BY ANN CRAWFORD-ROBERTS & SIDRA BONNER Congressional Republicans have vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as their first priority in the new Trump administration. Even before Trump takes office, the Senate and House have voted to initiate the process to gut major parts of the law commonly referred to as Obamacare. Following the […]

BY HAIYANG ZHANG In Europe, when the daughter of an aristocratic family reached the age of maturity, a debutante ball was traditionally the perfect occasion for a girl to present herself to the society as an adult. On Tuesday, January 17, President Xi Jinping became the first Chinese head of state to address the World […]

Six years ago, Tunisians succeeded in changing the course of history – but low trust and political participation could thwart its democratic transition.

For nearly eight years, one of the few sources of meaningful journalism about life inside Qatar – as opposed to the the gas- and oil-rich country’s dealings abroad – has been Doha News. Yet since the close of November, the online site’s articles on cultural, economic, and policy developments have been blocked in the one […]

BY GRANT TUDOR A World Bank country manager referred to Uganda’s progress in reducing poverty as “an African success story.” This was a common refrain a decade ago, when extreme poverty fell sharply and the HIV epidemic ground to a near halt. Strangely, though, the comment came last year. Uganda’s income inequality is now among […]

The United Arab Emirates’ increased use of hard power could corrode diplomatic ties and weaken its position vis-a-vis regional adversaries.

 In Fred Wilson’s Guarded View, four black headless mannequins dressed in iconic museum guard uniforms from the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Jewish Museum provoke visitors to consider the unequal power relations and stereotypes that structure our experiences of cultural institutions. First shown […]

The Syrian refugee crisis, corruption, and unraveling political coalitions are among the many problems facing Lebanese President Michel Aoun.

BY MARIE LAWRENCE Every year around this time, when we are happiest to open our wallets, NGOs overwhelm our inboxes with slick year-end infographics. Retailers launch multi-media campaigns to push their gotta-have-it widget of the season. Nonprofits and businesses spend millions proving their worth to would-be donors and consumers. Yet from the federal government, which […]

The atrocities in Rwanda, we are often told, were an ethnic conflict: a genocide that not only fell along racial lines, but one fueled by intractable differences separating two distinct peoples. Indeed, much coverage from 1994 onward implied a degree of inevitability to the world’s fastest genocide. After all, “ethnic tensions [had] existed in Rwanda […]

North Africa’s troubled borders are havens for smuggling and armed groups. Here’s what can be done to make them more secure.

BY MATTHEW E. SPECTOR The most critical activity at Trump Tower last week was not the selection of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as the president-elect’s secretary of state or the appearance of Kanye West for a short meeting about “life,” but a small, closed door meeting with 25 tech leaders with potentially dramatic implications for […]