The Globalist Podcast (December 13, 2023) – We examine Benjamin Netenyahu’s alleged scheme to bribe Hamas through Qatar.
Also, Tim Bale explains how, in the UK, Tory factions are pulling the strings on Rwanda; Liz Cheney’s message to the GOP; and film critic Karen Krizanovich reveals how Japan is breathing life into the US box office.
The Globalist Podcast (December 12, 2023) – We examine Volodymyr Zelensky’s efforts to bolster unity amid a rift between the Ukrainian leader and his top general.
Also, pro-democracy activist Nathan Law unpacks Hong Kong’s “patriots only” elections, a flick through today’s papers and a look at Swarovski’s new flagship store on Fifth Avenue.
We routinely test for chemicals that cause mutations. What about the dark matter of carcinogens—substances that don’t create cancer cells but rouse them from their slumber?
In the nineteen-seventies, Bruce Ames, a biochemist at Berkeley, devised a way to test whether a chemical might cause cancer. Various tenets of cancer biology were already well established. Cancer resulted from genetic mutations—changes in a cell’s DNA sequence that typically cause the cell to divide uncontrollably. These mutations could be inherited, induced by viruses, or generated by random copying errors in dividing cells. They could also be produced by physical or chemical agents: radiation, ultraviolet light, benzene. One day, Ames had found himself reading the list of ingredients on a package of potato chips, and wondering how safe the chemicals used as preservatives really were.
The law, passed in a frenzy after the First World War, is a disaster. Why is it still on the books?
In March, 1940, Edmund Carl Heine, a forty-nine-year-old American automobile executive, reached an understanding with a company then known as Volkswagenwerk GmbH. Heine, who immigrated to the United States from Germany as a young man, had spent years at Ford, first in Michigan and then in its international operations in South America and Europe, landing finally in Germany. In 1935, two years after the Nazi regime came to power, Ford fired him, for reasons that are unclear. Heine next signed on with Chrysler, in Spain, but the Spanish Civil War was tough on the car business. And so he was out of a job again.
The Globalist Podcast (December 11, 2023) – The latest on the war between Israel and Hamas, examine the results of Egypt’s presidential election and debate Japan prime minister Fumio Kishida’s uncertain political future.
Also, the dispute between Guyana and Venezuela over Essequibo, art news and a dispatch from the Monocle Christmas Market.
Monocle on Sunday, December 10, 2023 – Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, is joined by Emma Nelson for a festive show during our Christmas market at Midori House, London. Andrew Tuck, Nina dos Santos and Charles Hecker complete the panel.
Monocle on Saturday, December 11, 2023: Emma Nelson and Yassmin Abdel-Magied review the week’s news and culture. Also, Monocle’s Oslo correspondent, Lars Bevanger, visits Ambassaden – the former US embassy, which has been transformed into a food-and-drink hub. Arts and culture specialist Issabella Orlando also joins the panel to talk about other heritage-inspired spaces around the world.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 8, 2023):
How do you reinvent yourself after being a global superstar? The former R.E.M. frontman is still figuring that out.
By Jon Mooallem
When Michael Stipe was little, his parents called him Mr. Mouse. He was a scurrier. As soon as he could stand, he ran, and when he ran, he ran until he face-planted. His mother would deposit him in a baby walker, but if Stipe scrambled as fast as he could and hit the threshold of a doorway with a running start, he could topple the walker and eject himself onto the floor. Then he’d spring to his feet and run away.
When detained by the U.S. Coast Guard at sea, even children fleeing violence have no right to asylum — and often face an uncertain fate.
By Seth Freed Wessler
Tcherry’s mother could see that her 10-year-old son was not being taken care of. When he appeared on their video calls, his clothes were dirty. She asked who in the house was washing his shirts, the white Nike T-shirt and the yellow one with a handprint that he wore in rotation. He said nobody was, but he had tried his best to wash them by hand in the tub. His hair, which was buzzed short when he lived with his grandmother in Haiti, had now grown long and matted. He had already been thin, but by January, after three months in the smuggler’s house, he was beginning to look gaunt. Tcherry told his mother that there was not enough food. He said he felt “empty inside.”
The Globalist Podcast (December 8, 2023) – Natasha Lindstaedt discusses divisions within Congress after Republican senators blocked billions in new funding for Ukraine.
Also, a flick through the latest issue of Monocle’s seasonal newspaper, ‘Alpino’, the latest TV and film news and a new ski season kicks off in Europe.
A peace process can go wrong in many ways, but a real possibility exists that it could go right
What the world could learn from Britain’s flawed approach
Our poll tracker sheds light on that competition. It may yet matter
We’ve become inured to his rhetoric, but his message has grown darker.
“We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Donald Trump said this past November, in a campaign speech that was ostensibly honoring Veterans Day. “The real threat is not from the radical right; the real threat is from the radical left … The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
How Trump could unwind generations of progress
In late 2020, even as the instigators of insurrection were marshaling their followers to travel to Washington, D.C., another kind of coup—a quieter one—was in the works. On December 21, in one of his departing acts as attorney general, Bill Barr submitted a proposed rule change to the White House. The change would eliminate the venerable standard used by the Justice Department to handle discrimination cases, known as “disparate impact.” The memo was quickly overshadowed by the events of January 6, and, in the chaotic final days of Donald Trump’s presidency, it was never implemented. But Barr’s proposal represented perhaps the most aggressive step the administration took in its effort to dismantle existing civil-rights law. Should Trump return to power, he would surely attempt to see the effort through.
His campaign is promising a more repressive and dangerous America.
In a second term, Trump would punish the cities and states that don’t support him.
