NEW YORK—This morning, as the Hudson River looked suspiciously like the Thames on a bad day, New Yorkers discovered that their weather had once again become a global spectacle. A stubborn low-pressure system—one that had already battered Lisbon, flirted with Reykjavík, and ghosted Casablanca—decided that the only place worth ruining was Midtown. Satellite images showed…
Hurricane Kiko, a name that sounds like a failed boy-band member, has decided to treat the Hawaiian archipelago to its own private luau of 120-mile-an-hour misery. From Berlin to Bangkok, commodity traders, insurers, and climate-voyeurs are watching the satellite loops the way teenagers binge true-crime podcasts: equal parts horror and entertainment. Because if a Category-3…
Dallas, Texas—never the shy type—has spent the last few weeks auditioning for the Four Horsemen. One moment it’s 28 °C and the cicadas are gossiping like hedge-fund analysts at a rooftop bar; the next, marble-sized hail is auditioning for the lead role in “The Day After Tomorrow: Suburban Edition.” International observers, once content to treat…
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:…
Hurricane Kiko, a Category-4 tantrum that spun through the mid-Pacific last week, officially made landfall somewhere between “Instagrammable disaster” and “global press junket.” The storm clipped the Hawaiian archipelago with the enthusiasm of a drunk tourist looking for poke, then drifted off to international waters like a bored influencer who’s already filmed the “before” segment….
Global Thermostats and Frozen Pockets: The Winter Fuel Payment as a Geopolitical Mood Ring By Your Correspondent, Still Wearing Three Scarves LONDON—While the British government’s annual Winter Fuel Payment (£200–£300 sent to pensioners like an edible bouquet of lukewarm hope) is technically a domestic affair, its reverberations are felt from the slushy streets of Seoul…
