All Else

The Middle Ages as typically imagined in cinema, television, literature and Romantic paintings are dark and sinister, plagued by the diseases that ravaged Europe, with filthy, unhealthy cities and buildings. Research by Medieval scholars in recent decades – combined with new digital reconstruction techniques – has shattered these myths, presenting us with a wholly different picture.

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD for short, are 82% more likely to die earlier – from natural or unnatural causes – than people without the condition, a new study reveals. OCD affects about 2% of the population. The disorder significantly impairs daily life, affecting relationships, social activities and the general ability to function.

In Middle Eastern geopolitics, Iran’s strategy of aligning with violent nonstate actors – notably Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen – influences the regional balance of power. But to what extent?

The West claims it champions a liberal rules-based international order and human rights on the global stage. This rhetoric now appears completely disingenuous to most of the Global South. Even as Russia escalates its violence against civilians and infrastructure in Ukraine, most Global South states find the American condemnation of Russia grotesquely hypocritical as the United States supports Israel’s war in Gaza and attacks on civilians that are even more devastating than Russia’s.

The theme for the 2024 Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place on January 27, is the “fragility of freedom”. This year is an especially poignant one, marking 80 years since the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews, when the gas chambers of Auschwitz were working at full capacity, and also the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

Evidence suggests that less than 1% of transgender people who undergo gender-affirming surgery report regret. That proportion is even more striking when compared to the fact that 14.4% of the broader population reports regret after similar surgeries. For example, studies have found that between 5% and 14% of all women who receive mastectomies to reduce the risk of developing breast cancer say they regretted doing so.

By the mid-2000s, roughly one to four per cent of obituaries mentioned pets. Since 2015, this number has climbed as high as 15 per cent. As obituaries grow longer and more detailed, it only seems fair that animals get some attention. It has become more common to mention someone’s pet, or love of animals. Passages also grow more detailed. Beyond the pet’s name, we learn whether they were a “hoity-toity poodle,” a “loyal companion” or “the best dog ever.”

At the top of the list sits China with 44 in detention, followed by Myanmar (43), Belarus (28), Russia (22), and Vietnam (19). Israel and Iran share sixth place with 17 each. The journalists Israel detained were all from the occupied West Bank, all Palestinian, and all arrested after Hamas’s horrific attacks from Gaza on October 7. But we know very little about why they were detained.

Jeff Sharlet’s “The Undertow” tells how the cultural divisions in American society could allow such a thing as the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters to happen. (And how, despite everything that’s happened since, he remains the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential race.) Sharlet believes that event is part of a “slow civil war” that threatens the future of the American republic.

Extreme cold-weather events often occur in association with changes to another river of air high above the jet stream: the stratospheric polar vortex, a great stream of air moving around the North Pole in the middle of the stratosphere. When this stratospheric vortex becomes disrupted or stretched in part due to warming, it can distort the jet stream as well, pushing it southward in some areas and causing cold air outbreaks.