Category Archives: Opinion

Global Review: Five Top Stories To Watch In 2023

The Economist – From India becoming the world’s most populous country, to an illegal drug that might be approved as a medicine, The Economist offers its annual look at the year ahead.

Video timeline: 00:00 – The World Ahead 2023 00:35 – India’s population potential 04:30 – Psychedelic medicines 08:06 – Japan’s markets mayhem? 12:45 – Repairing the world 15:50 – The coronation’s colonial concerns

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Jan 2 & 9, 2023

A woman walks alone on New York City's High Line in winter.
Art by Ryo Takemasa

The New Yorker Magazine – December 26, 2022:

Trapped in the Trenches in Ukraine

A soldier holding a gun in Ukraine, photographed by David Guttenfelder.

Along the country’s seven-hundred-mile front line, constant artillery fire and drone surveillance have made it excruciatingly difficult to maneuver.

What Donald Trump’s Trial Might Look Like

Excerpts from Secret Service reports displayed on a screen during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022.

Presidents have been impeached, but none has ever been asked, after leaving office, to turn himself in for arraignment. The January 6th committee’s final actions could help change that.

Seventy-five Years After Indian Partition, Who Owns the Narrative?

A man towering over a landscape draws a line on the ground, which separates two sides of a tent camp and its inhabitants.

Literature once filled in archival gaps by saying the unsayable. Now a younger generation is devising new modes of telling the story and finding new stories to tell.

Politics: Zelensky U.S. Trip, Jan. 6 Committee Report

PBS NewsHour – New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington, the Jan. 6 committee report and if Congress should consider barring Trump from holding office again.

Foreign Affairs Magazine: The Best Articles Of 2022

Foreign Affairs (December 23, 2022) – Editors’ Top Picks from print and the web:

The Sources of Russian Misconduct

A Diplomat Defects From the Kremlin

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022

Revenge of the Patriarchs

Why Autocrats Fear Women

MARCH/APRIL 2022

Nobody Wants the Current World Order

How All the Major Powers—Even the United States—Became Revisionists

AUGUST 3, 2022

READ MORE

Previews: The Guardian Weekly – December 23, 2022

The cover of the 23 December edition of the Guardian Weekly.

The Guardian Weekly (December 23, 2022) issue:

As we near the end of another tumultuous year, one story has dominated the news agenda on almost every level. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February had been signposted for months, but the shattering of Europe’s postwar order still came as a seismic shock.

The economic and human cost inflicted by Russia on Ukraine has been enormous, while the concurrent shock waves of energy, food and migration crises have reverberated around the world. In a special essay for the final Guardian Weekly magazine of 2022, diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour examines the competing grand narratives of the past that lie at the heart of the conflict – and which make it so difficult to resolve.

In other reflections on 2022, we look back at a year of scientific successes, from medicine to mathematics via the moon. From the Observer, we remember those we lost over the course of the year, by those who knew them best. There’s a stunning photo gallery featuring work from the agency photographers of the year, and a comprehensive look at the best film and music of 2022 – not forgetting the now traditional roundup of the Guardian Weekly team’s must-see TV.

From Montreal came some hopeful news to round off an otherwise alarming year for the environment. The Cop15 biodiversity summit reached international agreement to try to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems, including targets to protect 30% of the planet for nature by the end of the decade and restore 30% of degraded water, coastal and marine ecosystems. Biodiversity reporters Patrick Greenfield and Phoebe Weston have the details.

Opinion: A Russian Attack Looms, Giving Up Growth, French Nuclear Industry

A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, a looming Russian offensive, why the rich world’s politicians are giving up on growth (10:00) and can the French nuclear industry avoid meltdown? (16:25),

A looming Russian offensive

Ukraine’s chiefs, in an unprecedented series of briefings, tell The Economist about the critical months that lie ahead

Why are the rich world’s politicians giving up on economic growth?

Even when they say they want more prosperity, they act as if they don’t

The French exception

As the world turns back to nuclear power, it should heed the lessons from France

Culture: New York Times Magazine – Dec 18, 2022

Current cover

The 12.18.22 Issue – The stories of 12 children, among the thousands, killed this year by what has become the leading cause of death for American kids: gun violence. But these are not the stories of how they died. These are the stories of the lives they lived.

Why We Published a Special Project About Child Gun Deaths

Every December, The Times Magazine devotes a special project to the deaths of notable people. This year, we are telling the stories of 12 children killed by guns.

Childhood’s Greatest Danger: The Data on Kids and Gun Violence

Gun violence recently surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for American children. No group of kids has been spared, but some have fared far worse.

What Guns Did to My Childhood

They ended my innocence even before I copped one of my own.

Politics: Trump Criminal Charges, U.S. Government Shutdown, House Speaker

PBS NewsHour – New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including the Jan. 6 committee prepares to vote on recommending criminal charges against Trump, Congress tries to avoid a government shutdown and the front-runner to be the next Speaker of the House still does not have a clear path to the gavel.

Preview: The Economist Magazine – Dec 17, 2022

All weekly editions | The Economist

The Economist – December 17, 2022 issue:

A looming Russian offensive

Ukraine’s chiefs, in an unprecedented series of briefings, tell The Economist about the critical months that lie ahead

What China can still do to avoid an enormous covid death toll

It must treat hospitals as a precious resource and start stockpiling drugs

Why are the rich world’s politicians giving up on economic growth?

Even when they say they want more prosperity, they act as if they don’t

Previews: The Guardian Weekly – December 16, 2022

Putsch back – Inside the 16 December Guardian Weekly | Germany | The  Guardian

The Guardian Weekly (December 16, 2022): In  Germany, 25 conspirators were arrested and accused of plotting to overthrow the government. The eclectic grouping, known as the Reichsbürger plotters, espoused a far-right ideology but hailed largely from the centre of respectable German society, headed up by an elderly minor aristocrat and including in their ranks family doctors, judges, a celebrity chef and an opera singer.

Three months have passed since fervent anti-regime demonstrations began in Iran. As more grim details emerged of public executions of protesters and the grotesque targeting of women by security forces, Christopher de Bellaigue takes a deep look at the movement, in particular the role played by women and young people, and asks what it might take for a popular revolution to succeed.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook) has spent $100bn building a virtual reality world known as the metaverse, which he believes will replace the conventional internet. The problem is, hardly anyone seems to prefer its clunky headsets and empty landscapes to the real world. With poor financial results and redundancies at Meta, has it all been a hugely expensive mistake? Steve Rose ventures into the metaverse, so you don’t have to.