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Happy World Water Day! This year’s theme, “Leveraging Water for Peace,” is a reminder that this precious shared resource can either spark conflict or foster peace. Nowhere is this more evident than in places where freshwater is shared between countries, known as transboundary aquifers, and 60% of the world’s flow traverses political boundaries, hydrating over 150 countries.
Much of the world’s freshwater comes from precipitation, which is increasingly impacted by climate change-induced droughts, heightening the risk of water-fueled conflict.
As water quantity drops, especially in places experiencing rising demand from rapid population growth, the competition intensifies. Nowhere is this more destabilizing than in countries sharing transboundary aquifers. Transboundary water cooperation is crucial for regional stability and conflict prevention. Yet only 24 countries have cooperation agreements for their shared water.
For World Water Day today, we take a look at some of the places that share H2O.
In just one month, the fighting in Gaza has claimed more UN aid workers' lives than any previous conflict. Since Oct. 7, at least 89 UNRWA personnel, the major UN humanitarian aid force in the region, have been killed. In total, 131 UN aid workers have died in the Gaza Strip in 2023. UN leaders are calling for an immediate ceasefire and expansion of humanitarian access to Gaza, emphasizing the need to protect civilians and vital infrastructure and to ensure the safe and swift delivery of essential aid.
But Israel remains unswayed by their calls and mounting international pressure for a ceasefire, saying hostages taken by Hamas militants should be released first.The Graphic Truth: The NHL is no longer dominated by Canadians
Tuesday was the happiest day of the year for many Canadians: NHL opening night! Canadian fans may notice, however, that there are fewer and fewer Canadian players – part of an ongoing trend. In fact, the last time more than half the league hailed from Canada was 10 years ago, as ever-greater contingents from the US and Europe filled NHL rosters.
It’s a far cry from the early days of the league when the NHL was an all-Canadian affair. Nearly a century ago, in 1924, the Boston Bruins joined the NHL as the first American team. Even then, the number of Americans was tiny – less than 5% for most of the 1940s and 50s – and Europeans hardly even registered.
That all started to change in 1967 when the NHL added six new American teams. It opened slots for more American players, and a trickle of talent from Sweden, Finland, and later Czechoslovakia found its way to the New World as well.
But the biggest changes came after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Long Canada’s fiercest rival at Olympic-level hockey, the fall of the Iron Curtain coincided with a major influx of Russian and other former Soviet players.
But as our graphic above shows, these days the share of European players is falling, and Americans are the fastest-growing demographic in the league.
Spain's snap election on Sunday yielded another hung parliament, which means no party or coalition has a majority of seats to form a government. So, what might happen next?
Here are four scenarios, ordered from most to least likely.
#1 — Election redo. In the coming days, King Felipe VI will ask the leader of the party with the most seats in parliament to try to form a government. That would be Alberto Núñez Feijóo from the center-right People's Party, which came in first with 132 out of 350 MPs.
Unfortunately for Feijóo, the PP and the far-right Vox Party together failed to win an outright majority. The same goes for PM Pedro Sánchez from the left-wing PSOE party, who also doesn't have enough votes along with the far-left Sumar (Add) coalition backed by two Catalan and Basque progressive separatist forces.
If no candidate gets an absolute majority in the first round, the second round only requires a simple majority (more yes than no votes). And if no government is formed two months after the first vote, Spain's constitution mandates going to the polls again, as the country has done twice following similar parliamentary messes in 2015-2016 and 2019.
#2 — Left-wing coalition government. The current left-wing coalition government (PSOE + Podemos, or We Can, now rebranded as Sumar) could stay in power if Junts (Together), a right-of-center Catalan secessionist party, votes for Sánchez in the first round or abstains in the second round. But negotiating with Junts top honcho Carles Puigdemont might prove toxic for the PM.
In case his name doesn’t ring a bell, the shaggy-haired former Catalan president is a fugitive of Spanish justice since Oct. 2017, when he fled to Belgium after unilaterally declaring independence following a sham referendum. You can bet that in exchange for his seven votes, Puigdemont will demand that Sánchez allow the restive region to hold a (legal) plebiscite — a political death sentence for any Spanish prime minister.
Still, the self-proclaimed martyr for Catalan independence might settle for a return home if all charges against him are dropped. This would have been unthinkable for anyone but Sánchez, who already pardoned the Catalan politicians who tried to secede with Puigdemont, and watered down the crime itself.
#3 — Center-right minority government. This one is a bit of a stretch, but the numbers do add up. Feijóo could try to cobble together a razor-thin majority of votes by wooing the moderate Basque Nationalist Party, or PNV, a traditional post-election kingmaker for both the PP and the PSOE.
To do so, though, the PNV will probably ask for the PP to govern alone. In other words, without Vox, a hard-right party that wants to strip not just the Basque Country but all Spanish regions of their autonomy and recentralize power in the national government. It'll also be a tough pill to swallow for Vox, whose voters might prefer to take their chances in an election redo over backing Feijóo pretty much for free.
#4 — Grand coalition. Imagine the PP and the PSOE taking one for Team Spain by setting aside their many differences to form a coalition government that would represent almost two-thirds of Spaniards who voted for either party. It's been done many times in Israel and most recently in Germany.
But alas, not in Spain, where Feijóo and Sánchez would rather keep voting over and over again than work together. As the popular Spanish saying goes, Es lo que hay (It is what is).
After months of anticipation, it's D-Day for “Oppenheimer,” the $100 million Christopher Nolan biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the celebrated American scientist who developed the first atomic bomb during World War II.
The journey of scientific revelation, brilliance, and execution is gripping enough, but an equally important part of Oppenheimer’s story is his postwar activism against the burgeoning nuclear arms race between Moscow and Washington. His calls to ditch nuclear weapons entirely helped to land him in the dock during the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s.
Was he right to worry? More than 75 years later, there are thousands of nuclear warheads in the world, each of which is vastly more destructive than anything Oppenheimer and his team worked on.
We take a look at who has the majority of those nuclear weapons today.
Canada’s population is booming, and a huge portion of that growth is being fueled by record-high immigration. The Trudeau government aims to grant permanent residency to 465,000 people in 2023 and raise that number to 500,000 people a year by 2025 – betting that immigration can spur economic growth and support its aging population. This commitment to immigration is why Canada is the fastest-growing G7 country, even as its peers brace for population contractions.
Meanwhile, across the border in the US, immigration is a much more polarizing issue. But contrary to what many on the right think, immigration numbers have declined under President Joe Biden.
We compare immigration in the US and Canada over the last two decades.
It’s been 10 years since the world’s largest economic bloc, the European Union, last expanded, admitting Croatia in July 2013. Amid the perennial challenges of getting more than two dozen countries to agree on common policies, and the constant wrangling between national capitals and Brussels over issues like budgets, immigration, or sanctions, it’s easy to forget that the EU, for all its faults, has anchored the longest period of relative peace in Western Europe since the Roman Empire.
How has it grown over that time? The 27-member bloc began in the 1950s as an economic grouping of six Western European countries, and from the 1970s onwards it expanded. The 1990s saw the creation of a single market, common currency, and visa-free travel, while the 2000s saw the Union’s biggest enlargement to date: a dozen countries, all but two of them from the former Soviet bloc. Only one country has ever left the EU, of course, but you know that story.
Currently, accession negotiations are farthest along with Serbia and Montenegro, though there have been calls to accelerate talks with Ukraine as a bulwark against future Russian encroachment. Here is a map showing when, and where, the EU has expanded over the years.
A bar graph of the increase in Canada's investment in the US lumber industry
Canada’s forestry sector has faced increasing pressure thanks to climate change. Ottawa has long supported its lumber industry, whose leaders see themselves as the natural low-cost producers in North America, much to the US producers’ dismay. The US has accused Canada of unfairly propping up its lumber industry, making their product cheaper and more competitive in the US market. In response, the US imposed what Canada considered “unwarranted duties” on softwood trade in 2021.
Fast forward to today: Canada’s forests have suffered major losses from severe wildfires, beetle outbreaks, warming temperatures, and floods, forcing the government to crack down on the logging industry and enforce more sustainable practices in Canada. It has also given more rights to First Nations to protect areas from logging. All of this spelled trouble for the Canadian lumber industry, which, as lumber prices soared due to COVID-fueled housing and home renovation boom, didn’t want to miss out on the profits.
Their solution? Move to the US. The five major lumber companies in Canada have drastically increased their investment in sawmills in the US, especially in the American South. We take a look at how Canadian dollars are flowing to forests across the border.