French serial killer ‘The Serpent’ freed from Nepal prison

Comment on this story Comment KATHMANDU, Nepal — Confessed French serial killer Charles Sobhraj was freed from prison in Nepal on Friday after serving most of his sentence for killing American and Canadian backpackers and was taken to the airport for a flight back to Paris, his attorney said. His alleged killings were dramatized in […]

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Brazil’s Lula promises no deforestation but challenges loom

Comment on this story Comment XAPURI, Brazil — When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is sworn in as president of the second most populous country in the western hemisphere Jan. 1, few challenges will be greater than fulfilling his promise to end all deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 2030. To understand why, consider the […]

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Three killed, at least three more injured in central Paris shooting

Comment on this story Comment Three people were killed and at least three wounded in a shooting in central Paris on Friday, according to France’s interior minister, who said the assailant “clearly wanted to attack foreigners” and probably acted alone. The shooting in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, a busy and multicultural part of the French capital, […]

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Eastern Congo’s M23 rebels retreat from occupied territory

Comment on this story Comment KIBUMBA, Congo — Eastern Congo’s M23 rebels retreated Friday from some of the territory it held, the group’s first withdrawal since it began seizing swaths of land more than a year ago. The rebels left the Kibumba area and its positions were taken over by the East African Regional Force […]

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Iranian Drama No Bears Shows an Artist Fighting Despair

The movies embattled Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has managed to make in the past decade or so—beginning with the 2011 This Is Not a Film and winding toward his latest, No Bears—are models of ingenuity, a multi-project study in the fortitude of the creative spirit. But as playful and inventive as these movies have sometimes […]

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Revisiting Whitney Houston’s 1994 Medley From AMAs Live Show

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, the new biopic from filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, is filled with recreations of the singer’s iconic performances—like her 1991 rendition of the national anthem at the Super Bowl. But the film closes with a scene that pays tribute to one of Houston’s lesser-known appearances: a 1994 performance at the […]

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In No Bears, Iranian Cinema and Reality Are Indecipherable

It’s unusual for a film director to be unavailable to speak about their movie in the weeks leading up to its release but this is the reality for Iranian director Jafar Pahani. As his film No Bears hits U.S. theaters on Dec. 23, the 62-year-old has been imprisoned for 165 days of a six-year sentence […]

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How Climate Education in the U.S. Has Changed Since 1970

How—or even whether—anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change is taught in the U.S. education system is uneven at best. The National Council for Science and the Environment evaluated state climate change standards in 2020; Wyoming was the only state to get an A, while 10 states received a D or worse. While not the only reason […]

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