Alexandria

Letter from Mexico: Lessons in a quake zone

Back in 2013, I was in Mexico City for a work trip when the light fixtures started swaying in a ground-floor hotel restaurant. In the United States, we’re taught to find a sturdy table to crouch under, or a doorframe to stand in when the earth starts to tremble. So, I did just that, throwing my hands up against one of the hulking doorways of the 1920s building.

Aid to North Koreans? The idea has roots.

In a surprise move that seems at odds with Washington’s threatening stance toward North Korea, the government of South Korea announced Sept. 21 that it plans to resume humanitarian aid to its neighbor. It also seems to contradict the ratcheting up of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council against the Kim regime in Pyongyang. The $8 million of assistance offered by President Moon Jae-in is aimed at helping close to a million children and pregnant women who are suffering from a recent drought in North Korea.

Is it the Kremlin’s turn to get WikiLeaked?

It’s been seven years since WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange threatened to drop an information bombshell on the Kremlin that would show Russians the inner workings of their government and business world. WikiLeaks went on to publish hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables and, more recently, a huge trove of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager. Recommended: Sochi, Soviets, and czars: How much do you know about Russia?

ISIS has planted a ticking bomb that is hard to defuse: traumatized children

In camps for internally displaced persons and in the war-torn towns and villages of western Iraq, there is one legacy of the so-called Islamic State’s brutal reign whose magnitude experts and authorities are only beginning to understand: traumatized children. From the stateless children of ISIS members, to child soldiers and the tens of thousands indoctrinated in ISIS schools, a generation of young Iraqis has been traumatized and radicalized by the nihilistic jihadist group. Unless authorities and the international community work to help reintegrate these children into society, including by providing counseling and psychiatric care, experts warn that Iraq and Syria will face a generational “time-bomb” of extremism, deliberately planted by ISIS, that could one day again threaten regional stability.