Not a drop of rain has fallen this summer on the reservoir in Sau, a town in Spain around 65 miles north of Barcelona. Now, as Vice reported, the entire Santa Romà de Sau Church is exposed as if the reservoir had never submerged it...
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From 2003 to 2009, the Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr waged an insurgency against American troops who had invaded his Middle Eastern country in 2003. Today, the soldiers are mostly gone. But al-Sadr is still arguably the most powerful force in Iraqi politics. After almost a year...
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The recent return of the body of the late president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, to his home from Spain was a fitting prelude to the tensions that have been growing in the country in the run-up to the Aug. 24 elections. After ruling Angola...
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In the 2013 novel (and 2018 hit film) “Crazy Rich Asians,” the ingénue travels to Singapore and realizes that her boyfriend is so fabulously wealthy that their backgrounds might be too different for them to share a life together. Spoiler alert – things work out for...
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Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Ukraine had 40 million people. Now it is 6.7 million short. Those missing millions have crossed the border, to Poland, to Romania, to Hungary, to safety. But that is only part of the story: Inside of Ukraine, six to...
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India and Pakistan had the rare experience of separating from one another at the same time they achieved independence from Britain, 75 years ago this month, on Aug. 15, 1947. Both countries appear to still be in search of themselves since then. Prime Minister Narendra Modi...
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The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was among the worst nuclear accidents in world history. Now, the world is bracing for another. “Humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” warned UN Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month. Thirty-six years ago, the explosion and fire...
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A few months ago, elite government soldiers in Ndop in the Northwest region of Cameroon detained more than 30 young men on motorcycles who were part of a funeral procession, but whom the soldiers said they believed were separatist fighters. “The soldiers selected those among us...
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On Monday, the Taliban marked the first anniversary of their takeover of Afghanistan with a national holiday, small victory parades and televised speeches boasting of their “great achievements” over the past year, the Associated Press reported. “We fulfilled the obligation of jihad and liberated our country,”...
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What’s in a name, Shakespeare once wrote. Well for monkeys these days, everything. Since May, monkeypox has been spreading exponentially around the globe, with countries that have never seen a case now reporting surges. Unfortunately, fatigue and anger stemming from the Covid pandemic, along with fear,...
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Near the prime minister’s office in The Hague, the seat of the government of the Netherlands, lies the Koediefstraat, or ‘Cow Thief Street’. Perhaps it was the Koediefstraat that inspired the Dutch government’s latest measure to combat climate change and reach the country’s climate goals, the...
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Indian investigators recently busted an alleged human trafficking ring that was smuggling ethnic Rohingya girls into India from refugee camps in Bangladesh. It’s just the latest misfortune to befall members of this ethnic group who have been forced from their homes and put into limbo. Six years...
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Palestinian lawyers took to the streets in Ramallah in the Israel-occupied territories of the West Bank recently to protest against the rule of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. As Agence France-Presse explained, the Oslo Peace Accords established the Palestinian Legislative Council, a kind of parliament,...
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Everywhere in Kenya these days, people are jamming, on corners, at gas stations, and even on buses. That’s because there’s a presidential election Tuesday and appealing to the youth vote – 40 percent of the electorate – is critical for a win. But irrespective of the...
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An emergency worker recently proposed to his girlfriend. Dressed in his first responder gear as his colleagues watched, he went on bended knee and presented his sweetheart with a ring. The moment would not have been a big deal, except that it occurred in Ukraine as...
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Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative former judge, won office a year ago promising change. But the same old problems continue to bedevil the country. The collapse of a luxury building in the southwest city of Abadan in May, a controversy involving an unfulfilled public grain...
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Europe’s first fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, once said that “Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice, it is a fallacy.” Democracy might be bringing fascism back to Italy again, however, almost 80 years after Il Duce was executed. That’s because when Italian voters go to the...
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American and Chinese ships and planes are more frequently encountering each other in the western Pacific Ocean, according to General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff during a recent visit to Indonesia. “The message is the Chinese military, in the air...
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The houseboats of the Nile River in Egypt have a storied past. Many believe the pharaohs used them thousands of years ago for long river voyages, the BBC explained, while in the 19th and 20th centuries Ottoman and British military leaders used them as bases. And...
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Russia plans to hold elections in the occupied Ukrainian territories of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and others as early as September, paving the way for Russian President Vladimir Putin to annex those regions in the same way he seized Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014. Of course, Russian...
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