By Michael Weissenstein and Andrea Rodriguez 10 May 2019 HAVANA (AP) – The Cuban government announced Friday that it is launching widespread rationing of chicken, eggs, rice, beans, soap and other basic products in the face of a grave economic crisis. Commerce Minister Betsy Díaz Velázquez told the state-run Cuban News Agency that various forms […]
By Conor Finnegan 9 May 2019 (ABC News) – Two days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cut a stop from his trip to Germany, his office announced that he was canceling another visit — this time to Greenland, where Pompeo was to see melting glaciers at the forefront of climate change. Pompeo had to […]
By Elizabeth Mclaughlin and Conor Finnegan 3 May 2019 (ABC News) – China is increasing its activity in the Arctic, building a second ice-breaking ship and looking to expand its footprint in Greenland, according to a new Pentagon report, and Beijing’s presence in the region could lead to the deployment of armed submarines, the report […]
6 May 2019 (IPBES) – Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the summary of which was […]
18 April 2019 (Gallup) – Gallup’s Positive and Negative Experience Indexes measure life’s intangibles — feelings and emotions — that traditional economic indicators such as GDP were never intended to capture. Each index provides a real-time snapshot of people’s daily experiences, offering leaders insights into the health of their societies that they cannot gather from […]
2 May 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – Everybody knows the “American Dream” of upward class mobility is a shining artifact of the past, to borrow the words of Leonard Cohen. But how fast is the dream dying? Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights project seeks to answer this question and hopes to prescribe remedies. They’ve collected a great […]
By Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Gareth Jones1 May 2019 JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Anti-Semitic attacks worldwide rose 13 percent in 2018 from the previous year, with the highest number of incidents reported in major Western democracies including the United States, France, Britain and Germany, an annual study showed on Wednesday. Those incidents included […]
By Julie Ray 25 April 2019 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Gallup) – Even as their economy roared, more Americans were stressed, angry, and worried last year than they have been at most points during the past decade. Asked about their feelings the previous day, the majority of Americans (55%) in 2018 said they had experienced stress during […]
By Noah Gallagher Shannon 10 April 2019 (The New York Times Magazine) – The Pinkertons wanted me to picture myself in a scene of absolute devastation. “A hurricane just wipes out everything, and you need to feed your children,” Andres Paz Larach said. The power grid is down, shipments of food are cut off, the […]
NEW YORK, 20 March 2019 – As in 2018, Finland again takes the top spot as the happiest country in the world according to three years of surveys taken by Gallup from 2016-2018. Rounding out the rest of the top ten are countries that have consistently ranked among the happiest. They are in order: Denmark, […]
