by Malcolm Davidson | 25 Oct 2022 | Climate change, Climate decoders, Decoders, Environment
At next month’s climate summit in Egypt, poorer nations coping with disasters will press wealthier states for a fund to help them ride out catastrophes. Women carry belongings from their flooded home in the Qambar Shahdadkot district of Sindh Province of...
by Bryson Hull | 9 Aug 2022 | Conflict, Decoders, Educators' Catalog, Politics, World
A conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is heating up as the war in Ukraine prompts geopolitical realignments, with implications for outside powers including the West and Russia. Azerbaijani soldiers carry portraits of soldiers killed during fighting over...
“It is easy to pay little attention or to even ignore regional conflicts, but they can hold the key to understanding larger political currents in the world.” Correspondent Bryson Hull’s words remind us of why a simmering conflict in the Caucuses between Armenia and Azerbaijan has potential implications for all of us. News Decoder is premised on the notion that young people know a great deal, through headlines on their screens, about what is happening in the world but, because they are young, can have difficulty connecting the dots and understanding why far-away events matter to them. Hull offers a clear explanation of why fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh appears periodically in those headlines, and then disappears, only to reappear some day, like so many other intractable conflicts in distant places.
Exercise: Ask your students to identify a regional conflict that became a proxy for armed competition involving stronger powers.
by Jessica Moody | 29 Jul 2022 | Climate change, Environment, Europe
There’s a disconnect between the urgency of climate science and the indifference of governments, media and business to act. Are we too late? Firefighters at the scene of a wildfire in Tabara, Spain, 19 July 2022 (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue) “I want you to...
by Tom Heneghan | 19 Apr 2022 | Conflict, Ukraine
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reflects Vladimir Putin’s unhinged state, some experts say. But his views of ‘Mother Russia’ provide a logical explanation. Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the government via...
by Bernd Debusmann | 4 Apr 2022 | Conflict, Europe, Human Rights, Immigration, Refugees, Ukraine
More than two-thirds of the world’s population live in nations that have not denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some Cold War bonds endure. A screen showing results from a vote in the United Nations General Assembly on a resolution condemning Russia’s...