Annalisa Merelli

The ice bucket challenge—a charity stunt using viral video and social media to promote awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—has spread to some influential places. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Vogue editor Anna Wintour have doused themselves in icy water to raise funds for research on the fatal neurological disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Former US president George Bush took a bucket to the head from his wife, and nominated his West Wing predecessor, Bill Clinton, to accept the challenge after him.

Twelve days after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Twitter users in the Middle East continue to follow events there closely. After offering protesters in Ferguson advice on how to deal with rough police tactics—based mainly on their own experiences from the Arab Spring demonstrations—they’re now directing some ironic jibes at the town’s police force.

The protests that have been going on for the past week in Ferguson, Missouri, after black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer, have brought back to light the racial tensions that still exist in the US. A new study by the Pew Research Center confirms that even our consumption of news about the shooting and the demonstrations, and our reactions to it, are divided along racial lines.

Last night, after a fourth day of protests in the town of Ferguson, Missouri, where police have been tear-gassing citizens protesting the shooting of teenager Michael Brown, the protesters got some solidarity on Twitter—all the way from the Middle East.

When Austrian singer Conchita Wurst won Europe’s cult song contest Eurovision with her song Rise Like a Phoenix, many celebrated with her. She became a joyous symbol of acceptance, gay rights, authenticity.

If you have ever been to New York, read anything about it, or listened to Frank Sinatra, you know the two most important things about the Big Apple are that it’s the best city on earth and an incredibly tough place to live.

Raj Shetye is likely India’s most talked-about fashion photographer at the moment. His latest shoot, depicting a woman attacked on a bus by a group of men, and entitled “The Wrong Turn,” has generated outrage in India and abroad for echoing the horrific 2012 gang rape on a New Delhi bus, which cost the victim her life. The case, known as Nirbhaya (fearless), the name used by the media to identify the victim, brought international attention on what many commentators, in India and abroad, described as a pervasive “rape culture.”

Since a gigantic cruise liner ran aground off its coast in January of 2012, the inhabitants of Isola del Giglio have lived with its hulking carcass looming over them, a grim reminder of the accident that killed 32 people. At twice the size of Titanic, the Costa Concordia was passing too close to the Tuscan island when it hit a rock and partially sunk. It has remained there ever since.

The number of children detained at the southwest border of the US since October has reached a shocking 52,000, up 99% since 2013. The children, primarily teens from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, often face months or years in detention before a judge can hear their cases. An uptick in media coverage of the conditions of unattended minor detainees has raised outrage in the United States, with President Obama calling the issue an “urgent humanitarian situation.”

Fireworks have been part of American Independence Day celebrations since independence itself. John Adams started the tradition on July 3, 1776, the day after independence was declared (but a day before the declaration’s wording was agreed). He wrote to his wife that the event

True, the Continental Congress, representing the 13 colonies which originally comprised the US, declared independence in July 1776—but it wasn’t on the fourth. It was the second.

Beppe Grillo, the leader of Italy’s MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five star movement), is not new to conspiracy theories related to health. In 2008, he called AIDS “a hoax” perpetuated by pharmaceutical companies and has for years decried vaccinations as potentially fatal and linked to autism. Now, vaccination fear has led more parents to forgo immunizing their children, and as a consequence, cases of measles are on the rise.

Guwahati is under water. At least eight people have died and several thousands have been affected by the flash flood that hit the city in Assam after a heavy overnight downpour. The region is prone to landslides, but this is the worst anyone has seen in years and has led to finger-pointing and grappling over the city’s infrastructure. Scenes from Guwahati, where thousands of people are now housed in relief camps.

The FIFA World Cup may be the biggest sporting event in the world, but from a geopolitical perspective there’s another tournament worth following: the Confederation of Independent Football Association World Football Cup, which held its first games at the Jämtkraft Arena, in Östersund, Sweden from June 1-8. Established in 2013, ConIFA is an organization that unites the football teams of nations, counties, and provinces that would like to be autonomous, but are not officially recognized.

Italy’s opera theaters are in deep trouble: as the Wall Street Journal recently reported, government austerity has reduced their budgets, and by the end of the year the houses whose balance sheets aren’t in order won’t be able to apply for public funding at all.

Daniel Nietzel is a teacher at the Muscatine Community School district in Iowa, not an entrepreneur. But a new gadget that he developed with a group of his colleagues has received nationwide press in the week since its launch.

Italy sent its World Cup team to Brazil looking rather dashing. The Italian players’ decadent suits—navy wool by Dolce & Gabbana, worn in all three pieces by every player despite the Brazilian sun—made a great display of “Made in Italy,” especially when compared with the English team’s more modest Marks & Spencer suits.

Fashionable travel is tough. Trousers get wrinkled, temperatures are unpredictable, and for overnight international flights, comfort is of the essence. But Italy’s national soccer team still managed to pull off a stylish arrival in Rio de Janeiro last week.

“Ce l’ho, ce l’ho, mi manca“—”Got it, got it, need it”—is the refrain that has introduced Italian kids to the joys of supply and demand for decades. It is the equivalent to the stock market’s “buy, sell,” but it accompanies the exchange of a very different, though similarly precious commodity: Panini stickers, which contain portraits of the football players taking part in the World Cup.

The post has been updated.

In 2000, the US become the most populous country to have ever eliminated measles. But due to a resurgence of anti-vaccination sentiment, the US is moving backward. Twenty years back, to be exact: 334 cases of measles were diagnosed in the US since the beginning of 2014, five times higher than in 1994.

European politicians might, we recently suggested, be looking to learn something from Italy’s Matteo Renzi. While far-right and far-left euroskeptics gave many countries’ mainstream parties a drubbing in the recent European Parliament election, Renzi’s Partito Democratico (PD) recorded an unprecedented victory, getting 40.8% of the votes.

The drug trade, prostitution and smuggling are to be added to Italy’s GDP calculations from Sep 2014, Italy’s institute of statistics, ISTAT, announced on May 22 (link in Italian). The change is meant to comply with an EU regulation from 2013 that requires all transactions, regardless of their legal status, to be accounted for.

Today, many visitors to the New York Times website have encountered an ad that spreads across the homepage and looks like this: