A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds. Adopting these options reduces the risk of crossing global environmental limits related to climate change, the use of agricultural land, the...
World
Millennials Are So Over U.S. Domination of World Affairs
Millennials, the generation born between 1981 and 1996, see America’s role in the 21st century world in ways that, as a recently released study shows, are an intriguing mix of continuity and change compared to prior generations. For over 40 years the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which conducted the study, has asked the American...
Study Suggests Bias for Sons Remains Among Second-Generation Women of South Asian Descent
A preference for male children persists among second-generation mothers of South Asian descent, according to new study that found a skewed ratio of male-to-female babies born to these women in Ontario. The findings, published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, came from the same group of researchers who reported in 2016 that more...
Why Stereotypes of Sexy Women Fans Persist at the World Cup
Globally, women’s football fandom is on the rise, with women comprising around 40% of worldwide television audiences for the 2014 men’s football World Cup. Couple this with the growing prominence of the women’s World Cup – to be held again next year in France – and it’s clear that football mega-events are no longer just...
Anthony Bourdain’s Window into Africa
Anthony Bourdain might have been a celebrity chef, but viewers of his Emmy Award-winning travel show, “Parts Unknown,” didn’t tune in for curry and noodle recipes. Cooking was simply the conceit Bourdain used to have a conversation about the culture, politics, struggles and triumphs of people around the world. As a human geographer, I was...
I Visited the Rohingya Camps in Myanmar and Here Is What I Saw
Myanmar recently claimed to have repatriated its first Rohingya refugee family. But, as an official from the United Nations noted, the country is still not safe for the return of its estimated 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees, who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape an ongoing state-sponsored military campaign and persecution from Buddhist neighbors. Indeed,...
Echoing Marielle Franco, Brazil’s Black Women Speak Out Against Violence
Brazil is still mourning the death of Marielle Franco, a black woman raised in a Rio favela and a sociologist whose academic work mirrored her radical politics. Elected to a seat on Rio’s city council in 2017, she was a member of the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party, and had the potential to achieve national...
Assassination in Brazil Unmasks the Deadly Racism of a Country That Would Rather Ignore It
When Marielle Franco, a Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman, was shot to death in downtown Rio on March 14, her killing moved the world. Protesters took to the streets in New York, Paris, Buenos Aires and elsewhere, pledging to continue Franco’s fight against racism, poverty, inequality and violence. Elected in 2016 after serving 10 years...
Why China Is a Leader in Intellectual Property (And What the US Has to Do with It)
United States President Donald Trump is not the first to complain about intellectual property (IP) theft by Chinese companies but ironically it was US companies’ use of China’s resources that led to the development of its powerhouse of patents. In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, western firms like Apple and Intel made large...
Inside North Korea’s Literary Fiction Factory
With colorful rhetoric about dotards and nuclear buttons, North Korean propaganda is attracting attention around the world. Outside observers can now easily access some of this propaganda by visiting regime-sponsored websites. These have, in turn, spawned foreign feeds like the excellent KCNA Watch media aggregator and satirical sites such as “Kim Jong Un Looking at...