Gil worked for more than 30 years at the Voice of America, the nation’s largest public-funded international broadcaster. He was 86 years old. Distinguished VOA correspondent Butler passed away on Oct. 10 at his home in Waldorf, Maryland. During his years at the Voice, from 1978 until his retirement well into the 21st century, his…
On October 31, representatives of around 200 countries are set to gather in Scotland for an annual U.N. conference on climate change. Central to their debate: progress on limiting global warming in the 2020s. There is a growing popular consensus that there’s not a minute to lose in making such reforms. President Biden told the…
Boise, Idaho, is one of many communities bracing for a surge of Afghan arrivals. The small city is preparing to welcome 58 Afghan refugees, and southern Idaho’s refugee center in Twin Falls expects another 50 in the next few weeks. Brown University’s Watson Institute, an expert on refugee issues, notes that thousands of Afghans have…
Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff died early October 18 after complications caused by COVID-19, according to his family. He was 84 years old. As the family put it: “General Powell was fully vaccinated, and we want to thank the staff of the Walter Reed National…
Building effective online interaction is all about listening, not technology. By Loren Hurst Some time ago, I noticed the term “ecosystem” began regularly showing up as a descriptor for business and political concepts. Once a term confined to the natural sciences, today we have industrial ecosystems, policy ecosystems, innovation ecosystems, and many others too…
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeffrey Zients describe the challenge bluntly in a recent Washington Post column: Vaccinating Americans and people around the world to defeat the virus both here at home and abroad. Our most powerful weapon in this fight is safe and effective vaccines.” Distributing vaccines around…
The world must be fully aware of the perils that would erupt should China occupy its tiny southeast Pacific coastal neighbor, Taiwan, and abolish it as a separate, internationally recognized republic. How would the United States and the world react if Beijing eliminated Taiwan and integrated it with the mainland? Background of the current situation…
New legislation introduced in the United States Senate would expand America’s attention to the strategically important Arctic region to our north. The proposed law would establish a new Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary of State for Arctic Affairs, “it’s high time that we have such representation,” according to Sherri Goodman, a former United States Deputy Undersecretary for…
Journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dimitri Muratov of Russia are the winners of the coveted international award for 2021. —Ms. Ressa has been a leading advocate of press freedom in her country, and the target of repeated efforts of the Philippines government to silence her. —Mr. Muratov co-founded Novaya Gazeta, described by the…
A wide-angle photo of the Mall surrounding the Washington Monument tells the grim story. Tiny white monuments to victims of the disease stretch to the horizon. Scores of eyewitnesses file through a winding path to the Monument, obviously moved by their firsthand glimpse of the scale of the nation’s COVID-19 death toll. Compare this pandemic…