Only weeks after confirming that Zika is indeed linked to microcephaly, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced in its June bulletin that there might be a wider range of birth defects caused by the virus.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced today (June 3), the names of the athletes who will compete this summer in Rio as the first ever Refugee Olympic Team.
Two months after Europe’s agreement with Turkey went into effect, Greece has finally shared the rules for asylum-seekers already in Greece to apply for refugee status. The process, explained in a handout distributed by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as the Greek government, adds a new step to the current system: pre-registration, which allows asylum-seekers to live in Greece until their application has been processed.
Europe is in the throes of a debate about the movement of people across its borders. Then there’s the less-discussed question of the cross-border transit of sperm.
At least 1,000 refugees and migrants died this weekend in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe from Africa. Several hundreds more were saved last week, some of them miraculously.
After one of the biggest labor strikes in recent US history, nearly 40,000 Verizon employees may finally return to work.
In June 1865, Scottish publisher MacMillan printed 2,000 copies of a beautiful new children’s book. But the illustrator, one John Tenniel, was so disappointed with the book’s print quality that he asked to have every copy recalled, and the entire book reprinted. The original 2,000 copies, author Lewis Carroll wrote in his diary, would be “sold as waste paper.”
By many measures, Sweden is the second-best country in which to be a woman, after Denmark. But for single, heterosexual women looking for partners, it may be number one: Unusually for a Western country, men now outnumber women in Sweden, Associated Press reports.
In just two years from 1942 to 1944, at least 76,000 French Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps by SNCF, France’s national railway corporation under the Vichy Republic. Of them, 74,000 were killed.
Everyone knows about the Monday back-to-work blues—it is common knowledge that working is, for most people, miserable. Except that might not be true: employees are alright, according to the Endred-Ipsos 2016 Barometer, a yearly survey of well-being at work.
Republican Donald Trump addressed a group of bikers today next to the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech.
Symptoms of chronic Islamophobia include thinking one’s neighbor might be a terrorist, and having an overwhelming fear of Muslims that interferes with daily life. Now the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has a simple cure for this malady: a chewing gum named Islamophobin. A mock medicine designed to alleviate symptoms including “blind intolerance, unthinking bigotry, irrational fear of Muslims,” the gum is marketed through a funny spoof medicine ad, and a site.
Invited to curate a series of events at the Louvre this weekend (link in French), French artist JR decided to leave his mark on the museum—or rather, use an eraser on it, by making the iconic glass pyramid outside the 13th and 16th centuries buildings seemingly disappear. Using his trademark technique of sticking large-size pictures to the outdoors of buildings, JR created a trompe l’œil, an optical illusion that appeared to turn the pyramid into a black-and-white filter for the buildings behind.
Divorce has been legal in Italy only since the 1970s, and its legislation is, paradoxically, amongst the most favorable to women in Europe. Italian divorce law assumes a divorced woman is unable to provide for herself, and can require an ex-husband to pay alimony that’s at times beyond his means.
‘Tis the season of commencement speeches. Barack Obama, Sheryl Sandberg, Lin-Manuel Miranda: The most important personalities topped one another’s performances, delivering inspiring talks about life, hardship, success, hope.
Zika has gone from an obscure, rare disease to a global pandemic in less than a year with active transmission in 48 countries and risk of spreading to several more in Europe and Africa. The disease, spread by the Aedes mosquito, is linked to microcephaly and brain damage in children, as well as Guillain-Barré syndrome and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, both serious and at times fatal neurological conditions.
Of all the countries hit by Zika epidemics in the past year, none has suffered as many cases as Brazil, where more than 1.5 million people may have been affected. The epidemic has caused over 6,000 children to be born with microcephaly (pdf, p.6) and other neurological conditions, as well as a heightened occurrence of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS).
This morning (May 25), in an operation that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) called “a miracle,” hundreds of migrants were rescued by the Italian navy, Marina Militare, off the Libyan coast in the Strait of Sicily, after the trawler that was carrying them capsized.
At 17 and not yet out of high school, Tom Osborn—an entrepreneur from Awendo, Kenya, with a passion for clean energy and technology—had an idea that could change the life of many Kenyans. Having seen how deforestation to create cooking fuel resulted in suffering from smoke inhalation, he came up with a solution: a “clean charcoal” briquette.
Women often aren’t paid for the work they do. Every day they chalk up an average of 4.5 hours of free labor in household chores and childcare regardless of where they are in the world. In developing countries, women can do 10 times as much as men.
This item has been corrected.
When I was 16, the two most exciting things to happen to my high school class were:
The Italian parliament finally today legalized civil unions—including between people of the same sex. The law, which passed with a majority of 372 to 51 in the chamber of deputies, makes Italy the last country in western Europe to provide a legal framework for same-sex couples.
Two hundred and fifty years before Pantone started publishing its authoritative guide to the colors of the world, a little known Dutch artist did it first.
