For centuries, Qatar was a sparsely populated sheikhdom under the loose influence of successive Islamic empires, caliphates, and regional Arab rulers. In 1916, it transitioned into a British protectorate.

At that time, its main industry was pearl diving – which sounds romantic but was, in fact, an arduous trade. Divers suffered from ruptured eardrums and chronic lung ailments. During the off-season many families lived in poverty.

Conditions in Qatar deteriorated sharply when the Great Depression reduced global demand for luxuries, and cultured pearls from Japan devastated the market for natural pearls.

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The Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, was an assault about 15 times as large, on a per capita basis, than the 9/11 attacks. When it was over, more Jews had been murdered than on any single day since the Holocaust.

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Unknown to most people alive today, Bennett Cerf was at one point one of the most famous people in America. Cerf, who co-founded the publishing firm Random House, was a columnist, best-selling author, and regular participant on CBS's What's My Line? He was also, despite his WASPy name, a Jew.

Many of the major publishing houses were founded by Jews. Besides Random House, there were also Simon & Schuster, Knopf, and Viking, among others. Cerf named his company Random House in part to avoid a Jewish-sounding name but also because he planned to publish Modern Library classics and other books "at random."

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When Israel made the historic decision late last year to recognize Somaliland, it did something few nations are willing to do: it acted on principle and strategic interest rather than diplomatic convention.

After more than three decades in which Somaliland has maintained its own institutions, elections, security forces, and governing structures – including multiple competitive presidential elections with peaceful transfers of power – Israel became the first country to acknowledge Somaliland's claim to sovereign statehood.

That decision mattered.

But recognition alone is not enough.

Now comes the harder part: turning a symbolic breakthrough into diplomatic momentum.

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President Trump's trip to China brings the economic implications of America's war against Iran into sharper focus. The fact that the Taiwan Strait generated more news than the Strait of Hormuz during the recent news cycle, is a telling indicator.

Critics keep framing this as crass resource politics: oil, opening the Strait of Hormuz waterway, and keeping gas prices down for American consumers.

Granted, we all want the price at the pump to come down, and previous administrations have cried wolf about weapons of mass destruction in the Mideast before, but the naysayers are wrong on the facts about this oil and water paradigm as I call it.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that peace between Israel and Lebanon is "imminently achievable"—if Beirut can finally confront Hezbollah. But even as Washington presses the two governments toward unprecedented security understandings, Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade fire in southern Lebanon.

The ceasefire declared by President Donald Trump on April 16, and then extended on April 23, now hangs in the balance.

For the governments of Israel and Lebanon, the uptick in violence comes at a delicate time. The ambassadors from both nations have met twice now in Washington in a bid to reach new security understandings—but Hezbollah remains powerful enough to stymie these efforts.

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A century ago, the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard and one of the founders of the NAACP, W.E.B. DuBois published The Gift of Black Folk, a book that was commissioned by the Catholic organization the Knights of Columbus, as part of a series intended to help Americans appreciate the contributions of minority groups.

DuBois was highly educated and an avid reader of great texts from Plato to Frederick Douglass. The irony of the present moment is that if DuBois were currently a student in a core philosophy class at Texas A&M University, he would be assigned only a redacted version of Plato's great work, The Republic.

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Imagine your physician walks into the exam room, recommends a prescription medication, and casually mentions she's being paid by the company that makes the drug to say so. You'd probably have questions.

You might even find a new doctor.

Now imagine that same scenario playing out on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube — except the advice is coming from a celebrity "influencer" who's very familiar to you, who has an emotional backstory, and a financial arrangement buried somewhere in a sea of hashtags. Millions of people encounter exactly this situation every day, and most of them have no idea it's happening.

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ANYONE WHO spends time with me knows me knows how much I despise litter. For as long as I can remember, I have fumed at the sight of trash on sidewalks, beer cans in the gutter, or garbage flung from passing cars. I often pick up litter when I'm walking, and when my kids were young I made them pick it up, too.

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