Blood Moon Diplomacy: How a Rust-Colored Orb Became the World’s Most Honest Mirror ——————————————————————– Tonight the moon will slip into Earth’s shadow and emerge the color of dried blood—an unsubtle reminder that even celestial bodies can’t escape a decent bruising. Across every time zone, billions of necks will crane skyward to witness the same bruised…
Eswatini: The Last Absolute Monarchy That Forgot to Update Its Marketing Strategy By Dave’s Locker International Desk Mbabane—Tucked between South Africa and Mozambique like a polite afterthought, Eswatini (née Swaziland) is the world’s last absolute monarchy whose ruler still insists on calling himself “Ingwenyama” instead of the far sexier “Supreme Leader” or “Emperor of Vibes.”…
Elissa Slotkin and the Quiet Art of Not Being Donald Trump By our man in the cheap seats, watching America audition for a reboot no one asked for Somewhere between the burnt-coffee smell of a Vienna train station and the faint whiff of tear gas drifting out of a Parisian banlieue, it’s easy to forget…
Carey Price and the Unbearable Lightness of Being a National Saint By Dave’s Locker International Desk, somewhere between a Tim Hortons and a UN peacekeeping outpost MONTREAL—If you want to watch a country negotiate with its own mythology, just mention Carey Price’s name in any bar from Chicoutimi to Chilliwack. The man has become a…
John McEnroe: The Last American Who Could Scream at Authority and Still Get Applause By Dave’s International Desk, still picking up the pieces after another Grand Slam meltdown somewhere on the GMT timeline PARIS—In the VIP box above Court Philippe-Chatrier, a silver-haired man in a bespoke blazer sits with the serenity of a retired apex…
Toronto, the city that can’t decide whether it’s New York with healthcare or Cleveland with delusions, has become the world’s polite laboratory for the question: “What happens when global capital, global talent, and global anxiety all collide in a place where the sidewalks apologize for your own bad mood?” From an international vantage point—say, a…
Mumbai: A City-Sized Metaphor for the Planet’s Nervous Breakdown By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent-at-Large, still jet-lagged from the last red-eye Mumbai, formerly Bombay, currently “Beta Test for the Apocalypse,” doesn’t so much welcome visitors as it frisks them for loose change and existential dread. Step off the plane at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International—Terminal 2, where the…
Rio de Janeiro—population 6.2 million, GDP roughly the size of Slovakia, and the only city on Earth where a sunrise over Guanabara Bay competes for attention with a sunrise over a favela’s rooftop militia—has long served as global shorthand for “paradise with caveats.” The caveats, of course, are what keep foreign correspondents in gainful employment:…
In the pantheon of world capitals, Wellington is the one that keeps its head down, politely coughs into its sleeve, and still manages to be the only place on the planet where a mid-grade earthquake counts as Tuesday’s coffee break. From Reykjavík to Riyadh, the city’s name evokes two immediate images: a boot-shaped harbour that…
The DWP Christmas Bonus 2025: A Ten-Pound Token in a Twenty-Pound World By Pascal ‘Peso-Punchline’ Mercier, filing from the departure lounge of an airport that still pretends budget airlines have legroom — London – British tabloids call it a “festive bung”; the Department for Work & Pensions prefers the bureaucratically neutral “Christmas Bonus.” Either way,…
Sweden’s national football team, once the polite cousin who brought lingonberry jam to Europe’s raucous potluck, has lately become the guest who drinks everyone else’s aquavit and starts quoting existentialist poetry at 3 a.m. The Blågult’s recent flirtation with relevance—qualifying for Euro 2024 after a play-off that resembled a Nordic noir cliff-hanger—has rippled far beyond…
Elizabeth Hurley at 59: How One Woman’s Bikini Selfies Became a Geopolitical Flashpoint By Our Correspondent, Somewhere over the Atlantic It began, as most modern crises do, with an Instagram grid. There, framed by the turquoise infinity-pool of a rented Cotswolds manor, Elizabeth Hurley—actress, swimsuit entrepreneur, and walking reminder that time is negotiable—posted another photograph…
