Caitlin Hu

In its battle to get Italians to make more babies, the Italian government has made an embarrassing misstep.

Patience is a virtue. Don’t bug your partner about their weight. Try not to vex your boss. As a new translation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs reveals, the fundamental rules of human behavior have changed little in the last 4,000 years—and wisdom from the times of the pharaohs still rings wry and insightful today.

After years of occupation by ISIL and a bloody months-long siege, civilians in the Syrian city of Manbij are finally free.

Update, 6:35pm ET: The climber has been intercepted by police, who pulled him inside the building from a window on the 21st floor.

In a dark reversal of one of the world’s most popular mobile games, life-sized Pokémon are hunting pedestrians in a new video campaign for the city of Basel, Switzerland. The marauding creatures target people who are absorbed in their phones, probably playing Pokémon Go.

In the fall of 1943, German soldiers in Italy began rounding up Italian Jews and deporting them—10,000 people were sent to concentration camps during the nearly two-year Nazi occupation. Most never returned. But in Rome, a group of doctors saved at least 20 Jews from a similar fate, by diagnosing them with Syndrome K, a deadly, disfiguring, and contagiosissima disease.

The 11 police officers shot by snipers at the end of a Black Lives Matters march in Dallas had been standing guard as protesters made their way through the city, on an evening that local reports described as “peaceful” until the attack began.

An “AR-15-type assault rifle” has been linked to this morning’s massacre in Orlando—the deadliest mass shooting yet in the US. The most popular rifle in the country, it’s become a symbol for both sides of the gun control debate. Update June 14: According to Florida authorities, the exact gun was an Italian version of the semi-automatic weapon, made by Sig Sauer.

An explosion rattled Shanghai’s main airport today (June 12), injuring four.

A massive fire is raging through a trash pile of over 100,000 tons of tires in central Spain today, May 13. The result—in addition to heavy local air pollution—is a spectacular set of pictures that illustrate the terrifying power humans gained when we first figured out how to make sparks.

Today may be the beginning of the end of globalization as we know it—at least in the West. On April 12, the European Commission proposed new visa requirements for US and Canadian travelers.

More than 36,000 migrating people are trapped in Greece, due to recent border restrictions by nearby countries. In neighboring Macedonia, economic migrants are uniformly barred from entry, as are Afghans claiming refugee status and Iraqis and Syrians from cities not directly located in combat zones. According to the AP, some have even been turned away for possessing Greek registration papers signed in black, rather than blue, ink.

Happy new year! This week, people around the world are getting haircuts, buying new clothes, and stocking up on treats to fête the Year of the Monkey, which begins Feb. 8. Businesses across China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and their respective diasporas have shut down for the holidays. All of China is on vacation, and its economy is at a virtual standstill.

Smartphone cameras opened the art of photography to basically everyone, and now, camera-equipped drones offer access to vertiginous new perspectives, from skyscrapers poking through clouds to vast fields laid out like a carpet.

To mark the end of the year, photo agency AP has rounded up its “most popular, highest-trending, most liked and shared photos posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.” In other words, the images that resonated most across social media in 2015 .

What do people want most? Philosophers have tried and failed to settle the question; would-be heads of state hazard guesses at each new electoral cycle; inventors, designers, and entrepreneurs lose sleep every night trying to crack it. And whenever the holidays roll around, that existential question gets personal: What do the people closest to me want? Then, despairingly, what can I, no philosopher, president, or inventor, possibly give to make them happy?

One of the attackers in Friday night’s Paris massacres was a French ISIL recruit, whose father traveled all the way to Syria in 2013 in a futile attempt to get him to give up jihad.

France is the number one enemy of ISIL, explained magistrate and antiterror expert Marc Trévidic to Paris-Match with chilling prescience back in September. Not the US, not the UK, not Turkey. France.

As a series of bloody shootings unfolds across Paris tonight, Nov. 13, leaving dozens of confirmed deaths, support for the city has already begun with the hashtag #portesouvertes. The hashtag is being used to offer shelter in Paris to anyone in the city who is afraid to attempt returning home or taking public transportation.

Japanese legislators who want to protect the country’s 70-year tradition of pacifism resorted to violence today (Sept. 17) to defend their ideals.

Devastation at Europe’s borders is nothing new. In May, Spanish immigration authorities released x-ray images of an eight-year-old Ivoirian boy found huddled inside a suitcase. In June, a man fell from the sky onto a rooftop in London, having stowed away in the undercarriage of an airplane all the way from South Africa. In August alone, more than 600 people drowned trying to reach Europe.

“The city of Palmyra, noble for its situation, the riches of its soil and its pleasant streams, encloses its fields with a vast compass of sands,” wrote Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder in Natural History (in 77 AD). “And as if shut out by nature from all other lands, it is by a peculiar lot between two mighty empires, the Romans and the Parthians, wherein discord is ever the first object on both sides.”

As Syria endures its fourth year of turmoil, Europe is just beginning to grasp the true scale of desperation of refugees overwhelming its borders.

Days after a devastating explosion at a chemical warehouse in the port of Tianjin, China, aerial photos reveal the stunning extent of the damage. A steaming black crater marks ground zero, while the apocalyptic surrounding landscape is charred and flattened. Rows of burnt-out cars and twisted shipping containers stretch into the distance on all sides.