Author: KnowledgeHippo

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is jeopardizing Hungary’s position as a reliable NATO ally, the US ambassador to Budapest warned on Thursday, with “its close and expanding relationship with Russia” and with “dangerously unabashed anti-American messaging” on state-controlled media.The ambassador, David Pressman, has criticized Mr. Orban for months for essentially siding with President Vladimir Putin of Russia over the war in Ukraine, but his latest remarks sharply heightened tensions and showed that trust in Hungary among NATO allies had collapsed.Hungary is “an ally that behaves differently” and is “alone on the defining European security issue of the last quarter century, Russia’s…

There are certain patterns in Jonathan Kozol’s half-century of writing about America’s failure to adequately educate poor black and Hispanic children, which began with “Death at an Early Age,” a poignant account of his year teaching in its public schools. Boston.Dilapidated school buildings with cramped bathrooms and leaking ceilings. Students flattered by scripted curricula and endless test prep. Bleak urban neighborhoods with neglected parks, dilapidated apartments and underpaid teachers. Despair is punctuated by bright and lively children who bluntly point out the obvious injustice that adults have been trained to overlook.Death at an Early Age, published in 1967, turned him…

Ira M. Millstein, a respected lawyer who crusaded for greater independence from corporate boards, invoked his bipartisanship in helping shepherd Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the federal bench and carefully helped New York avoid bankruptcy in the mid-1970s .died Wednesday at his home in Mamaroneck, N.Y. He was 97.His death was confirmed by his daughter, Elizabeth Millstein Tremain.Mr. Millstein trained as an engineer at Columbia before turning to law and was respected for his thoroughness and tact. He became the senior partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a New York-based law firm, where he specialized in antitrust law and government regulation.…

During a leadership crisis in 2015, Reddit asked Steve Huffman, one of its founders, to return to run the social networking platform.Mr. Huffman, who worked for a travel website, did not want to return. Reddit was a headache. He was experiencing a revolving door of executives. Its large community of users was combative with management. Reddit’s ownership was also complicated, and its technology lagged behind competitors.“I ran into the burning building,” Mr. Huffman said in a 2017 podcast describing his return.This month, Reddit is poised to go public in one of the first tech IPOs of the year. His movement…

Teenage pregnancy increases a young woman’s chances of dropping out of school and struggling with poverty, research has shown. Teenagers are also more likely to develop serious medical complications during pregnancy.Now a large Canadian study reports another troubling finding: Women who were pregnant as teenagers are more likely to die before their 31st birthday. The trend was seen among women who had completed teenage pregnancies, as well as among those who had miscarried.”The younger the person was when they got pregnant, the greater the risk of premature death,” said Dr. Joel G. Ray, an obstetrician and epidemiologist at St. Michael’s…

As the sun peeked through an overcast sky in Kyoto, Japan, monks wearing pom-pom vests and black boxes, known as tokin, asked in front of Mibu Dera, one of the city’s oldest temples. These were the Yamabushi (mountain hermits), part of a Buddhist sect known as Shugendō.To enter the sacred precincts of the temple, each monk had to prove that he was a true Yamabushi by answering a series of questions about the sect’s beliefs, dress, and tools. Only those with satisfactory answers would be granted access.They were watched by a trio of kids in light jackets, with six curious…

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas plans to appoint Mohammed Mustafa, a close economic adviser, as prime minister in the coming days, according to two Palestinian officials, a European Union diplomat and a fourth person familiar with the matter.If Mr. Abbas formally appoints Mr. Mustafa, it would amount to a rejection of international efforts to encourage the octogenarian Palestinian leader to appoint an independent prime minister who can revitalize the hardening rule, officials and analysts said.While Mr. Abbas was set to appoint Mr. Mustafa, a longtime insider to the highest levels of the authority, he was still holding final consultations with…

What’s next for TikTok?The video social networking app isn’t going away from smartphones anytime soon. The legislative process is still in its early stages after the House passed a bill that would require the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to be sold or be banned. The bill then goes to a skeptical Senate, after which President Biden will have to sign it into law. Even after that, it may not happen.Here’s what to expect.What will happen next in the legislative process?The bill must be approved by the Senate, which could also make changes to the text of the legislation.Several senators have…

After being paralyzed by polio at age 6, Paul Alexander was confined for much of his life to a yellow iron lung that kept him alive. He was not expected to survive this diagnosis, and even when he beat those odds, his life was limited mainly by a machine in which he could not move.But the toll of life on an iron lung with polio didn’t stop Mr. Alexander from going to college, getting a law degree and practicing law for more than 30 years. As a boy, he taught himself to breathe for minutes and later hours at a…

“Just make your world the world,” Mr. Smiley said as he walked along a new 6.2-mile nature trail on the inn’s crazy golf course. “If you make small daily changes, like reducing waste and plastic, you’ll feel good.”Deep River, Ontario”I think the climate crisis can make people feel so paralyzed, like it’s almost too little, too late,” said Shannon MacLaggan, who created Anupaya Cabin Co. with her husband, Pete, as a shelter in the desert and an incubator for climate action. in 2021. “There are huge internal concepts about how to deal with global warming, but this is something tangible…