeping into his gamay. The cause? A former Real Housewife of New York has managed to export “low-calorie margarita in…
David Lammy: The Man Quietly Re-Wiring Britain’s Place in a World That’s Already On Fire By Dave’s International Affairs Desk Across the marble corridors of Westminster and the slightly less hygienic corridors of Brussels, a single question echoes with the urgency of a smoke alarm whose batteries have just expired: “Who the hell is David…
Sharjah, UAE – In a desert stadium where the air-conditioning costs more than several national GDPs, Afghanistan’s cricket eleven politely reminded the United Arab Emirates that passport stamps, oil royalties and diplomatic clout still don’t buy you cover drives. The final scorecard—Afghanistan 255 for 6, UAE all out for 195—reads like a polite invoice from…
