Davis Cup 2025: The Last Tennis Colosseum Before We All Drown or Starve By Our Correspondent Somewhere Between Two Time Zones TURIN, ITALY — In a cavernous hall that looks like a Bond villain’s private airport, twenty-five nations have gathered to decide who gets the honor of polishing silverware while the planet politely self-immolates. Welcome…
Jatinder Singh, a name that sounds like it was auto-generated by a visa-processing algorithm, has quietly become the Rosetta Stone through which the world deciphers its own absurdity. The 37-year-old Punjab-born, Toronto-schooled, Dubai-resident management consultant is not famous—yet he is precisely the kind of un-famous person whose itinerary now carries more geopolitical weight than most…
The Curious International Soft-Power of a Yorkshire Bad Boy: How Aaron Dingle Quietly Became a Global Litmus Test for Post-Industrial Angst By the time the closing credits roll on Emmerdale tonight, a Bulgarian barista in Berlin, a Singaporean coder on night shift, and a Mexican diplomat’s daughter in Geneva will have all watched the same…
KARACHI, PAKISTAN – Somewhere between a sandstorm and a smartphone screen, Fakhar Zaman is busy proving that national heroes are just like the rest of us, only with better highlight reels and worse visa queues. The 33-year-old left-handed opener has become a walking metaphor for a country that insists on swinging for the boundary even…
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: The World’s Favorite Over-Achiever Has an Accent Problem By Our Bureau Chief in a Café That Charges Rent by the Minute, Paris Joseph Gordon-Levitt has become the twenty-first century’s Swiss Army knife of cultural diplomacy: compact, multi-purpose, and irritatingly useful at dinner parties from Buenos Aires to Busan. While other American actors spend…
The World According to Sione Takitaki: How a Linebacker from the Mormon Archipelago Shook the Global Zeitgeist By Dave’s International Affairs Desk, still hung-over from COP28 and the World Cup in the same calendar year Salt Lake City, Utah—On the surface, Sione Takitaki is merely another linebacker who tackles for money and occasionally forgets he’s…
**Borderlands 4: The Great Digital Border Crisis** In a world where actual borders remain stubbornly physical—complete with barbed wire, armed guards, and the occasional dramatic river crossing—humanity has found a new frontier to squabble over: the digital borders of Steam’s gaming platform. And like every great human endeavor, we’ve managed to turn it into an…
ISLAMABAD – Somewhere between the IMF’s latest repayment schedule and the 14th daily power outage, 220 million Pakistanis paused on Sunday to watch their cricket team discover yet another creative way to self-harm. This time it was a five-run defeat to India in Colombo, secured via a run-out that resembled a Benny Hill chase scene…
KARACHI—As the world’s attention ricochets between AI-generated popes in Balenciaga and whatever new constitutional buffet is being served in Israel, a 21-year-old wicket-keeper from Peshawar has quietly become the Rorschach test nobody asked for. Mohammad Haris—known in cricketing circles as the “Peshawar Panther,” mostly because marketing interns ran out of alliterative animals—has gone from TikTok…
The Maldives, that necklace of coral atolls tossed across the Indian Ocean like a billionaire’s broken bracelet, has always punched above its weight in the apocalypse sweepstakes. While other nations merely flirt with existential doom, the Maldives brings a dowry of 1,192 islands, an average elevation you could clear with a decent jump shot, and…
Helldivers: The Globe’s Newest Export in Controlled Democracy and Friendly Fire Diplomacy By J. M. St. Croix, International Affairs Correspondent Somewhere between a NATO wargame and a fraternity hazing ritual sits Helldivers 2, the Swedish-made multiplayer shooter that has quietly become the planet’s most efficient soft-power delivery system since Netflix discovered Korean dramas. In the…
**The Beautiful Game’s Not-So-Beautiful Truth: When Saudi Rivalry Meets Global Sportswashing** In the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where temperatures soar high enough to make Hell’s HR department issue heat warnings, two football clubs prepare for a dance that’s about as friendly as a cobra mating ritual. Al-Ettifaq versus Al-Ahli isn’t just another Saturday…
