World

An old Olds — as all Oldses are, there being no new ones — on the streets of New York, November 2021 (Jay Nordlinger) I haven’t meant to focus on Oldsmobiles lately — it was just an accident. I happened past one in Dallas, and put it in a column of mine titled “Snapshots of

It seems to be the case that young Americans are becoming more troubled. On our university campuses, suicides and attempts have been increasing. Are school officials doing a good job of handling this? In today’s Martin Center article, UNC student Natalia Mayorga writes about the “mental health crisis” at Chapel Hill; in just the last

This Brownstone Institute essay by Vinay Prasad asks “For Whom Do the Covid ‘Fact-Checkers’ really Work?” They certainly don’t work for the good of the public. Key paragraph: “So here is what blows my mind: We are living in a world where the CDC director can say something that is false, made-up and no institution

Phil’s, ahem, strong views on the Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill have gotten a lot of attention. You can argue that he’s wrong on the merits or the politics (I don’t believe he is), but you can’t say he’s inconsistent: I have been consistently outraged about disregard for fiscal sanity across administrations, much

President Joe Biden looks on as he delivers remarks on the U.S. debt ceiling from the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. October 4, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) I used to say, you know, like a week ago, that if Biden cratered, he’d be in the high 30s in approval. I think

On Monday morning, Meta — the company formerly known as Facebook — announced that it would be shutting down “the Face Recognition system on Facebook,” a technology that has been raising privacy alarms since it debuted. In a blog post, the company described the move as “one of the biggest shifts in facial recognition usage

Rob Dobi for BuzzFeed News There’s a very real chance the planet will warm up an average of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) this century — and that would be disastrous. In such a brutally hot world, scientists agree, deadly heat waves, massive wildfires, and damaging downpours will come far more often and hit

When I was a teenager, magazines were everywhere — the doctor’s office, the magazine aisle at the grocery store where my mom shopped, piled up on the babysitter’s couch. The really good issues were passed around by the parents in my neighborhood. I was struck by the images on the covers, but only in the

Before the borders closed, Michele, 31, made a modest income buying clothes and electronics in South Africa and reselling them for profit across the border in Zimbabwe. But when the pandemic shut down most traffic between the two countries, she said, her revenue dried up and she had to try “other means to earn a

Mark Harris for BuzzFeed News; Getty Images Didier Raoult (left) and Elisabeth Bik Days after a mysterious new illness was declared a pandemic last March, a prominent scientist in France announced that he had already found a cure. Based on a small clinical trial, microbiologist Didier Raoult claimed that hydroxychloroquine, a decades-old antimalarial drug, was

Oksana Parafeniuk for BuzzFeed News Craig Lang in Kyiv on Feb. 18, 2021 KYIV — One chilly day in February, Craig Lang, a former US Army soldier wanted for allegedly killing a married couple in Florida, pleaded with three stern-faced judges in a Kyiv courtroom to allow him to stay in Ukraine. He first came

Under lockdown, travel photography fueled our jealousy, longing, and admiration. For travelers back in the 1800s, photographs were important in another way: “You might have gone to that place, but you couldn’t take a picture of it, so you buy one to show people back home,” said Jamie Allen, an associate curator at the George

Fernando Llano / AP A Haitian immigrant wades across the Rio Grande to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. The 35-year-old father weighed his options: head back into the US, where he could be sent back to Haiti, or stay in Mexico as authorities closed in around him and other immigrants. Wood, who declined to give his full

Angela Merkel was on the campaign trail on Friday, two days before Germans head to the polls to elect a new parliament and thus her replacement. The 67-year-old is retiring after almost 16 years as German chancellor, but she is still out campaigning for her center-right Christian Democratic Union party. On Friday, she made a

Jessica Obert for BuzzFeed News Samuel Jules, 23, a member of Surf Haiti, has participated in surf competitions. The sun had just crested above the hills when Samuel Jules walked past an abandoned house on Kabic Beach, in southern Haiti, wrapped the surfboard leash around his ankle, and glided into the turquoise waves. For a

Top scientists across the world — including experts at the FDA and the World Health Organization — pushed back against the need for widespread coronavirus vaccine booster shots on Monday. In a review published in the top medical journal The Lancet, the scientists argued that booster shots are not needed in the general population since