2025-12-05 15:00:18
Encouraging people to use performance-enhancing drugs to break world records — the core idea behind the Enhanced Games, aka the “Steroid Olympics” — already gave me pause. Now its billionaire backers say they’ll offer testosterone to ordinary folks, not just athletes, as part of their plan to take their events-slash-telemedicine company public via a special-purpose acquisition company. That makes me even warier.
2025-12-05 13:30:10
Russia is lining up a naval base on the Red Sea. US President Donald Trump seeks peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while threatening war in Nigeria. Extremists are on the march from the Sahel to southern Africa. Across the continent, foreign powers are scrambling for vital resources and real estate.
2025-12-05 13:00:10
Taxing expensive homes to raise less than 0.1% of total government receipts is hardly a fiscal revolution. But the modest beginnings of Britain’s proposed mansion tax shouldn’t obscure its potential significance. History and international experience suggest the high-value council tax surcharge is likely to become bigger and broader in scope as time goes on. A shiny new dial has been created on the fiscal dashboard; the temptation to turn it will be hard to resist.
2025-12-05 12:30:10
If your social media feeds are driven by similar algorithms to mine, you’ll know that the Miss Universe contest hasn’t completely ended despite a winner being crowned on Nov. 21 in Thailand. In fact, you might say we’ve had a month of pageantry — provided you focus on how people can make spectacles of themselves. For those who’ve missed out, here’s as sober-minded a synopsis as I can come up with.
2025-12-05 12:00:10
Nominally, Israel is abiding by a truce in Gaza and is poised to begin a second phase that includes talks on a wider political settlement. To the north, it’s agreed to a ceasefire and negotiations in Lebanon, which should give space for a new government in Beirut to deal with Hezbollah. To the east, it’s also in talks with a new leader of Syria who — for the first time in decades — is not in cahoots with Tehran. In every case, however, the operative word here is “nominally.”
2025-12-05 09:00:11
China has tried many tactics to isolate Japan over the past month, from letters to the United Nations to courting France and Russia. Now, it has taken to silencing some of Tokyo’s beloved cultural icons, from the Empress of J-Pop to the world’s top-selling manga.
