WEC Articles

  geopolitics , analysis of the geographic influences on power relationships in   international relations . The word   geopolitics   was originally coined by the Swedish political scientist   Rudolf Kjellén   about the turn of the 20th century, and its use spread throughout Europe in the period between World Wars I and II (1918–39) and came into worldwide use during the latter. In contemporary discourse,   geopolitics   has been widely employed as a loose synonym for international politics. Arguments about the political effects of  geography —particularly  climate ,  topography , arable land, and access to the sea—have appeared in Western political thought since at least the ancient Greek era and were prominent in the writings of philosophers as  diverse  as  Aristotle  (384–322  BC ) and  Montesquieu  (1689–1745). The best-known body of geopolitical writings is the extensive literature of the late...

Zelenskyy warns of Russian chemical   attack in speech to Japan Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday warned Japanese lawmakers in a virtual speech that Russia was escalating its attacks on Ukraine, including possibly employing chemical or nuclear weapons, as he called for tougher sanctions. "I have received reports that Russia is preparing chemical attacks by using chemical weapons such as sarin," he said in the speech to Japan's parliament. "How would the world react if nuclear weapons are used is also now discussed around the world." Japanese are familiar with sarin because it was used by members of a cult in an attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 that killed 13 people and injured thousands.    Zelenskyy also pointed to the dangerous situation near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant where forest fires have erupted but Russian troops, which have taken control of the site, are hampering any Ukrainian attempts to put them out. "On Feb. 2...

“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. It’s now an Academy Award nominee, a first for Bhutan. Feb. 12, 2022 The director Pawo Choyning Dorji, right, talked with Pem Zam, a young first-time actress from rural Bhutan, during the shooting of his film “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom.” Kinley Wangchuk  THIMPHU, Bhutan — As a crew of 35 people prepared to make a movie in Bhutan’s remote Lunana Valley, they faced a slew of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The valley had no electricity. It could only be reached by walking eight days from the nearest village. And the schoolchildren who were expected to star in the film knew nothing about acting or cinema. “They did not even know what a camera was or what it looked like,” Namgay Dorji, the village schoolteacher, said in a telephone interview. On Tuesday, the movie, “ Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom ,” was nominated for an Academy Award — a first for Bhutan. Its director, Pawo Choyn...

  Zhao Xiaoqing, right, with Zhao Fei in Xianyang, China. Zhao Xiaoqing When Zhao Xiaoqing first met Zhao Fei on a blind date, the sparks didn’t really fly. When they met for a second time at his home in northwest China in December, it lasted longer than they both expected. Facing a new outbreak of coronavirus cases, the health authorities announced a lockdown so sudden and severe that she didn’t have time to scurry home. So for nearly four weeks, Zhao Xiaoqing has lived in the city of Xianyang, in Shaanxi Province, with the family of Zhao Fei, a man she had barely known. (They share a last name but are not related.) “Initially, I was quite worried about things being awkward,” said Ms. Zhao, who is from Baoji, about 93 miles away, or a two-hour drive by car. “But I got along well with his family.” Chinese officials have employed swift lockdowns across the country as one of its top strategies to rapidly stamp out infections. Last month, officials  locked down 13 million people ...

  The stunning Covid vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna drew upon long-buried discoveries made in the hopes of ending past epidemics. Updated  Jan. 16, 2022, 9:33 p.m. ET Jan. 16, 2022 A 3D plaster model of a coronavirus spike protein in the office of Dr. Barney Graham, an immunologist and virologist recently retired from the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institutes of Health. Johnathon Kelso for The New York Times Thousands of miles from Dr. Barney Graham’s lab in Bethesda, Md., a frightening new coronavirus had jumped from camels to humans in the Middle East, killing one out of every three people infected. An expert on the world’s most intractable viruses, Dr. Graham had been working for months to develop a vaccine, but had gotten nowhere. Now he was terrified that the virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, had infected one of his lab’s own scientists, who was sick with a fever and a cough in the fall of 2013 after a pilgrimage to the h...