Nicholas Roske: When a Californian Knocks on the Door of the Supreme Court, the Whole World Learns the Wi-Fi Password PARIS—Among the many diplomatic cables that crossed my desk this week, one humble police report from Maryland managed to eclipse wars, coups, and crypto crashes. It concerned Nicholas John Roske, 26, a recent export from…
Chris Briney and the Global Ripple of a Quiet American Heartbreak By Our Correspondent in Exile, Somewhere Over the Mid-Atlantic The United States, that perpetually surprised adolescent superpower, lost another citizen last week. Chris Briney—age 45, father of two, possessor of an all-American surname that sounds suspiciously like a discount supermarket chain—was shot dead in…
Minneapolis, that charming mid-Western city once famous for lakes, lutefisk, and the polite passive-aggression of its inhabitants, has once again elbowed its way onto the world stage with a shooting that left the hometown crowd sighing “not again” and the rest of the planet sighing “still?” Details remain as murky as the Mississippi in springtime,…
Ricky Pearsall and the Global Theatre of a Single Gunshot By Matteo “Grimly Amused” Rossi, International Desk, Dave’s Locker SAN FRANCISCO—Somewhere between the sourdough tourists and the algorithmic fog, a 23-year-old wide receiver named Ricky Pearsall took a bullet to the chest on a Saturday afternoon. The shot was allegedly fired by a 17-year-old who,…
Stockton-on-Tees, a town whose very name sounds like an accounting error, has become the latest contestant in humanity’s longest-running reality show: “How Many Bullets Fit in a Saturday Night?” The shooting that left one man perforated and three others fashionably ventilated has ricocheted far beyond the Tees, prompting the usual international choreography: British politicians furrowing…
Oakland, California—city of perpetual reinvention, birthplace of both the Black Panthers and artisanal toast—has once again reminded the planet that its most reliable export isn’t software or sourdough but gunfire. On a balmy Wednesday evening, a modest fusillade erupted near Lake Merritt, that algae-fringed jewel where joggers from 40 countries dodge goose droppings and, apparently,…
The Ballad of Brian Robinson Jr.: A Parable for the Age of Globalized Violence and Marketing By the time the medics reached Brian Robinson Jr. on that humid August evening in Washington, D.C., the bullets had already logged more international air-miles than most diplomats. One slug, ballistics later suggested, began its brief résumé in a…
Another Thursday, Another Gun: Fremont Joins the Global Chorus of Trigger-Happy Tuesdays By Matteo “Bullets & Bylines” Ricci, Foreign Correspondent-at-Large FREMONT, California—It happened at 4:17 p.m. local time, which was 0:17 a.m. in Kyiv, 6:17 a.m. in Singapore, and precisely cocktail hour on the International Space Station where, presumably, astronauts were too busy admiring the…
