Author: Tall Iskarnah

Au revoir Paris, Hola LA. In a nutshell, that was the just completed ceremony of the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad. It was Tom Cruise leaping off the rim of the Stade de France to take the Olympic flag from LA Mayor Karen Bass and Simone Biles. As the guitar riffs of H.E.R. filled the air, Cruise then exited on a motorbike to deliver the flag to a sunny West Coast. It was the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish and Olympic fixture Snoop Dogg getting into the pre-recorded groove down in Long Beach. It wasn’t telling of the full scope of Los Angeles and no mention was made of Snoop’s…

Northern Elders showing Buyer’s Remorse for Backing Tinubu in 2023 It seems unthinkable that the wealthy and powerful cattle-herding class could be on the margins of President Bola Tinubu’s ruling clique, but it’s thinkable now. During the eight years of Fulani-born Muhammadu Buhari, the beef-on-the hoof lobby called Miyetti Allah Cattlemen’s Association marched vast herds of bony white cattle the length of the nation over lands public and private with impunity. The herds and their rifle-carrying herders uprooted thousands of small plot farms and sent thousands of civilians to their graves in so-called farmer-herder clashes. During those years, the killers…

Explanations beginning to emerge after worst terror attack in Israel’s history They might as well have been sitting ducks. They are the tatzpitaniyot, mostly female soldiers stationed on the IDF bases near the Gaza Strip, their eyes glued to security cameras and other feeds of the border. Last Saturday morning, the Hamas terrorists who entered some of those bases with hang gliders shot at cameras and jammed some communications systems. They shot at the combat soldiers who were stationed at those bases, as well as at the tatzpitaniyot. “Yes, they surprised us, and we weren’t ready for it,” said a female soldier…

Punishing hot weather affects not only a person’s health or work productivity but also affects couples’ fertility and birth outcomes, a project by the National University of Singapore (NUS) found. Rising temperatures could further reduce Singapore’s resident total fertility rate, which dipped below 1 – a record low – in 2023. The rate refers to the average number of babies each woman would have during her reproductive years. Researchers from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine studied sperm samples from 818 men that were already stored at the National University Hospital’s (NUH) andrology section. The scientists then traced the men’s…

The parliaments of Iran and Tajikistan signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Monday to expand cooperation between the two legislative bodies. The signing ceremony, reported by the Iranian Students’ News Agency, took place in Tehran, with Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and National Assembly of Tajikistan Chairman Rustam Emomali leading the initiative. The agreement was further endorsed during a meeting between Emomali and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who emphasized the importance of this collaboration as a support for the political and economic partnerships between the two nations. President Raisi also highlighted the role of bilateral cooperation in combating…

The Soviet Union’s collapse 32 years ago led to rapid change, economic collapse, and violence. In Tajikistan, that violence slid rapidly into civil war. Reflecting on the Soviet Union’s collapse 32 years ago and attempting to draw any sort of conclusion is often a matter of perspective. In his new book, “Moscow’s Heavy Shadow: The Violent Collapse of the USSR,” Dr. Isaac McKean Scarborough, an assistant professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University, writes of the collapse from one of the Soviet Union’s most distant peripheries — Dushanbe. In doing so, he highlights a perspective not often taken…

A former army general with a controversial past has claimed victory in Indonesia’s presidential election. Unofficial results show Prabowo Subianto, 72, winning nearly 60% of the vote – enough to avoid a presidential runoff – with around 85% of votes counted, according to state-owned news organization Antara, CNN affiliate CNN Indonesia and Reuters, which are reporting early counts done by a series of non-government think tanks. Ballot stations closed across the country early on Wednesday afternoon. Prabowo, billed as the frontrunner ahead of Wednesday’s contest, told supporters in Jakarta, he and running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka, who is the eldest son…

The Israeli army said on Sunday its air force carried out overnight strikes targeting tunnels, command centers, munitions warehouses of Hamas in Gaza. “Overnight, Israeli Air Force fighter jets and helicopters struck terror targets in the Gaza Strip, including terror tunnel shafts, command centers and weapons storage facilities. Furthermore, with the direction of [Israeli army] ground troops, an [army] UAV targeted and eliminated five Hamas terrorists,” the Israeli army said in a statement. It added: “Over the last day, [Israeli army] naval troops struck Hamas terror targets and assisted [army] ground troops during their operational activities. Among these targets were terrorist infrastructure, vessels belonging to Hamas’…

Israel is expanding military operations into southern Gaza, putting at risk hundreds of thousands of Palestinians escaping the north as US officials grow increasingly uneasy about the war’s toll on civilians. Southern Gaza was hit by airstrikes overnight, when the Israeli military struck around 200 targets, including weapons depots used by militant group Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union. The attacks came hours after the Israeli army urged those who fled south to evacuate again. The casualties in Gaza — standing at around 15,500 according to the Hamas-run health ministry — has spurred increasingly vocal and public…

Time to Make Hard Choices If devastation is the goal, Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip has been a resounding success. More than two months after Hamas killed over 1,100 people on October 7, Israeli air and ground operations have killed some 20,000 Palestinians, many of them children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. Much of Gaza lies in ruins, with the United Nations estimating that almost 20 percent of the territory’s prewar structures have been destroyed. More than half of Gazans are experiencing severe hunger, unemployment has risen to 85 percent, and disease is spreading. But the statements…