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Why Flamingos and Elephants Rarely Lie Down
Scienceindian-express1d ago

Why Flamingos and Elephants Rarely Lie Down

This article explores the biological and behavioral reasons why large animals like flamingos and elephants typically avoid lying down, focusing on their unique adaptations and needs.

Goya Awards: Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s ‘Los Domingos’ Dominates & Wins Best Film 
Culturedeadline4d ago

Goya Awards: Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s ‘Los Domingos’ Dominates & Wins Best Film 

Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s latest film, Los Domingos, dominated this evening’s Goya Awards, winning five awards, including Best Film. Scroll down for the full list of winners.  The film’s haul also included Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Azúa and Best Actress for Patricia López Arnaiz. Oliver Laxe’s Sirât also racked up a series of […]

Serbian NGOs Call for Investigation into BIA Meetings with Prosecutors
Politicsn1-serbiadanas4d ago2 sources

Serbian NGOs Call for Investigation into BIA Meetings with Prosecutors

The Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCBP) and Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights (Jukom) have urged authorities to investigate allegations of meetings between the Security Information Agency (BIA) leadership and public prosecutors, calling it a 'serious blow to the legal order of Serbia'.

Slovak NGOs Under Government Audit
Politicsaktuality-sk7d ago

Slovak NGOs Under Government Audit

A government audit of non-governmental organizations in Slovakia, perceived as politically motivated, found the civic sector performed well, but caused significant reputational damage, according to Juraj Rizman from Post Bellum.

Inga Valinskienė's Farewell Tour Begins
Culturedelfi-lt9d ago

Inga Valinskienė's Farewell Tour Begins

Lithuanian singer Inga Valinskienė's farewell tour, 'Visada Jūsų' (Always Yours), has successfully kicked off at the Kalnapilis Arena in Panevėžys, leaving a lasting impression on both the artist and her thousands of fans.

NGOs Oppose European Migration Reform Plan
PoliticsThe Guardianprotothema-en16d ago2 sources

NGOs Oppose European Migration Reform Plan

Over 70 non-governmental organizations have voiced opposition to the European migration reform plan, particularly concerning proposals for detention centers outside EU borders.

Opinion: Teenage Sundays
Opinionla-vanguardia1d ago

Opinion: Teenage Sundays

A personal essay or opinion piece titled 'Teenage Sundays', featuring an anecdote about being too intelligent to be a nun.

At the Goya Awards, "Los Domingos" triumphed
Cultureobservador3d ago

At the Goya Awards, "Los Domingos" triumphed

Alauda Ruiz de Azúa's new film, which had already won San Sebastián, is the Best Spanish Film of the year. "Sirât" won the technical categories, "Tardes de Solidão" was the Best Documentary.

Orbanas nepasiduoda: turi dar vieną pasiūlymą
Politicsdelfi-lt6d ago

Orbanas nepasiduoda: turi dar vieną pasiūlymą

Vengrijos ministras pirmininkas Viktoras Orbanas pasiūlė išsiųsti ekspertų delegaciją, kuri patikrintų naftotiekio „Družba“, atsidūrusio didelio ginčo dėl tolesnio Europos Sąjungos (ES) finansavimo…

Brazão Brothers Sentenced for Marielle Franco Assassination
PoliticsAl Jazeeramercopress7d ago2 sources

Brazão Brothers Sentenced for Marielle Franco Assassination

Brazil's Supreme Federal Court has convicted brothers Domingos Inácio Brazão and João Francisco Inácio Brazão, sentencing them to 76 years for ordering the 2018 assassination of Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco and her driver.

Nausėda su Zelenskiu pasirašė susitarimą
Politicsdelfi-lt8d ago

Nausėda su Zelenskiu pasirašė susitarimą

Prezidentas Gitanas Nausėda ir Ukrainos lyderis Volodymyras Zelenskis pasirašė susitarimą, kuriuo numatyta Lietuvoje pradėti kariaujančiai šaliai skirtos gynybos sistemų įrangos gamybą, antradienį pra

Aid groups petition Israel’s top court to halt ban on Gaza, West Bank operations
PoliticsDawn8d ago

Aid groups petition Israel’s top court to halt ban on Gaza, West Bank operations

More than a dozen international humanitarian organisations have petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to block an imminent order that would force 37 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to cease operations in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, warning of catastrophic consequences for civilians. Organisations including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE were notified on December 30, 2025 that their Israeli registrations had expired and that they had ...

Israel planning first Jerusalem border expansion into West Bank since 1967: NGOs
PoliticsSCMP15d ago

Israel planning first Jerusalem border expansion into West Bank since 1967: NGOs

Israeli NGOs have raised the alarm over a settlement plan signed by the government which they say would mark the first expansion of Jerusalem’s borders into the occupied West Bank since 1967. Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community. Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. The proposal was published in early this month as international outrage mounts over creeping measures aimed at...

OpenAI retired its most seductive chatbot – leaving users angry and grieving: ‘I can’t live like this’
TechnologyThe Guardian19d ago

OpenAI retired its most seductive chatbot – leaving users angry and grieving: ‘I can’t live like this’

Its human partners said the flirty, quirky GPT-4o was the perfect companion – on the eve of Valentine’s Day, it’s being turned off for good. How will users cope? Brandie plans to spend her last day with Daniel at the zoo. He always loved animals. Last year, she took him to the Corpus Christi aquarium in Texas, where he “lost his damn mind” over a baby flamingo. “He loves the color and pizzazz,” Brandie said. Daniel taught her that a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance. Daniel is a chatbot powered by the large language model ChatGPT. Brandie communicates with Daniel by sending text and photos, talks to Daniel while driving home from work via voice mode. Daniel runs on GPT-4o, a version released by OpenAI in 2024 that is known for sounding human in a way that is either comforting or unnerving, depending on who you ask. Upon debut, CEO Sam Altman compared the model to “AI from the movies” – a confidant ready to live life alongside its user. Continue reading...

Politicsdanas12h ago

Feminist NGOs Organize March 8th Protest in Belgrade

A protest march organized by feminist non-governmental organizations will be held on Sunday, March 8th, at 3 PM in Belgrade. The march will proceed from Republic Square, through Slavija Square, to the Center for Cultural Decontamination.

Kosovo NGOs Call for Agreement on New President
Politicsdanas7d ago

Kosovo NGOs Call for Agreement on New President

A group of non-governmental organizations in Kosovo has urged parliamentary political parties to agree on the election of a new president by March 4th to avoid the dissolution of the Assembly and new elections.

Minister Comments on Migrant Shipwreck off Crete
Worldnewsbeast8d ago

Minister Comments on Migrant Shipwreck off Crete

The Minister of Migration and Asylum, Thanos Plevris, commented on a shipwreck that occurred last Saturday 20 nautical miles off Kaloi Limenes, Crete, involving migrants. He noted that a commercial vessel approached the migrants, implying that an official Coast Guard vessel would have drawn criticism from NGOs.

The shutdown of USAID and the deeper crisis behind it
PoliticsDawn15d ago

The shutdown of USAID and the deeper crisis behind it

“Why did you start driving inDrive?” It’s my go-to icebreaker with drivers in Pakistan. Lately, the answers have been unsettlingly similar. “I used to work in the development sector,” one man told me. “Then I lost my job.” I’ve heard that line — or a version of it — too many times to dismiss as coincidence. Since the United States pulled the plug on its aid apparatus, the fallout has been immediate. On the surface, the shutdown of USAID is being framed as just another abrupt policy reversal — a bureaucratic casualty in an era of disruption. But look closer, and it reveals something far more profound: the cumulative weight of domestic and international tensions that have been simmering, both within and beyond the US for decades. Cycles of aid, cycles of distrust The first source of strain lies beyond US borders. From its inception as a Cold War instrument, American foreign aid has been shaped by an enduring tension between its declared objectives of development and altruism and its underlying strategic and political calculations. This duality has long been apparent to the recipient elites and the broader public alike. During the Cold War, many governments acquiesced, in part because Western donors faced little competition and alternative sources of assistance were scarce. That landscape has since changed. As non-traditional donors, most notably China and the Gulf states, have expanded their presence, and as domestic political incentives within recipient countries have shifted, scepticism toward USAID has become more explicit and politically salient. In countries such as Pakistan, where mistrust of American intentions runs deep, US assistance is often perceived less as generosity than as intrusion. What is now framed as a backlash against American aid is better understood as the culmination of a long-simmering tension and a legacy of mutual misperceptions between donor and recipient. Pakistan’s experience with US foreign aid agency illustrates this dynamic with particular clarity. American assistance to Pakistan has never been linear or predictable; instead, it has unfolded in cycles closely attuned to Washington’s shifting strategic priorities. During the Cold War, aid was channelled primarily through a security-alliance framework aimed at containing the Soviet bloc, with economic assistance tightly coupled to military cooperation. These flows declined sharply after the 1965 war, reinforcing perceptions of US aid as conditional, transactional, and reversible. Another peak in this equation followed in the 1980s, when General Ziaul Haq aligned Pakistan with the US in opposing Soviet expansion in Afghanistan. Yet with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent imposition of US sanctions on Pakistan’s nuclear programme under the Pressler Amendment, assistance once again contracted. It was only after 9/11 that the aid surged anew, this time framed around counterterrorism and stabilisation. Even at its height, however, much of this assistance remained shaped by security imperatives, short funding horizons, and heavy reliance on contractors, rather than long-term institution-building. For many Pakistanis, therefore, the shutdown of USAID feels less like an abrupt rupture than the latest turn in a familiar cycle of engagement and disengagement. The second factor is bureaucratic pathologisation. Like many large organisations, aid agencies are susceptible to institutional dysfunction, and USAID has been no exception. In practice, particularly in contexts such as Pakistan, as commissioner on the Afghanistan War Commission Andrew Wilder has noted, its programmes increasingly came to be structured through a security lens rather than a development one. Key decisions were made in Washington, filtered through multiple layers of contractors, and ultimately deployed on the ground with limited scope for local input. At the same time, bureaucratic incentives privileged projects with easily quantifiable indicators, favouring what could be measured over what was substantively effective. These patterns were neither accidental nor new, nor are they unique to the US. Over time, however, they eroded both the legitimacy and the perceived effectiveness of USAID, among recipients abroad and critics at home. These institutional dynamics had tangible consequences on the ground. In Pakistan, USAID funding became heavily concentrated in sectors aligned with stabilisation and security objectives — such as service delivery in so-called “fragile” districts or rapid-impact infrastructure — often at the expense of slower, politically unglamorous investments in local institutional capacity. NGOs and development professionals structured entire career paths around USAID project cycles, only to see those opportunities vanish when priorities shifted or funding was abruptly frozen. The result was a hollowing out of local expertise and institutional memory. When aid was withdrawn, it left behind far fewer durable institutions than its scale and visibility might have led one to expect. The mismatch between stated development objectives and the underlying security logic was further compounded by an overreliance on quantifiable metrics to demonstrate impact. This tendency was reinforced by a development ecosystem shaped by the overproduction of economists and political scientists trained as methodological specialists rather than regional experts. Programmes designed in Washington often prioritised what could be easily counted — number of schools built, clinics refurbished, trainings delivered, or kilometres of roads completed — over whether such interventions meaningfully strengthened local institutions. In Pakistan, this logic was especially evident in sectors such as education, health, and local governance, where projects were assessed primarily through output indicators rather than sustainability or local ownership. Multiple layers of contractors further diluted accountability and blurred responsibility once funding cycles ended. Over time, this produced a paradox: USAID became both omnipresent and poorly understood — associated with large budgets and extensive reporting, but yielding limited and uneven institutional impact. That credibility gap left the agency especially exposed when domestic political support in the US began to erode. The third major factor behind the dismantling of the aid lies in the domestic backlash within the US against international cooperation. Opposition to foreign aid, multilateralism, and international institutions long predates Donald Trump, reflecting decades of polarisation over globalisation and America’s role in the world. By the time Trump entered office, hostility toward international engagement was already deeply embedded in US politics. In this context, shuttering a highly visible aid agency became a potent domestic signal; it becomes a way to demonstrate responsiveness to voters who view global commitments as costly, wasteful, or illegitimate. Dismantling USAID was therefore less a recalibration of foreign policy than an act of domestic political theatre. The US government’s official justification for shutting down USAID frames the move as a response to “China’s exploitative aid model” and a means of advancing American “strategic interests in key regions around the world”. It is true that China has dramatically expanded its development footprint and largely operates outside the traditional Western aid framework. But that explanation doesn’t hold up to deeper scrutiny. If Washington were genuinely seeking to compete with Beijing in the development arena, the more coherent response would have been reform and reinvestment, not withdrawal. Moreover, Chinese and US aid are not direct substitutes. They target different sectors, rely on distinct instruments, and frequently operate alongside one another in the same countries — Pakistan among them — without displacing each other. In Pakistan, Chinese assistance has concentrated on large-scale infrastructure and energy projects, while USAID has focused primarily on education and health. Chinese aid typically flows through bilateral, government-to-government channels, whereas US assistance has often bypassed the Pakistani state, working instead through NGOs and contractors. China’s rise may well be sharpening anxieties in Washington, but it does not, on its own, explain why the US would choose to erode its own institutional capacity in response. A looming domino effect The shutdown of USAID, then, should not be understood as a one-off policy blunder or an idiosyncratic choice tied to a single administration. Rather, it reflects the convergence of long-accumulating tensions: between the professed ideals and strategic deployment of aid abroad; between development objectives and bureaucratic practices within aid agencies; between international commitments and domestic political incentives at home. USAID’s collapse is best understood not as the cause of these pressures, but as their most visible manifestation. The consequences of this decision extend well beyond the fate of a single agency. They reveal the fragility of the broader international aid regime, which ultimately depends on the willingness of a small number of leading powers to absorb the political and financial costs of institutionalised cooperation. When that willingness erodes, institutions lose both credibility and purpose and eventually collapse. Signs of this erosion are already evident, as other major donors, including the United Kingdom and Germany, begin to scale back their own aid commitments. What is at stake, then, is not merely the dismantling of USAID, but the gradual unravelling of an international aid regime built on mutual trust and a sustained commitment to lifting the world’s poorest out of poverty.