Author: James Martin
Comment on this storyCommentOne sunny spring morning in May 2020, President Donald Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden and announced what would turn out to be his administration’s most striking success: Operation Warp Speed, which combined an influx of money with some trimming of bureaucracy to generate safe and effective vaccines against Covid in record time.Trump’s promises about Operation Warp Speed are easy to forget, but at the time doubts about the project were extremely widespread. So it’s sad or funny — or both — that Operation Warp Speed has already emerged as a vulnerability for Trump in the…
Comment on this storyCommentThe Colorado River has gone nearly dry the way Mike Campbell in “The Sun Also Rises” went bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly. It took decades, countless mistakes and global warming to bring the river to the brink of disaster. It will take doing countless things right to have any hope of solving the problem as the planet continues to warm. Except now we don’t have decades.The most urgent need is to stop using so much water. The seven US states in the river basin keep failing to agree on a plan to slash annual consumption by up to a quarter. So now we’re…
Comment on this storyCommentNot so long ago, alternative protein products like Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger promised to consign conventional beef, pork and chicken to the culinary dark ages. The companies’ stock prices soared, as did their market share. But consumers lost their appetite for fake meat in 2022, with the industry posting significant declines here in the US.Divorcing Americans from their carnivorous habits has always been an uphill battle. For nearly two centuries, a colorful cast of eccentrics and entrepreneurs have pushed alternatives to meat only to see the real thing regain its place of pride on the nation’s…
Comment on this storyCommentIt takes a clinical case of solipsism to behave as irresponsibly as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan does. Then again, maybe he’s doing it on purpose. Erdogan faces an election in May or June — one that, despite his strongman machinations, he could theoretically lose. In the run-up, he’s apparently trying to energize his hardline and Islamist bases. To him that seems to mean acting like a geopolitical orc.Officially, his country is one of the 30 members of NATO and, on paper, even a candidate to join the European Union one day. In reality, he’s more often undermining the…
Comment on this storyCommentThe campaign by western nations to defund the Kremlin and force President Vladimir Putin to abandon his war in Ukraine has reached a delicate phase. On Feb. 5, the European Union joined the UK and the US in banning seaborne imports of Russian diesel and other oil products. The measure, coupled with a price cap on Russian fuel exports, is designed to blow a sizable hole in Moscow’s energy revenues. The flip side: If European buyers are unable to find alternative supplies, the sanctions will heap new costs on diesel-reliant industries such as farming and road haulage…
Comment on this storyCommentPakistan is facing another in a series of economic crises that have repeatedly sent it to the International Monetary Fund seeking help. Most of its previous bailouts — 13 since the late 1980s — were left uncompleted, however, without Pakistan making any meaningful structural changes to help rein in government spending or raise revenue. Today, with the economy in a tailspin yet again — a situation exacerbated by last year’s devastating floods and continued political turmoil — Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government is in discussions to revive its latest, $6.5 billion loan program. But it’s hard to…
Comment on this storyCommentAt a Waffle House in Georgia, the customer is not always right. The fast-food restaurant was inundated last month with orders for a waffle sandwich that wasn’t on the menu — but was on TikTok. According to videos on TikTok, Waffle House posted handwritten signs pleading with customers to stop ordering a special combo they had seen on social media: “Order from the menu,” one sign read. “We are not making anything you saw on TikTok!!”After TikTok exploded with Waffle House menu hacks, this store refused to make off-menu items. (Video: Bryant Xavier Crawford via TikTok)Two weeks…
Comment on this storyCommentWartime horrors and sexual slavery aren’t top of mind when perusing luxury malls on Orchard Road in Singapore. Yet Cairnhill Road, a terraced street a short walk away, was home to one of most prominent brothels used by the Japanese army in World War II. Sentosa, an island known today for golf courses, tony hotels and spas, also hosted a so-called “comfort station” where women were similarly subjugated.The world is familiar with the ordeal of comfort women mainly because of the courage shown by Koreans who were coerced into bondage and have publicly campaigned for compensation and acts of contrition from…
Comment on this storyCommentFor months, I’ve been talking to scientists about drug-resistant fungi, waiting for a news hook that might help me convince readers to care about the threat. Little did I know that I was waiting for a fictional apocalypse.In the new HBO show the Last of Us, a real-life fungus called Cordyceps, known to hijack the brains and bodies of insects, has adapted to thrive on human hosts. It swiftly and gruesomely transforms the people it infects, turning them first into zombies that chase down human prey. Eventually, the zombies morph into giant mushrooms. Yikes.In the real world,…
Comment on this storyCommentThe federal government produced two notable documents on gun violence last week. The first, a report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, provided a measure of the mayhem induced by the deregulation of firearms and the removal of strictures on virtually anyone wishing to possess them. The second, a ruling Thursday by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, was a solemn promise of more chaos to come.The ATF report, which analyzed the years 2017 to 2021, noted the proliferation of ghost guns, which lack serial numbers and can’t be traced, at crime scenes.…