Blogs

The global pandemic caused by COVID-19, climate change, and racism all have some unfortunate similarities. They are all global crises and they all have a death toll. They each cause the most harm to the least well-off in society, and they all lay bare our structures of social inequality. And they all are made worse […]

Turkey’s cities are back to their daily hurley-burley after most of the restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19 were lifted. The return to the old normal, with crowds on the streets, packed public transport and traffic jams, happened so fast that the time when the cities appeared apocalyptically quiet and still during the curfews […]

Hong Kong has begun to tighten restrictions as coronavirus cases hit record highs (Reuters). Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam reported that more than 100 cases were reported on Sunday, the most since the pandemic began in late January (Reuters). The government has increased testing especially for individuals in high-risk areas (NYT). Social gatherings are now […]

The Turkish parliament approved a controversial law on Wednesday which gives authorities greater power in regulating social media (AP). The adoption of such a law raised the concern of growing censorship on dissenting voices on social media platforms (Reuters). The law requires foreign social media sites to appoint Turkish representatives to address authorities’ concerns over […]

Monday, July 27th, Papua New Guinean President, James Marape, ordered the lockdown of the capital city of Port Moresby (Asian Age). The lockdown came after the small nation’s first COVID-19 death and a rapid spike in confirmed cases (Asian Age). Within a day, Marape announced the discovery of twenty-three new positive cases (Asian Age). Before […]

A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) details sexual violence against gay and bisexual men, transgender women, and non-binary people in Syria (HRW). The Syrian state and non-state actors have targeted people based on their perceived or known sexual orientation or gender identity, people they saw as “soft” (HRW). HRW conducted 40 interviews in […]

Due to climate change, polar bears have been listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (BBC). According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are an estimated 22,000 to 31,000 polar bears left in the wild (NBC). A new study, published in Nature Climate Change, puts a timeline […]

Poland’s right-wing government is officially planning to leave the Istanbul Convention, a European treaty against domestic violence. Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro stated he will formally ask the Ministry of Family on Monday to start the process to leave the treaty (AP). Ziobro stated the treaty is “harmful” because it forces schools to teach about gender, […]

Ecuadorian Defense Minister Oswaldo Jarrin told reporters last week that the country was monitoring a fleet of Chinese fishing vessels off the Galapagos Islands (Reuters). Vessels like these pose a threat to the marine life of the Galapagos Islands, and species such as sharks, manta rays and tuna (El Universo). Patrols are currently surrounding the […]

Kuwait’s ruler Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah left the country early Thursday to complete medical treatment in the US (Reuters). Sheikh Sabah recently underwent surgery for an unannounced medical condition (Al Jazeera). A Kuwaiti royal said Sheikh Sabah lost consciousness twice since entering the hospital over the weekend (WSJ). The ruler suffered a debilitating stroke […]