For years, women across the country have played high school football, and a handful have even gone on to suit up in college, but for the first time, a woman has earned an NCAA football scholarship. At a ceremony in her high school’s gym, Becca Longo signed a letter of intent to play for Division…
Demotix/Shawkan. All rights reserved.A few weeks ago a video was aired portraying the graffiti-painted wall of Mohamed Mahmoud Street being partially demolished. This famous wall is the fence of the American University in Cairo’s premises in Tahrir Square. The workers in the video explained that the wall was not going to be entirely demolished, only parts of…
Migrants bound for Germany walk through the streets of Budapest. Demotix/Beata Zawrzel. All rights reserved.The March is a remarkable film shown on TV channels across Europe all of 25 years ago, but set a decade or two hence in the early twenty-first century. In a world sharply divided by poverty and affected by climate change,…
PYD checkpoint in Afrin during Syrian Kurdistan rebellion, 2012.Wikiommons/ScottBobb. Some rights reserved.'War is the continuation of politics by other means', Clausewitz famously remarked. Nowhere is this maxim better in display than in Turkey’s current dual-offensive against the ‘Islamic State’, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). For rather than being a…
In the spring of 1837, a “long, gawky, ugly, shapeless man” walked into Joshua Speed’s dry goods store in Springfield, Illinois, requesting supplies for a bed. Speed said the cost would be $17, which ended up being too pricey for the visitor, who asked instead for credit until Christmas. The 23-year-old Speed was nonetheless taken…
On Friday night, U.S. District Judge James Robart of Washington state blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban. In the hearing, Robart said, Immediately following the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had suspended all actions associated with the ban, resuming standard inspections of travelers, CNN reports. Airlines also quickly took action following Robart’s…
Freshly planted flowers surrounded the Baghdad Women’s centre, one of nine US-funded centers built across the city in 2004 that aimed to promote women’s rights in Iraq’s nascent democracy. I was there researching my book on women in Iraq, and to see how well US feminism was being received in this Muslim country. Western aid workers…
Demotix/Jacob Simkin. All rights reserved.With the advent of the Syrian uprising in 2011, the monopoly over political truth-telling shifted away from the established dissident man of letters, whose voice remained largely silent in the context of the revolution. Instead, it fell to the average Syrian, who has no impressive credentials to speak of, but is…
President Donald Trump recently pledged to “destroy” the Johnson Amendment, a 63-year-old law that bans charities from engaging in political activities. As Trump said this at the National Prayer Breakfast, his focus was on permitting religious groups to play a more vocal role in political campaigns. Our experience in researching nonprofit organizations, however, suggests there…
Poppy cultivation in Badakhshan, Afghanistan. Getty Images / Paula Bronstein. All rights reserved. In April 2016, the international community will convene for the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem (UNGASS). This event, held two years early due to the urgency of the drug situation and intensity of drug-related violence, presents…