Trump looks on at the White House: the latest in a long line. Andrew Harrer/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.A bare couple of months after Trump’s inauguration, he is being widely touted as the worst president in US history. His bombast, splenetic tweets, unsavoury remarks about women, and scapegoating of minorities provide plenty of ammunition for opponents to vilify the new leader of the free world. Moreover he has had the temerity – no other word suffices – to assault the media for disseminating fake news, a risky activity even for so powerful a figure as the president.  They have responded in kind by spearing some of Trump’s outlandish misstatements and,…

Stefano Montesi/Demotix. All rights reserved. Libya to Italy in search of freedom Besieged by civil war, poverty and violent repression, huge numbers of people are risking their lives making the hazardous journey from Tripoli or Benghazi across the Mediterranean to Italy. Crammed into unsafe, poorly maintained vessels, thousands of vulnerable men, women and children are leaving their homes in search of peace, freedom and opportunity. They come from countries in turmoil: Syria, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Somalia and Libya among others; they have lost hope of life becoming peaceful and just in their homeland, and see no alternative but to pack a bag with their past and set off into the…

The holidays have a way of drawing even the most secular people toward houses of worship. So whether religion is part of your everyday life or Christmas Eve is the last time anyone will spot you near an altar until Easter, it’s likely you’ll encounter someone undergoing a spiritual experience in the coming days. Ask someone what it’s like to “feel the spirit,” and they’ll probably describe it as mysterious, even unknowable. Yet, thanks to new research, neuroscientists can tell us exactly what’s happening in the brain at that moment. According to recent findings published in Social Neuroscience as part of an ongoing study called the Religious Brain Project, researchers have found evidence that when a…

Sir Roger Carr, chairman of BAE systems and new vice-chair of the BBC Trust. Photo: The CBI “Sometimes you have to make hard sacrifices”, said Sir Michael Lyons, former chairman of the BBC Trust, after the Corporation’s decision not to renew Jeremy Clarkson’s contract on March 25. Clarkson’s apparent status as “too valuable to sack”, despite a long list of indiscretions, was displaced by the insistence that, in the words of the BBC’s director of television, “it’s like football clubs: no one is bigger than the club.” The Clarkson fiasco – complete with “derogatory and abusive language”, a “physical attack” lasting around thirty seconds, and allegations of death threats made…

Most know Los Angeles International Airport as a headache-inducing maze they’d like to avoid at all costs. But on Sunday, thousands willingly gathered at LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal to denounce Donald Trump’s most recent executive order to temporarily ban travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. Additionally, the order bans refugees from entering the country for the next 120 days—banning Syrian refugees indefinitely—during which time the Trump administration insists it will sort out the kinks of its “extreme vetting” process.    Almost immediately, the order caused chaos and confusion at several international airports across the United States. Reports surfaced of border patrol officers detaining green card holders returning to the U.S.—a…

Click:Pen bag making machine Thousands of people took to the streets of Georgia's major cities on Saturday in protest at the Georgian government's response to recent events along the country's de-facto border (the administrative boundary line) with South Ossetia. On 10 July, the de-facto authorities of South Ossetia moved border posts several hundred metres deeper into Georgian-controlled territory in the vicinity of two villages—Orchosani and Tsitelubani—in Georgia's Shida Kartli region. A 1.5 kilometre underground section of the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline has now been brought under South Ossetian control, while the de-facto border is now nearly half a kilometre closer to Georgia's East-West highway and the Kartli-2 power line. As in…

Massachusetts Congressional Representative Seth Moulton doesn’t have much of a political pedigree. “The first congressman my parents ever met was me,” Moulton, 38, recently joked to a small crowd at GOOD’s Los Angeles offices. But the outspoken newcomer from his home state’s 6th District is a veteran of another, and arguably more important order: After graduating from Harvard in 2001 with a degree in physics, Moulton joined the Marine Corps and served roughly five years in the military, which included four tours in Iraq. His experience and support for war veterans helped him win his first congressional term two years ago. He’s gone on to propose key strategic efforts in…

Cairo International Book Fair. Mahmood Shahiin/Demotix. All rights reserved. I have been following Hesham Shafick’s articles on the evolution of the upper-middle class in Egypt (Whatever is happening to the Egyptians, parts one and two) and have been pondering the questions asked at the end of the second article: “Why did the new upper middle-class choose to isolate itself from the country to which they belong? Was this a deliberate choice or rather enforced by exogenous political and market forces?” The answers to these questions have become more evident since Shafick and Saad asked them. A quick review of newspaper headlines, television ads, and social media will reveal the political role this new class…

Demonstrations in Taiz to force Huthi militia from the city, March 2015. Erem News. All rights reserved.While media coverage of the tragic situation unfolding in Yemen in recent months has focused on armed clashes and other violence, there has also been widespread and ongoing nonviolent civil resistance employed by a number of different actors. In fact, the most significant setbacks to the Huthi militia in their march southward across the country in recent months have come not from the remnants of the Yemeni army or Saudi air strikes, but from massive resistance by unarmed civilians which has thus far prevented their capture of Taiz, the country’s third largest city, and…

Donald Trump loves the exclamation point—a lot. And he uses it on his Twitter feed—a lot. Trump, who boasts nearly 20 million Twitter followers—still deep in the shadow of Barack Obama and his 80 million followers—uses the exclamation point in so many ways. He uses it to celebrate Army-Navy sports… to laud high officials… and to rally for a good meeting. He also uses the exclamation point to engage in international affairs… to debunk names… to discredit public arts and media figures…  or just CNN, specifically. The exclamation point has its origin in Latin as a proclamation of joy called “io,” and was originally written with the i on top of the…