It might not seem like a terrible tragedy that no one alive looks at the vertical groove between the nose and the upper lip and thinks siniik’adach’uuch’. The last person who did, Marie Smith Jones, was also the last person who spoke Eyak, an Alaskan tribal language. She died in 2008. A year

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Cultural appropriation Thanks so much for all of the wonderfulness that is The Christian Science Monitor Weekly. There are so many things I appreciate about the publication, including its insightful coverage of news from around the world, the aptly named Humanity Behind the Headlines section,

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Recession alarm bells are ringing around the world. From Europe to Asia and Latin America, signs of economic weakness have emerged or worsened recently. For decades, an inverted yield curve, when shorter-term bonds yield a higher interest rate than long-term ones, has been seen as a likely

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Nanfu Wang, co-director with Jialing Zhang of the extraordinary documentary “One Child Nation,” was born in 1985 in rural eastern China before immigrating in her mid-20s to the United States. Her years in China coincided with the government-mandated one-child-per-family policy, instituted in

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Even before the recent shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, surveys showed that Americans are more fearful about more things in general. Safety may seem more elusive than ever because the very concept of what it means has expanded. It was once defined as a state of physical

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Over the course of 10 days this month, more than a million people will come to the Iowa State Fair to sample pork chops on a stick, ride the Ferris wheel, and gawk at the famous “butter cow.” Many will also encounter various Democratic presidential candidates, making their pitch from a soapbox.

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Guatemala’s new president-elect, Alejandro Giammattei, won’t actually enter office for several months. But one day after the election, he’s already inherited a hornet’s nest from his predecessor: an unpopular migration deal with the United States. Threatened by President Donald Trump with

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As editor, I know that The Christian Science Monitor should change the way I see the world. I just never expected that to be true about Woodstock. This summer is the 50th anniversary of the legendary music festival in upstate New York, and in this week’s cover story, staff writer Stephen

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Effects of the lunar program Regarding the July 22 editorial “Why the moon landing still inspires”: The successful Apollo 11 mission confirms that a team of committed, highly motivated men and women can accomplish a worthwhile project in a way that is truly satisfying. Therein lies a lesson we

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The spread of body cameras has been one of the most profound changes in U.S. law enforcement since the tragic shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, five years ago. Two-thirds of all American police departments now regularly film the activity of police officers via silent eyes clipped

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London As someone who appreciates Leonardo da Vinci’s painting skills, I’ve long marveled at how crowds rush past his most sublime painting, “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,” to line up in front of the “Mona Lisa” at the Louvre Museum in Paris.  The art critic in me wants to say,

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Fears of a currency war have piled atop anxiety about rising tariffs and their toll on the global economy. Stock markets around the world swooned after Beijing allowed its currency to fall below a key level against the U.S. dollar. The United States declared China a currency manipulator.

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As the nation grapples with the aftermath of two horrific mass shootings – one allegedly committed by an avowed white supremacist – the Republican Party has been engaging in a kind of soul-searching of its own.   Many leading Republican politicians, including several from states with

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For decades, Sierra Leone has recorded high levels of sexual violence. And to many women fighting to change that, their battle felt like an invisible one – until this winter. Anger finally burst into the open as high-profile cases piled up, particularly against children. Soon, President Julius

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EL PASO, Texas; LOS ANGELES Thirty people died and dozens were wounded in two mass shootings within just 13 hours of each other in the United States, shocking the country and prompting calls from some politicians for tighter gun control. The first massacre occurred on Saturday morning in the

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Glacier memories One of my favorite vacation memories is driving Glacier National Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road with a carful of friends. So I was instantly struck by the July 22 Monitor Weekly article “Glacier National Park … without glaciers?” If, as correspondent Doug Struck

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When Marilyn Ford points, she might as well be pointing with President Donald Trump’s finger. “He is right, you know,” says the silver-haired septuagenarian, referring to Mr. Trump’s recent racially tainted fusillades on liberal cities. This week’s spree of attacks shines a spotlight on a long

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President Donald Trump came into office suspicious of an intelligence community he considered to a great extent to be part of the “deep state.” He clashed with his intelligence chiefs over Iran, over North Korea, and above all over Russia and its role in the 2016 elections. So few were

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