Ben West started reasonstostay.co.uk in honor of his brother, Sam, who died by suicide. The website is designed to be a support for people struggling with suicidal thoughts and suicidal ideation. On the site, anonymous users from around the world write and submit letters of support to folks in need.
As a young reporter, he had a ringside seat for part of the 1979 revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed an austere Islamic republic headed by a Shia Muslim cleric. He was the first foreign journalist to interview Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Neauphle-le-Château, France. Abolhassan Banisadr, a Paris-based academic, was elected Iran’s first president before being ousted …
Wastewater can contain psychoactive medications commonly used to treat mental health conditions. New research from Johns Hopkins University suggests that certain crops store these chemicals mainly in their leaves. The study is part of a broader effort to understand the safety of irrigating crops with municipal wastewater.
Ma Ruilin is a former United Front Work Department official who defected to the United States in 2024. He is providing the FBI with granular evidence of how Beijing surveils, intimidates, and silences Chinese diaspora communities on American soil. Ma's portfolio covered ethnic minorities, religious communities, private entrepreneurs, intellectuals, social media influencers, and diasporas in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. …
Trump's executive order raised the fee for H-1B visas to $100,000. It's unclear what effect, if any, the new rules will have on hiring, immigration, and the workforce. The fee hike is disproportionately affecting rural schools and hospitals. Alaska has nearly 600 international teachers, 341 of whom are on H- 1B visas.
On March 8, Israeli drone strikes hit oil depots and refineries on the outskirts of Tehran, setting fuel on fire and releasing columns of black smoke, which mixed with rain clouds poured toxic chemicals onto the city later in the day. Nejat Rahmanian, a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Bradford, experienced a similar event 35 …
Nature is slowing down, and its ability to regenerate is failing in the face of climate change, according to the authors of a new analysis of the speed of species turnover in ecosystems. Species turnover is down by a third since the mid-1970s, when the current trend of rapidly rising global temperatures began.
GlassHouse Research raised concerns about Exchange Income Corporation's ownership of Regional One, an international aircraft leasing company. Wolfpack Research alleged Babcock & Wilcox’s recent multi-billion-dollar deal to provide power-generating boilers is with an entity created by its largest shareholder, BRC Group. The Bear Syndicate, a European short-seller group, published on TAKKT AG (Frankfurt: TTK — EUR 169 million), a German …
The Bitcoin market has experienced some significant price relief in recent weeks. The premier cryptocurrency currently trades around $71,000. The global markets have been rocked by heightened geopolitical tensions in the Middle East after the US and Israel launched a coordinated attack on Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran has initiated a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a major …
Steven Jones is the founder of the Seafarers Happiness Index, which measures the happiness of seafarers at sea. There is a sense of shadow that seems to have settled over the maritime world, a pall of heaviness and collective fatigue. Around 20,000 seafarers are trapped aboard vessels in or near the Persian Gulf as the Strait of Hormuz narrows under …
On Mar. 12, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a staff advisory telling exchanges to tighten surveillance on event contracts. The regulator opened a 45-day rulemaking process that asks pointed questions about inside information, manipulation and whether some markets serve the public interest at all. Prediction markets are moving into ordinary retail finance distribution.
Brandon Sigaran Cruz, 21, was deported to El Salvador on March 15, last year. He was among more than 260 migrants sent to CECOT, an infamous megaprison known for human rights abuses. He has been imprisoned without access to a lawyer, contact with his family and no prospect of a trial before a judge in El Salvador.
The right to die by euthanasia is popular in the Netherlands. Dr. Menno Oosterhoff ended the life of his 18-year-old patient in October 2022. He injected her with a coma-inducing drug and a muscle relaxer to stop her breathing. The majority of physician-assisted deaths involve physical illness.
Since the United States and Israel first attacked Iran on Feb. 28, war has exploded across the Middle East. At least 1,444 Iranians had been killed as of March 13, including at least 168 children who were killed in a strike on an elementary school. Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon has killed more than 600 people and displaced over 800,000. Iran's …
Zhao Tong is a senior fellow with the Nuclear Policy Programme at Washington-based think tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research focuses on strategic security issues, including nuclear weapons policy, deterrence, arms control, non-proliferation, missile defence and regional security in the Asia-Pacific.
As Israel and the U.S. begin the third week of their joint aerial assault against the Iranian regime, Jews living in the Islamic Republic are facing fraught circumstances. Since the campaign began, many Jews in Iran have had little or no contact with relatives abroad. Internet blackouts have limited communication, but in many cases the silence is deliberate, as such …