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Editorial

Spread of fossil fuels

Colombia’s economy is dependent on fossil fuels, which account for about half of its exports. But at the UN climate summit this weekend, Gustavo Petro, the country’s president, committed to stop the expansion of coal, oil and gas exploitation and reorient his nation away from such “ poisons”. Colombia is the first big economy to endorse a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. This is a sensible, globally significant step — which raises the question of why other carbon-exporting OECD members, such as Britain, shouldn’t follow suit. What is crazy is that governments plan to ...

Congressional expulsion

George Santos, assuming that’s his real name, is a classic type, and in another era he’d be selling miracle elixirs out of a horse-drawn wagon or perhaps founding a religion based on his divine revelations. Instead he went to Congress. On Friday the House expelled the indicted New Yorker, but however bad Mr. Santos’s conduct, it’s a worrying precedent for a polarized age. Mr. Santos faces 23 federal charges, including fraud and identity theft. Yet he has pleaded not guilty, and even politicians get a presumption of innocence. Before Friday’s expulsion, which passed 311-114, ...

Worthy opponents

Like two heavyweight champions, the two teams kept delivering their best shots, only to have their opponent launch a haymaker of his own. Both Lahainaluna and Kamehameha Maui came into the Oct. 14 Maui Interscholastic League high school football showdown undefeated. Fans screamed themselves hoarse in sold-out War Memorial Stadium. Television viewers watching statewide on OC-16 did the same. At stake was the Lunas’ 41-game MIL winning streak dating back to 2016. And so much more. This was a team playing for a town destroyed by wildfire two months earlier. More than half its coaches ...

Challenge of coexisting

It is said that wars end when both sides conclude they have nothing more to gain by fighting. By that logic, Israel and the Palestinians should have long ago agreed to the only solution that makes sense: separate states side by side. They’ve tried, again and again, but in this cauldron of religious passion and competing grievances, peace has always lost out. Is there any chance that things will be different when the guns fall silent this time? On the face of it, it does not seem promising. The brutal attack by Hamas on Oct. 7 and the massive Israeli retaliatory assault on Gaza have ...

COVID learning loss

In the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, Congress sent $190 billion in aid to schools, stipulating that 20 percent of the funds had to be used for reversing learning setbacks. At the time, educators knew that the impact on how children learn would be significant, but the extent was not yet known. The evidence is now in, and it is startling. The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education. It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades ...

Filtering out the fakes

Orange flames exploding from the heart of Lahaina send red-hot embers streaking across the sunset sky. Anyone there on Aug. 8 would immediately know the image available on Adobe Stock is a fake. Where is the choking cloud of black smoke that turned day to night? Why aren’t the palm trees being battered by cruel winds? Where are the sailing leaves, limbs and debris? Why isn’t the ocean a wind-chopped froth? The Lahaina picture was featured this week as part of a Washington Post story about images generated by artificial intelligence that look like prizewinning photojournalism. ...