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Over the last two months the world has changed dramatically! Streets and highways in cities around the world—from Paris and London to New York, and from Madrid to Los Angeles—became devoid of traffic almost overnight due to lockdown attempts to control the coronavirus.
Decades after the worst nuclear disaster in history, the now-shuttered nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, is in the news again. Thirty-four years ago, the plant’s reactor number 4 melted down. Since that time, the surrounding radioactive towns have been almost vacant, and the site has become a tourist attraction. In the last few weeks, a major forest...
Oil prices are plummeting, and for Middle Eastern nations that rely on oil revenues to support their economies, this is very bad news. Iraq’s 2020 budget assumes that oil’s average price for the year will be $56 (U.S. dollars) per barrel (The Spectator, April 4, 2020), yet oil has dropped to less than $20 per barrel (as of this writing) and continues to show...
“Whatever it takes” is the now-famous comment of Mario Draghi when he was the European Central Bank chairman. He was addressing the European debt crisis of 2012—and his sentiment is now shared by many world leaders and national governments as they attempt to deal with the economic consequences of the coronavirus shutdown of national economies (The Economist,...
“The European Experiment”—a description applied to the European Union by many—is in serious trouble. Old divides that have plagued the continent for centuries are reemerging. A couple of weeks ago, EU leaders met to come up with a unified financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic but struggled to agree (Reuters, March 27, 2020).
The Financial Times makes a grave case concerning the impact of the current pandemic: “It is no exaggeration to say the oil industry faces its gravest crisis of the past 100 years” (March 24, 2020). As many citizens of industrialized nations settle into life at home, travel by land, sea, and air has fallen drastically. Experts estimate that between 10 and 25...
New Zealand recently passed what many view as a “progressive” law that allows abortion—no questions asked—up until 20 weeks of pregnancy (New York Times, March 18, 2020). Previously, New Zealand was one of just a few industrialized nations that still viewed abortion as a criminal act.
The Guardian reports that tropical storms have provided moisture to enable locusts to thrive in the arid North African desert (March 20, 2020). Storms that usually move through the region quickly have stayed longer and come more frequently. A single tropical cyclone can increase locust reproduction 400-fold, but the recent duo of tropical cyclones resulted in an...
COVID-19 is wreaking havoc everywhere, and especially in Europe! While the coronavirus pandemic threatens global economies, experts say it could tear the European Union apart (Geopolitical Monitor, March 19, 2020). Financially strapped Italy is on the front lines with viral infections and deaths, and much of the rest of Europe is not far behind. What will happen...
Amidst the devastating locust plague and COVID-19 pandemic, tensions between Kenya and Somalia have reached a fever pitch as Somalia’s civil war continues to tear that country apart (Deutsche Welle, March 13, 2020). The al-Qaeda-linked terror group, al-Shabab, is also in the fight, and their raids have spilled over into Kenya. During a recent incursion into...