KATHMANDU—While the rest of the planet obsesses over which billionaire will colonize Mars first, a modest Himalayan republic the size of Arkansas keeps quietly demonstrating how to survive the twenty-first century without losing its soul—or its sense of irony. Nepal, population 30 million and falling off the map every time Google’s servers hiccup, has become…
The Curious Case of Sunday Trading Laws: When God, GDP, and Grocery Lists Collide By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from a Black-Market Avocado Bought on the Sabbath Somewhere between the pearly gates and the self-checkout aisle, humanity continues its millennia-old debate: should the seventh day be reserved for rest, retail, or restocking the fridge with…
Philadelphia’s Weather Forecast: A Micro-Tragedy With Global Ticket Sales by R. S. Vane, International Desk Philadelphia woke up this morning to a sky the color of last week’s coffee grounds and a forecast that could generously be called “schizophrenic.” By noon the temperature had already performed three costume changes, hailstones auditioned for a Broadway revival…
The Bigger Tantrum: How Israel Became Everyone’s Favorite Emotional Support Conflict If the planet were a badly lit bar at 3 a.m., Israel would be the patron standing on a stool, waving a half-empty flag and explaining—loudly—why everyone else is ruining the evening. The rest of us, nursing watered-down geopolitics and existential dread, keep ordering…
Weather Near Me, Apocalypse Near Us By R. Salter, Senior Meteorological Misanthrope, Dave’s Locker It’s a breezy 19 °C on my balcony in Lisbon—perfect for watching the Tagus glitter like a cheap disco ball while the rest of the planet melts, freezes, or combusts, depending on postal code. The phrase “weather near me” used to…
Maureen Lipman and the Global Theatre of Outrage From the West End to the West Bank, one woman’s cancelled yoghurt ad somehow mirrors the end of civilisation By the time Dame Maureen Lipman’s face was digitally scraped from a British yoghurt commercial last week, the story had already been meme-ified in three languages, weaponised by…
The Diplomat of Diseases: How a Tiny Kissing Bug Became a Global Gate-Crasher By L. Sinclair, Foreign Correspondent-at-Large If romance had a vector, you’d expect roses, violins, or at least a half-decent dating app. Instead, the Western Hemisphere’s most ardent suitor is a thumb-sized assassin in a striped waistcoat: Triatoma infestans, better known as the…
DEFRA: The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, or, as the rest of the planet calls it, “the world’s most polite ecological apocalypse manager.” While most nations still pretend climate change is a future problem, the United Kingdom has gamely elevated it to a cabinet-level spectator sport, complete with white papers, select committees, and…
Joe Lewis, the tax-haven ghost whose name now circulates through every trading floor from Singapore to São Paulo, is not the boxer who once bruised history—he’s the British-born, Bahamas-domiciled billionaire who allegedly bruised insider-trading statutes instead. Last week the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, that marble-faced temple where financial sins go…
The Curious Diplomacy of Dejounte Murray, or How One Mid-Cycle Trade Became a Soft-Power Parable By Alistair “Ali” Bakhtiar, currently in transit somewhere above the Caspian Sea PARIS—On paper it’s just another NBA salary-cap footnote: Dejounte Murray, the league’s resident triple-double whisperer, leaves the Atlanta Hawks for the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for a…
Tottenham Tickets: The Global Passport to Controlled Chaos By our Special Correspondent for Gladiatorial Commerce It begins, as all modern tragedies do, with a push notification. Somewhere between Jakarta and Johannesburg, a phone vibrates: “General Sale – Spurs v. Bayern – 15:00 BST.” The recipient, a risk-consultant from Singapore who has never set foot in…
Singapore: The Tiny City-State That Outsmarted the Planet – and Still Worries About Parking Tickets By Our Correspondent with a Sunburn and a Sense of Irony SINGAPORE—Somewhere between the 14th time you’re reminded not to chew gum and the 15th “No Durians” sign on the MRT, it hits you: this whole country is a deliberate…
