But first, here’s a closer look at what’s been going on around the world in the last week or so:
60 — The number of counties across the Texas panhandle that are under the banner of a disaster declaration following the state’s worst fire in recorded history last week. The Smokehouse Creek fire has torched over 1.2 million acres so far.
It’s a harrowing example of a global trend I’ve seen before: Last summer, when Canada’s wildfires generated post-apocalyptic skies across much of the Northeast, I reported for Heatmap News that fires are becoming exponentially larger and more destructive.
“Some people like to say this is the new normal. I really do not like that term. Normal suggests a steady state. We’re not in a steady state. We’re in a downward spiral in Dante’s circle of hell,” Michael Flannigan, a lead fire researcher at Thompson Rivers University, told me.
200 — The exact number of years since the Anglo-Burmese Wars, which sowed the seeds of Myanmar’s present troubles since the Myanmar military seized power from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup three years ago, GZero’s Matthew Kendrick reports. Kendrick is an old hand here at Frame. He reported for us on El Salvador’s mass-imprisonment crisis last year.
22 — The number of days in advance that sea ice has started to break down toward the end of the winter season each year. This shift has immensely impacted the bearded seal hunting season for Indigenous communities in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, according to a recent study from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the International Arctic Research Center.
“The ugruk, or bearded seal, is probably the most important sea mammal that we hunt. … It’s important that people take notice, because we’re already experiencing the effects of the climate crisis, especially when it comes to our sea mammals and their health,” Bobby Shaeffer, one of the Iñupiaq elders and hunters who co-authored the study, told The Circle magazine, which is a publication run by the World Wildlife Federation Arctic Program.
Gaza’s aid infrastructure is collapsing. Here’s how we got here — and what experts say could be done to remedy it.
This 20-or-so aid airdrops in recent weeks across northern Gaza from Jordan, France, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, and most recently the United States, do not constitute a turn for the better amid a protracted war between Israel and Hamas. For the 2.3 million Palestinians that are facing starvation and displacement in Gaza, it’s “a symbol of the failure of the aid effort on the ground,” the BBC wrote today.
Here’s why: Delivering food by air is eight to ten times more expensive than ground transportation, and air deliveries are a fraction of the size of ground deliveries, Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, explained to NPR yesterday.
If airdrops are so inefficient, why are they being deployed? The first domino to fall was funding for UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees. In January, the Israeli government asserted, without providing evidence, that 12 members of the agency were involved in the October 7 attack on Israeli citizens by Hamas. Since then, several western countries have withdrawn their funding, amounting to a $450 million loss to the agency, and aid operations from the group have been bottlenecked — and even blocked — by Israeli authorities ever since.
Earlier this month at the UN General Assembly, the UNRWA Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, warned that aid groups are functioning “hand-to-mouth” as a result, and that the fates of millions of people “hang in the balance.”
So, what could be done? Aid agencies and humanitarians have signaled a need for an immediate ceasefire in the region, a reinvigoration of Gaza’s aid infrastructure, as well as the cooperation of Israeli authorities to protect aid groups as they administer life-saving resources.
“This is not about increasing the number of trucks by five, by ten a day, it is about flooding the zone, about surging vast quantities of food, medicine, and shelter to the people who need it. It is about a sustained humanitarian pipeline, pipelines that reach civilians in desperate and growing need,” said the USAID administrator Samantha Power at a February press conference in Ramallah.
We’ll be back next week with another interactive Frame story.
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This piece is part of our Dispatch series, distinguished by our correspondents physically reporting from the heart of the story. Next week’s article features reports from Panama by journalist Michelle Shen.
Our last Dispatch featured a piece by journalist Melisa Trad who reported from Israel and West Bank to tell the story of two brother’s documenting the histories of former Palestinian communities.
When I was a little girl growing up in the California Bay Area, I wanted to be one of two things: A smoke jumper parachuting into blazing wildfires, or an astronaut floating Wall-E-style through the galaxy.
Yesterday, one of those dream jobs opened up, and it has me positively tickled: NASA is looking for its next class of astronauts — and the recruitment video they released yesterday feels like a real-world version of “Interstellar,” featuring cinematic electronic music overlaid with the narration of Morgan Freeman encouraging space-venuring hopefuls to help land the world’s first woman and person of color on the moon. It’s a bit too earnest, sure, but it’s also everything I would hope a space odyssey to look like.
NASA’s 2023 Artemis Generation class, selected in 2021. Source: NASA
The new class of astronauts will join NASA’s “Artemis Generation,” with ambitions to bring humans for the first time ever to the lunar South Pole,” according to the job application. Ahead of the human-centered mission, NASA’s Odysseus spacecraft landed on the moon last month to deliver data that could help NASA prepare the Artemis team.
The gig posting comes amid a newfound interest in the moon: In 2019, then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence reinvigorated the United States’ mission on the moon by directing NASA to land astronauts on the lunar south pole by 2024, where scientists believe there to be reserves of frozen water. The world has followed suit: Last August, India became the first country in the world to land a spacecraft there.
“We need more adventurers ready to join the ranks to explore the cosmos, including future missions to the Moon, on to Mars, and beyond,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement about the new Artemis team.
On Friday, March 8 — The 10-year anniversary of the vanishing of Malaysia flight 370 occurs. On Sunday,Malaysian officials announced they may renew the hunt for the lost flight, which is believed to have disappeared somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. When the jet carrying 239 vanished in 2014, it cast into sharp relief the “painfully slow” efforts to bolster aviation safety.
On Saturday, March 9 — Ramadan begins worldwide, but for many, the month-long holiday is eclipsed by the massive shadow of the 150-day war between Israel and Hamas, which has had an outsized impact on 2.3 million Palestinians currently living in Gaza. On Sunday, during the annual commemoration of "Bloody Sunday," in Selma, Alabama , U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate six-week cease-fire in Gaza to facilitate a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas and ensure a peaceful Ramadan for those in the region who celebrate.
On Sunday, March 10 —The 96th Academy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles. Among several hopefuls in the Oscar’s Best Documentary Feature Film category is the 2022 film “Bobi Wine: The People’s President,” which is about the titular character’s rise to prominence as a Ugandan opposition leader. Wine, a former Afrobeats musician and Uganda’s version of Alexei Navalny, has dedicated his life to illuminating the corrupt, hardline rule of Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.
“It’s a gripping piece of film-making: a propulsive, kinetic account of a grassroots campaign captured at what would seem to be considerable personal risk to both the subject and directors,” The Guardian’s Wendy Ide wrote in her review of the film.
On Tuesday, March 12 — Mexico's $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers takes a new turn. On this day, the U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor will decide whether he will put Mexico’s case on hold pending the U.S. gun manufacturer’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Reuters reported in February. Mexico alleges several U.S. gun companies undermined the country’s gun laws in ways they knew would arm dangerous drug cartels. The Council on Foreign Relations has an excellent primer on the myriad challenges, including drug cartels, that are fueling Mexico’s high rates of criminal violence.
“Without the illicit trafficking that comes from the United States we would not have the level of gun violence that we have; Life in Mexico would be different,” said the lawyer leading Mexico’s lawsuit, Alejandro Celorio Alcántar, in a Spanish-language interview with El País.
Amish communities across the U.S. are known for horse-drawn buggies, forgoing the use of phones and computers at home, and a traditional dress code.
A group of Amish residents waving to U.S. President George W. Bush during his visit to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 2006. Credit: White House/ Kimberlee Hewitt/Wikimedia
But for most Amish adolescents, when they come of age, they are allowed to leave their community and experiment with non-Amish, or “English”, culture. This period is called rumspringa which means “running around” in Pennsylvania German.
Every rumspringa varies depending on the community and individual. Some attend “singings” where Amish teenage girls and boys sing German and English gospel hymns and have the chance to meet a potential partner. Other Amish adolescents join their more rebellious peers in friend groups, wearing “English” clothing and experimenting with drugs and partying. Others leave the community altogether and socialize with non-Amish folk.
Some Amish end up leaving the community after their rumspringa, but around 90% decide to be baptized and become part of the Amish church for good.
Rumspringa is a rite of passage, present across cultures — whether they be “walkabouts” practiced by Aboriginal Australians, or the “eurotrip” practiced by some American high schoolers. These rites of passage serve a social function, allowing adolescents to rebel and find their independence, in hopes that that they return to become even healthier and more mature members of their community.
These rituals make me wonder what we can gain from partaking in rites of passage later in life, leaving our community, donning new clothes and ways of being. Maybe regular rites of passage could strengthen communities at a time when loneliness in countries like the U.S. is rapidly increasing.
— Ben
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