flickering pictures

With the world’s oceans expected to rise dramatically this century, the new president of the tiny island republic of Maldives is getting proactive about climate change. The Guardian reports: The U.N. forecasts that the seas are likely to rise by up to 59cm [nearly two feet] by 2100, due to global warming. Most parts of [...]

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Two teenaged girls were brutally killed in the Indian village of Kaluvas during the Hindu festival of Diwali, apparently because they had visited boys to wish them a happy holiday. The girls’ fathers were reportedly part of the mob that killed them. The Times of India reports: Rajender Shivran, who claims he couldn’t sleep under [...]

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Parts of South Dakota are buried under a staggering snowstorm that apparently came out of nowhere, and people are missing all over the state. I know South Dakotans are hardy and all, but isn’t it a little early in the season for this sort of thing? CNN reports: “We cannot see a thing in many [...]

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Language is a clumsy inadequate tool, which is all the more reason to celebrate those who wield it well. In The Workings of the Subtle Heart — the “second greatest book ever written” according to Kurt Vonnegut — William Widmer riffs on a Japanese word that seems to have no English equivalent. I am told [...]

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Not that it’s any of my business, since I’m not American, but on behalf of the rest of the world, congratulations on choosing the best person for the job. We — and 52% of America — could be wrong about him, and we’ll have four years to find out, but in terms at least of [...]

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Peter Hitchens, an excellent — if fiercely conservative — writer and columnist at Britain’s right-leaning Daily Mail, is covering America’s pre-election mood from Moscow, Idaho, which is incidentally named after a town in Pennsylvania, not Russia. Though I don’t agree with his politics, his latest editorial piece is a thing of beauty — as much [...]

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It’s been an exciting few days in Iran. First, a government stunt meant to encourage healthy eating habits ended rather badly. The Daily Mail reports: The meat had been cooked, the sandwich almost assembled and assorted Guinness Book of Records dignitaries were patiently waiting by to give it their official stamp of approval. But cooks [...]

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