The situation in Gaza and the West Bank has deteriorated sharply since October 7, 2023. Gaza faces unprecedented devastation, while economic strangulation and security clampdowns in the West Bank have created intolerable conditions for daily life. Over 400 permanent Israeli checkpoints now divide Palestinian communities across the West Bank, severely disrupting movement, trade, and human dignity.
On 22 April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed plans to reorganize the State Department with the justification of increasing efficiency, rooting out ‘radical political ideology’, and delivering Trump’s foreign policy agenda. The details of the plan focus on reducing the size of the State Department and its budget over time: consolidating regional bureaus and embassies, shutting down redundant offices, and ending non-statutory programs that the administration determines to be irrelevant to American interests.
The current US administration has altered South Africa’s trajectory as a nation. On 7 February 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14204 titled, “Addressing Egregious Actions of The Republic of South Africa”. It outlines two reasons for its existence, first that South Africa’s Expropriation Act (2024) dismantles “equal opportunity” and fuels “disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners”. Secondly, the Order states that South Africa’s condemnation of Israel to the International Court of Justice, “poses national security threats to the US.” The provisions of the order also set two major policies that will reverberate across the international community. One is an immediate cut to United States aid to South Africa, second is the promotion of resettling Afrikaners, Dutch-descended South Africans, in the United States as refugees from racial discrimination.
Many Ukrainians closely followed President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington, where Ukraine and the United States planned to sign an agreement on rare earth metals. According to the American side, this deal was intended to pave the way for a ceasefire in Ukraine. However, a verbal spat between President Donald Trump, Vice President James Vance, and President Zelensky turned everything upside down.
The Argentinian people have had enough. On 12 March 2025, the people of Buenos Aires took to the street to protests President Javier Milei’s policy of extreme austerity. The protesters showed anger at the weakness of their pension system exposed by these policies. In reaction, the government sent out police; senior citizens and soccer fans were then blasted with firehoses, teargassed, and shot with rubber bullets Ghastly images and videos have emerged of badly wounded protesters voicing their desperation to the riot police.
The United States in early March was added to the CIVICUS Monitor Human Rights Watchlist. CIVICUS is a global research organization that studies and publishes the status of freedoms and threats to civil liberties in various countries around the world each year. CIVICUS has pointed to Trump’s erratic use of executive orders, mass firings of federal workers, dismantling of foreign aid programs, antagonism of journalists and efforts to tamp down pro-Palestinian protests as just some of the reasons for the change in the United States status.
40% of the U.S. population line our coasts. That equates to approximately 130 million people residing in coastal counties. In addition to those who retire seaside, entire economies are integrated into the coastal industries of fishing, tourism, energy, shipbuilding, and recreation. Even a cursory glance using google maps shows how tightly clustered the built space is, all on only 10% of the total U.S. land mass. Shoreline communities have five times the population density as compared to the U.S. average.
It has been over a month now of the reelected Trump administration, in only a short time Donald Trump has managed to completely rewrite US foreign policy. Old allies are now possible enemies, old enemies are allies. There’s the possibility of the United States annexing and taking land by force, trade wars are on the rise and US soft power and global aid are now a thing of the past.
40% of the U.S. population line our coasts. That equates to approximately 130 million people residing in coastal counties. In addition to those who retire seaside, entire economies are integrated into the coastal industries of fishing, tourism, energy, shipbuilding, and recreation. Even a cursory glance using google maps shows how tightly clustered the built space is, all on only 10% of the total U.S. land mass. Shoreline communities have five times the population density as compared to the U.S. average.
The International Cycling Union (UCI) is the governing-body of cycling throughout the world. This year’s World Championships, held every four years, will take place in and around Kigali, Rwanda. The previous edition of the World Championships was held in the cycling-rich region of Flanders in Belgium. According to Velo, the planned route in Kigali is set to be the hardest course ever for a UCI World Championships. The men’s course is set to be a 268 kilometer slog through the Rwandan mountains (with more climbing than previous World Championships set in the European Alps) and the women’s race will be a similar slog through the mountains but a bit shorter at only 165 kilometers.
No one in this world deserves to get sick. It is a condition that ranges from a day-long tedium to the unfortunate conclusion of one’s life. From both extremes and everything in between, illness is a state of being humanity could live without, or at least with a reduced frequency.
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