It marked a turning point in the Cold War: the president of the United States had just signed a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. The US military’s top brass were furious, having warned that the treaty endangered national security. But the president had signed it anyway. To the generals, that amounted to treason. They assembled a secret combat unit to topple the president. A coup d’état was coming; the American Republic would fall. The plot of the Hollywood film Seven Days in May (1964) is, of course, fiction. But its journey to the screen is historically significant, because the person…

I dreamt of autumn in the window's twilight,And you, a tipsy jesters' throng amidst. 'And like a falcon, having stooped to slaughter,My heart returned to settle on your wrist.But time went on, grew old and deaf. Like thawingSoft ice old silk decayed on easy chairs.A bloated sunset from the garden paintedThe glass with bloody red September tears.But time grew old and deaf. And you, the loud one,Quite suddenly were still. This broke a spell.The dreaming ceased at once, as though in answerTo an abruptly silenced bell.And I awakened. Dismal as the autumnThe dawn was dark. A stronger wind aroseTo chase…

The 2020 elections raised a lot of hope around the world that the Iran nuclear deal could be saved, and that Joe Biden would approach the process with the same openness the Obama Administration did, and would reverse the Trump-era abandonment of the deal.Biden was short on comments after the inauguration, however, and that left many wondering where he actually stood. Details are starting to emerge and again are pointing to the US and Iran finding themselves in a stalemate even when a straightforward deal is to be had.Iran has been very clear from the start that they want sanctions…

The myriad personal and professional pressures of the pandemic are taking a toll on entrepreneurs. Mental health experts, including a psychiatrist, an organizational psychologist, and an occupational therapist, among others, interviewed for this Businessweek news article also weighed in with their concerns and analyses. Below are some of their suggestions for individuals who run their own ventures.Make (a little) time to get perspective.“Every time I use an hour to talk to someone in my network to see a bigger picture, I always come back stronger,” says Paola Santana, the founder and CEO of Social Glass, a San Francisco startup that streamlines how government agencies buy from local businesses.…

Professor Francis Fukuyama, currently Bernard L Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, was born in Chicago in 1952, and has a BA from Cornell and a doctorate in political science from Harvard. He has worked with the RAND Corporation, the Department of State specialising on the Middle East, and continues to serve on several significant boards such as the President’s Council on Bioethics and the National Endowment for Democracy. Something of the range of his interests can be gauged from the fact that he has written monographs on Russia and the Third World, the consequences of…