All in Current Events
Climate change is arguably the most relevant and impactful current event. Both its effects and countermeasures are felt globally, and many countries have begun implementing policies and goals in hopes of nullifying its impacts. Environmental catastrophes such as rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions are a direct result of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and are on course to continue worsening if emissions don't dramatically decline.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been there for decades, and despite the agreements made to establish peace between both parties, the conflicts are still present to this day, and we are here to see its economic impact on both Israel and Palestine.
In February 2022 the war in Ukraine was widely expected to last less than a week against a Russian invasion. Now, there is speculation that the Western support of Ukraine could last beyond 2025. There are similar estimations on when Russia’s necessary material and logistics will be eroded. Ukraine has been in the Russian sphere of influence for much of its history, and for hundreds of years was adjoined to Moscow through different regimes. Once the conflict manifested positive results for Ukraine’s defense, 45 countries hastily sent weapons once designated for their own militaries, to the soldiers who were now fighting their enemy.
Analyzing the representation and roles of women in political organizations and public spaces, two observations become clear. Firstly, women are significantly under-represented in elected institutions and in the leadership of political organizations. In actuality, women make up 153 of the 540 voting and non-voting members of [US] Congress when both the House of Representatives and the Senate are taken into consideration. This represents 28% – less than one-third – of all congress(wo)men. And this observation is also true, and sometimes even more evident, in the global South. For example, in Guatemala 31 of the 160 elected representatives are women, which represents only 19% of all the country’s elected representatives. But, why is this the case?
The French Revolution arose in 1789 as the masses fought to redistribute power to the people and have their opinions to be represented in government. Yet in March 2023, the French citizens are fighting for their needs to be met just like they did 234 years ago.
In the last few decades, there has been a growth in media depictions of macabre capitalism. It seems that serial killers are the current obsession with streaming services, literature, and film. This has spawned a lucrative business centered on sensationalized accounts of these killers, but why is this so appealing to the public? People are interested in stories about serial killers for a variety of reasons, including a morbid curiosity regarding the motivations behind such crimes and a fascination with the darker side of human nature.
Social media have become one of the major sources of communication and information worldwide, with trillions of bytes of information being exchanged every second online. While trending topics on social media tend to change according to several factors, such as country or age, health-related content has recently been trending all over the world, across all ages on all major social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok).
In May 2022, Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership. The decision arrived at a time of the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, which sparked, and is continuing to elicit, growing security concerns among its European neighbors. Both Sweden and Finland have engaged in regular military cooperation with NATO allies, especially with respect to the sale and purchase of military equipment. Finland’s decision to purchase 64 F-35 aircraft from the US aerospace corporation Lockheed Martin in early 2022 was viewed as a move that, although not entirely indicative of a NATO future, provided a parallel with the neighboring, fellow Arctic country Norway, which also operates the F-35 aircraft. Indeed, the sense of shared military prowess and interoperability between Arctic countries and the wider NATO intergovernmental organization as a whole is a fundamental component of both the feasibility and practicality of Sweden and Finland’s decision to join NATO.
In 2022, the Philippines saw the rise of Bongbong Marcos to the Philippine presidency years after his father, infamous dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was ousted from power by the EDSA People’s Power revolution in 1986. So how is it that yet another Marcos has ascended to office yet again in the Philippines, not a full lifetime after their family’s exile by popular revolution? Why has the myth of a Philippine Golden Age under Ferdinand Marcos, rife with recorded human rights abuses, persisted to this day to help propel Bongbong Marcos to the highest levels of government? It is decades of extensive historical revisionism and a complex disinformation network with roots in the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte that have placed the Marcos family back into the presidential office.
Social media have become one of the major sources of communication and information worldwide, with trillions of bytes of information being exchanged every second online. While trending topics on social media tend to change according to several factors, such as country or age, health-related content has recently been trending all over the world, across all ages on all major social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok).
