   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S70Israel Killed My Family, but Not My Hope   Although I’ve lost many relatives, I still believe Palestinians and Israelis can embrace a different path.On July 1, 2005, as I was getting into a taxi leaving my family’s home in Gaza City and heading to the United States as a 15-year-old exchange student, I poked my head out of the car’s window and told my dad to keep my room nice for when I came back. He replied, “Inshallah, it’ll be better than when you left it.”
Continued here
|
S69The Ghost of January 6th Haunts 2024  The long shadow of January 6, 2021, hangs over this election. Three years after a mob of Americans stormed their own Capitol, seeking to block Joe Biden’s victory and keep Donald Trump in the White House, Biden and Trump each began 2024 with plans to make the tragic events of that day the centerpiece of his campaign. For the incumbent, it’s the rationale for his entire Presidency and the most compelling reason to give him a second term—a continuation of the “battle for the soul of America” that animated Biden’s run in 2020. For Trump, it’s the false battle cry around which he hopes to rally the MAGA mob once again. Already, he has proved that millions of his supporters are immune to the truth about January 6th. It will be an incredible act of political sorcery if he can ride his lies about the 2020 election and its violent aftermath back into the White House. And yet, as the year begins, his chances of doing so are better than ever.On Wednesday, in his first day back in the office this new year, the President hosted lunch for a group of American historians to advise him on how to frame the stakes of this election. One attendee, Heather Cox Richardson, a Civil War scholar whose latest book, “Democracy Awakening,” was Biden’s most conspicuous purchase during a day of post-Thanksgiving shopping, has called the visual of Trumpists parading the Confederate flag through Congress on January 6th “a gut-punch larger than any other moment in history.” Biden’s first campaign ad of the year, released on Thursday, leans heavily on the history theme, interspersing violent images of January 6th with old footage of civil-rights and suffragist marches, of Martin Luther King, Jr., and American Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima in the Second World War. “I’ve made the preservation of American democracy the central issue of my Presidency,” Biden says.
Continued here
|
S48I research the therapeutic qualities of writing about art - here are three steps for trying it yourself  What do we learn about ourselves when we write creatively about an artwork? I asked myself this question during my creative writing PhD, where my focus was on writing a collection of poems in response to modern and contemporary art.Lockdown had an impact on my mental health, and the poems I produced during this time went beyond straightforward descriptions of the artworks. They explored my thoughts and feelings – with the artwork aiding in uncovering parts of myself I was not aware of, or helping to warp or disguise personal content that would have left me feeling exposed if written about directly.
Continued here
|
S50AI could change how we obtain legal advice, but those without access to the technology could be left out in the cold  The legal profession has already been using artificial intelligence (AI) for several years, to automate reviews and predict outcomes, among other functions. However, these tools have mostly been used by large, well established firms.In effect, certain law firms have already deployed AI tools to assist their employed solicitors with day-to-day work. By 2022, three quarters of the largest solicitor’s law firms were utilising AI. However, this trend has now started to encompass small and medium firms too, signalling a shift of such technological tools towards mainstream utilisation.
Continued here
|
S67How we discovered that Uranus and Neptune are actually nearly identical in colour  In many images of the two outer gas giants of the Solar System, Neptune typically looks rich blue while Uranus comes across as pale green. But now our new study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, has revealed that these two ice giants are actually very similar shades of greenish blue.The study follows our previous work in 2022 that analysed the spectra (light broken down by wavelength) of light reflected off Uranus and Neptune from several sources, including the space telescope imaging spectrograph on the Hubble space telescope. These were recorded in 2002 (Uranus) and 2003 (Neptune).
Continued here
|
S47
S34S68Joe Biden Makes Saving Democracy the Center of His Campaign  An election year has begun, and the signs point toward a tight Presidential contest. Of the three national polls published since January 1st, two show Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump by one point in a head-to-head matchup; the third shows the pair tied. In a telephone call with reporters on January 2nd, the top officials in Biden’s reëlection campaign discussed their political strategy. They mentioned supporting abortion rights, mobilizing minority voters, and building an economy that benefits the middle class, but their overriding theme was that a Biden victory is essential to preserve American democracy.“The choice for voters,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said on the call, “will not simply be between competing philosophies of government.” She continued, “The choice will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedom. . . . We are running our campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it, because it does.” Quentin Fulks, the deputy campaign manager, added, “Donald Trump tells us point blank—if he wins a second term, he will do everything he can to dismantle American democracy, strip Americans of their hard-fought and fundamental freedoms. . . . We should take him at his word.”
Continued here
|
S63S30Africans discovered dinosaur fossils long before the term 'palaeontology' existed  University of the Witwatersrand provides support as a hosting partner of The Conversation AFRICA.Credit for discovering the first dinosaur bones usually goes to British gentlemen for their finds between the 17th and 19th centuries in England. Robert Plot, an English natural history scholar, was the first of these to describe a dinosaur bone, in his 1676 book The Natural History of Oxfordshire. Over the next two centuries dinosaur palaeontology would be dominated by numerous British natural scientists.
Continued here
|
S39Drugs of the future will be easier and faster to make, thanks to mRNA - after researchers work out a few remaining kinks  Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is made of four building blocks denoted by the letters A, C, G and U. The sequence of letters in an mRNA molecule conveys genetic information that directs how a protein is made. An mRNA drug comprises two essential components: mRNA molecules, which code for desired proteins, and the lipid molecules – such as phospholipids and cholesterol – that encapsulate them. These mRNA-lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, are tiny spheres about 100 nanometers in diameter that protect mRNA from degradation and facilitate its delivery into target cells.
Continued here
|
S70Whatâs Behind Israelâs Crackdown in the West Bank?  Last week, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report on the "rapid deterioration" of conditions in the West Bank following Hamas's October 7th attack. Israeli security forces have killed nearly three hundred Palestinians, sometimes using "unnecessary or disproportionate force"; thousands of Palestinians have been arrested for minor incidents; and Israeli settlers have forced more than a thousand Palestinians from their land. The report called for the Israeli government to hold settlers and security forces accountable for violations of human rights. (As the report notes, settlers have only rarely been charged with crimes for attacks on Palestinians.)To understand how the current situation in the West Bank will shape the future of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, I recently spoke by phone with Ibrahim Dalalsha, the director at the Horizon Center for Political Studies and Media Outreach, a think tank in Ramallah. He previously worked as an adviser at the United States consulate in Jerusalem for two decades before it closed, in 2019. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Palestinians viewed the attacks of October 7th, whether Israel has a real plan for either the West Bank or Gaza, and how the violence visited upon Palestinians manifests itself in Palestinian politics.
Continued here
|
S52S36
S49Should I have children? Why society's idealisation of motherhood benefits no one  Mothers – and non-mothers. Our language creates the falsehood that being with a child is a norm. Words like childless or childfree firmly place the person without a child as the one lacking. Women who decide not to have children are marked as outsiders by our social and cultural norms. And the expectation is not just that women will be mothers – it is that they will be the right kind of mother.
Continued here
|
S61S66S56S57S54Ukraine's churches are adopting the western calendar - but not everyone is happy  Everywhere in Europe, rituals to mark the winter solstice have long been focused on the Christian narrative of the birth of Jesus. Yet in the ancient Julian calendar, which has gradually been falling out of synch with the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, Christmas Day now falls on January 7, over two weeks later.A reformed calendar was first disseminated in 1582 on the authority of Pope Gregory XIII. While most of Europe has come to recognise the Gregorian calendar for both religious and civil purposes, a number of eastern Slavic churches – both Orthodox and Catholic – have retained the Julian calendar in their liturgical life.
Continued here
|
S62S45Spycatcher scandal: newly released documents from the Thatcher era reveal the changing nature of government secrecy  I grew up in Tasmania in the 1980s. The capital city, Hobart, had a bit of a “living at the edge of the world” feeling in those days. It seemed about as far away from anywhere as you could get. So, I remember the thrill when the first hints of the “Spycatcher” scandal hit. A British spy had “secretly” been living only a few miles away in the sleepy town of Cygnet. To a child, it all felt impossibly adventurous.The British National Archives has now released a slew of Cabinet Office papers dealing with the extraordinary series of events surrounding this man and his attempts to publish Spycatcher, a memoir that promised to spill secrets on double agents and assassination plots. Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, was so concerned about the book’s contents that the UK government launched multiple legal attempts to have it barred from publication. The most famous of these cases unfolded in Australia, where Thatcher had dispatched her top civil servant to fight the former MI5 operative Peter Wright in court.
Continued here
|
S38S53Central banks should be fighting the climate crisis - here's why  Climate finance was a major focus at the recent COP28 summit, but one set of game-changing institutions remains largely missing in such conversations: central banks.Central banks are public institutions, charged with maintaining economic stability through controlling the supply of money in an economy. These banks have enormous power to catalyse a more just, equitable and climate-stable future.
Continued here
|
S15Small and Young Businesses Are Especially Vulnerable to Extreme Weather  Businesses today are especially vulnerable to extreme weather and other natural disasters, as recent flooding in North Carolina, Louisiana, the northern UK, and Chennai demonstrates. And there’s no end in sight: The frequency and severity of disasters will continue to increase due to more volatile weather, rising sea levels, and increasing urbanization. These threats change the risk management calculus of firms hoping to succeed in a more turbulent world.
Continued here
|
S44Peter Magubane: courageous photographer who chronicled South Africa's struggle for freedom  Peter Sexford Magubane, a courageous South African photographer whose images testify to both the iniquity of apartheid and the determination and devotion of those who brought about its demise, passed away at 91 years of age in early January 2024.Magubane leaves behind a vast archive of extraordinary images, many of which continue to be the signature images of some of the worst atrocities committed by the apartheid regime.
Continued here
|
S41Pundits: Central to democracy, or partisan spewers of opinion who destroy trust  Walter Lippmann, who lived from 1889 to 1974, was an early and prime example of the public intellectual as pundit commenting on news of the day. Lippmann, a Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote a syndicated column on national and international affairs. He advocated a philosophy in which honest reflection on common experiences would lift citizens out of their parochial worldviews.
Continued here
|
S35Bullies in South African schools were often bullied themselves - insights from an expert  “Pupil stabbed to death at Gauteng school had suffered history of bullying”. “Grade 6 learner commits suicide after bullying”. “Grade 11 learner takes her own life after taunts over her appearance.”These are just some headlines about the occasionally tragic effects of violent school bullying in South African schools – and, unfortunately, the problem runs deep. In 2015 the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, which also collects information on the factors that affect academic performance, found that 64% of South African grade 9 learners (most aged between 14 and 16) experience bullying (social, verbal, physical or cyber) on at least a monthly basis. A similar rate, 65%, was found in 2019.
Continued here
|
S58Walter Benjamin's Illuminations: the remarkably prescient work of an intellectual truth-seeker  Walter Benjamin was a German Jewish intellectual born in Berlin in 1892 to wealthy parents. He died by his own hand in September 1940 while fleeing the Nazis. Following his death, his writing was nearly forgotten until the publication in German in 1955 of an anthology of his work.Illuminations, which draws together many of Benjamin’s most significant pieces, was published in English in 1968. It includes the enduring The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), as well as writings on translation, book collecting, and some of the authors he most admired: Kafka, Baudelaire and Proust. Illuminations also has a weighty introduction by political philosopher Hannah Arendt.
Continued here
|
S51Mr Bates vs The Post Office depicts one of the UK's worst miscarriages of justice: here's why so many victims didn't speak out  The new ITV drama about the Post Office Horizon IT scandal is an incredibly important vehicle for getting the story of what is increasingly recognised as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history into public consciousness.However, viewers might find themselves with one looming unanswered question as they watch: how could this persist, at such a scale, for so long? How could hundreds of people face wrongful termination of their employment contracts, loss of their businesses, bankruptcy and often criminal prosecution at the hands of the same organisation for over a decade, with no one seeming to pay any attention?
Continued here
|
S59S55S33How living like a hunter-gatherer could improve your health  Many of us want to live long, happy and healthy lives. Yet it’s often confusing to know the best way to achieve this, and many aspects of modern, westernised living conspire to keep us from achieving this goal.The solution may be to step back in time. For the bulk of our existence, we evolved following a hunter-gatherer lifestyle of foraging for food and hunting animals. Today, only a few hunter-gatherer communities still exist, such as the Hadza of Tanzania.
Continued here
|
S29Are Jains the original vegans?  Although the term "vegan" was coined nearly 80 years ago by the British animal rights advocate Donald Watson, it is only in the last couple of decades that veganism (and Veganuary, the month long challenge to eat solely plant-based food) has really come into its own as an influential lifestyle trend. However, in many Eastern cultures, the practice of shunning meat as an act of kindness towards animals is ancient, going back more than two millennia.In particular, Jainism, the Indian faith that originated in north India sometime between 5th-7th Century BCE, predating even Buddhism, comes closest to the modern-day vegan principles of avoiding animal products. "Non-violence or ahimsa is the basic principle of life for all Jains," explained Kusum Jain, retired professor of philosophy at the University of Rajasthan. Professor Jain, who has done extensive research as well as advised doctorate students on this subject, added, "This includes all living things – not just human beings, but also animals, insects and sometimes plants, even those living in water or under the earth. For Jains, hurting or harming any living being in any sense is violence."
Continued here
|
S64S43S40Focus on right now, not the distant future, to stay motivated and on track to your long-term health goals  It’s a familiar start-of-the-year scene. You’ve committed to a healthier lifestyle and are determined that this time is going to be different. Your refrigerator is stocked with fruits and veggies, you’ve tossed out processed foods, and your workout routine is written in pen in your daily planner.Yet, as you head out one morning, the tantalizing aroma of fresh doughnuts wafts through the air. How can you resist the call of this sugary treat and stick with your healthy choices?
Continued here
|
S20You Can't Be a Wimp--Make the Tough Calls  Getting to the right answer is a lot harder today than it was 10 years ago, Charan points out. Leaders have to contend with more variables and constituencies than ever before. They must be able to cut through all that complexity and to make subjective judgments about highly ambiguous, and constantly changing, factors. The best executives know which decisions to focus on (and which to delegate), when to make a decision, and what the risk of not making a decision is. When opportunities arise and vanish quickly, timing is critical.
Continued here
|
S46What is selective mutism? And is it a lifelong condition?  Belle* is six years old. Like many children, she is a playful and often boisterous child at home with her family. Unlike many children, she has an anxiety disorder which renders her speechless and often physically frozen in specific situations such as school or when she is out with her family.This affects her ability to join class activities and make friends at school. Other typical childhood experiences, such as attending birthday parties or joining in after-school activities, prove to be challenging for her.
Continued here
|
S27The tiny Italian town that drinks like Ancient Rome and Greece  The year was 1370, and even the shimmering canals of Venice brought no joy to Francesco Petrarch. Over the last two decades, the world-renowned scholar and poet had travelled the length and breadth of Italy. But with every passing year, he found himself retreating more from social life, seeking to escape the "ignorance" of his age."I escape the city like an exile," he wrote, "and choose to live in a solitary small village, in a pretty little house… where I spend my days completely calm, away from the tumult, the noise, the chores, continuously reading and writing.
Continued here
|
 |
TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives About Us | Advertise Privacy Policy Unsubscribe (one-click) You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs.
Our mailing address is GF 25/39, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110008, India |
