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War crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law that can be committed in the course of armed conflict. They are punishable by both domestic and international tribunals. They include acts of murder, extermination, enslavement, imprisonment or deportation or forcible transfer of population, torture, grave forms of sexual violence and cruel treatment.

In the past, armies regularly behaved brutally to their enemies and civilians during armed conflict and whether they were punished depended on who won the war. At the end of World War II the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis and the mistreatment of prisoners of war by the Japanese led to a change in attitudes. The victors of World War II made a commitment to prosecute anyone they suspected of war crimes and the UN established four different treaties and conventions that became known as the laws of war.

These treaties are a significant body of international law that defines what is permissible in armed conflict and limits the means and extent of violence that can be used by belligerent nations during war. They are also designed to limit the extent of harm that can be done to civilians and property.

The law of war was further developed by subsequent international conferences including the Hague Rules for War at Sea of 1899, the Geneva Conventions of 1907, the First Geneva Convention Relating to the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded and Sick Members of Armed Forces at War of 1929 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. These conventions and their Additional Protocols form the core of international humanitarian law, which has been further developed by customary international law, human rights law, and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The Civil War, a four-year conflict that preserved the nation as one country and ended slavery—the system that had shaped the South’s economic life from its inception—cost more American lives than any other war in the nation’s history. It also transformed the country, turning a decentralized republic into a centralized government that taxed people directly, drafted men into military service, created an internal revenue bureau and national bank, established a federal court system, confiscated billions of dollars in personal property (by emancipating slaves), and consolidated power at the top by confirming cabinet secretaries and a Supreme Court justice.

The war began with Nat Turner’s bloody slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery bestseller “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852, and John Brown’s raid on a federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in 1859. Abolitionists convinced many Northerners that slavery was morally wrong, but they were unable to change the nation’s political structure so that the Constitution could be amended to ban slavery in the United States.

Starring Kirsten Dunst and featuring performances from Narcos’ Wagner Moura, Lady Bird’s Stephen McKinley Henderson, Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny, and Nick Offerman as a tyrannical President, Alex Garland’s Civil War depicts a near-future United States ravaged by secessionist violence. The film follows Lee, a jaded photojournalist who travels with two younger colleagues, a Southern journalist and a rookie photographer, to Washington, D.C., where they hope to interview a President who hasn’t spoken to the press in more than a year.

Stock market volatility can be a source of investor anxiety and fear. But a well-diversified portfolio, including stocks and bonds, can help reduce the impact of volatile markets on your financial goals.

Volatility refers to how much the price of an investment (like a stock, mutual fund, or exchange-traded fund) moves up and down over time. An asset’s volatility may be influenced by its past performance, its expected future returns, or both.

A stock’s volatility is typically expressed as the standard deviation of its daily price movements over a defined period, such as a month or a year. This measure is then annualized by multiplying it by 16 (the square root of 256), which approximates the average number of trading days in a year. Alternatively, a stock’s volatility can also be measured by its beta, which compares the fluctuations of the stock to those of the overall market or an appropriate index.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange created the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX), a key gauge of 30-day expected volatility conveyed by options prices on the S&P 500 Index. The VIX is widely used by traders to gauge the riskiness of investing in the US stock market.

Investors can reduce their vulnerability to market turbulence by working with registered investment professionals—check FINRA BrokerCheck to see if a person is licensed to sell securities—and sticking to a comprehensive financial plan. It can also be helpful to maintain a diversified portfolio and to avoid chasing the market, either during a downturn or in a recovery.

Election interference involves attempts to disrupt the electoral process or promote partisan objectives. It can be conducted by domestic or foreign actors, and it may be motivated by economic or geopolitical goals. Election interference can occur in digital and real-world channels. In the digital realm, the threat is heightened by cyberattacks and information operations. In the real world, the threat can be heightened by intimidation and the spreading of racially inflamed fearmongering.

It is vital that states are ready to prevent and counter any interference that threatens the integrity of elections. This must include enhancing state-level preparedness and increasing coordination between law enforcement agencies and local election officials. This includes empowering state and local officials to refuse illegal requests for access to their elections systems or equipment.

In addition, the US must build greater transparency and resilience in the information space. This should involve boosting public awareness of the tactics employed by interference groups, e.g. through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s public bulletins and regular security updates. This should be complemented by proactive strategic communications, including ‘pre-bunking’.

Lastly, it is important to remember that the views of foreign governments and citizens do not stop at the US borders, and voters should be able to take them into consideration when formulating their votes, as they would any other information about candidates or campaigns. In fact, the recent experience in Romania, where a TikTok campaign appeared to have influenced voters by stoking fear about noncitizen voting and invoking white supremacy ideologies, suggests that this kind of interference can be weaponized to undermine the legitimacy of democratic processes.

When Kansans think of the border wars, they tend to recall hard-fought battles on the hardwood and gridiron, with coaches named Brown and Stewart and players like Manning and Peeler. The real border war, however, was fought in fields, forests and farms and along the roads and railroads of eastern Kansas and western Missouri, in countless skirmishes and hit-and-run engagements that were far more brutal and consequential than the scuffles celebrated in the movies and on the sporting pages.

A new display at the British Museum lays out the world’s oldest recorded example of protracted boundary dispute, the fight between the city states of Lagash and Umma over a strip of land called Gishakidu or “Edge of the Plain.” As Rachel Campbell-Johnston writes in The Times, this conflict may have been one of the first armed conflicts recorded in history, and its settlement is documented on a stone pillar—perhaps the earliest known depiction of what we now call a no man’s land—erected by the king of Lagash.

Since 2020, when clashes along the 2,100-mile contested border between China and India killed 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, the two sides have conducted 18 rounds of corps-commander level talks to limit unwanted escalation and establish military buffer zones. Yet such efforts have done little to disengage the two countries from each other, and sporadic armed clashes between troops still occur along the LAC. If tensions continue to rise, large numbers of troops near the border could be engulfed in full-scale conflict.

President Trump has launched a trade war that’s unlike any America has seen in decades. Against the advice of almost every professional economist, he has announced tariffs against most major economies. This shock could reshape global trade and supply chains, including your own company’s.

The President says he wants to use tariffs to reduce the gap between the value of goods the US buys from foreigners and those it sells to them – known as the trade deficit. He also says that it will encourage US consumers to buy more American-made products, increase tax collections and boost investment.

But economists say the opposite is more likely. Tariffs raise the price of imports, and higher prices reduce demand. In fact, the average household’s annual consumption drops by about 4% for each percentage point increase in the cost of their favorite imported brands. And the cost to companies of shipping those goods to consumers eats up profits and cuts corporate investment.

Business leaders are expressing serious concerns about the impact of the trade war on their prospects. A survey by the Business Roundtable found that CEOs have reduced their plans to hire and invest because of the tariff turbulence.

The economic consequences of a full-blown trade war are hard to predict. But the history of previous trade wars offers some clues. Most importantly, a successful diplomacy that achieves negotiated agreements will depend on carefully managing Trump’s mercurial nature. Otherwise, negotiating partners will be hesitant to make deals for fear that they could be undone by his next bombastic threat.

Coup d’etat is a term used to describe the illegal overthrow of the leader of a state. It differs from a revolution, which seeks to change the fundamental social and political ideology of a country, by focusing on replacing the existing government.

Whether the outcome of a coup is positive or negative depends on how it is handled. Coups that are bloodless can create new political orders while those that lead to chaos or a return of old power structures can destabilize the entire world order. International responses to coups can vary from condemnation and sanctions to tacit support depending on geopolitical interests.

The coup of 18 Brumaire was successful for several reasons. First, the conspirators industriously promulgated rumors of a Jacobin plot to bring down the Directory, creating an atmosphere of suspicion that allowed them to ratify a decree relocating the assemblies to the Chateau de Saint Cloud. This gave Bonaparte the opportunity to occupy this space under the guise of protecting the assemblies against the’real conspirators’ and subsequently enact his own reorganisation of the directory.

While a coup d’etat is generally seen as a violent and destructive event, it can have long-term effects on societal structures and governance. For example, during the collapse of communism, a number of coups led to the removal of existing regimes and the establishment of democratic reforms. The French Revolution also demonstrates the ability for coups to disrupt revolutionary ideals and shift the trajectory of political order towards authoritarian governance.

Economic inequality is a widening gap in the distribution of income, pay and wealth that results from globalization, technology, education and a host of domestic and national factors. This trend has profound consequences. Inequality can result in a weaker economy, higher poverty rates and greater stress for people living below the middle class. It can also lead to social instability, a lack of trust and reduced levels of social cohesion. It can also diminish opportunities for people to thrive in life by restricting their access to health care, education and housing.

Many of the factors that contribute to economic inequality are complex. For example, a person’s ability to move from one income group to another depends on the value of their assets, and asset values can fluctuate dramatically. In the United States, for instance, the value of homes climbed by a huge amount between the 1970s and 2020s. Some of this change can be attributed to inflation, but much of it is due to the booming real estate market.

A median of 39% of adults across the 36 countries surveyed say that some people being born with more opportunities than others contributes to economic inequality a great deal, while another 36% say it contributes a fair amount. This sentiment is strongest in Latin America, where half or more in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia say this is a big contributor to inequality. In addition, adults on the ideological left are more likely to say this than those on the right in nine of the 36 countries surveyed.

Even after high-profile failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, some in the policy community still call for supplanting illiberal regimes using military force. Such arguments typically assert that regime change will achieve security or humanitarian goals more cheaply and quickly than sustained diplomatic pressure and engagement. But a growing scholarly consensus shows that foreign-imposed regime change rarely succeeds and often creates more problems than it solves.

While a more democratic world may improve American security and human rights, the use of armed force to push for these political outcomes undermines nonmilitary tools that are more effective at these goals. It also empowers peer competitors who have incentives to counter US attempts at regime change. The United States should rethink its strategic objectives and seek other ways to promote democracy, security, and human rights around the globe.

A key reason why regime-change operations fail is that citizens observe heterogeneous signals, creating endogenous differences in beliefs about the likelihood of regime change. Leaders attempt to induce higher anti-regime efforts by increasing the reward for a given level of effort but that raises the cost of failure. Leaders therefore struggle to find an optimal reward scheme for each citizen.

The resulting heterogeneity makes it more difficult for outside forces to create a coherent, cohesive revolution with a clear end goal in mind. Instead, they are more likely to create a failed state or civil war and draw the foreign intervener into lengthy nation-building projects. To improve policy outcomes, American officials must shift two common mindsets: First, they must understand that a toppled foreign regime is only the beginning of a long process of building democracy and establishing institutions and norms that provide stability.

Recession fears are on the rise.

Recessions may seem scary, but they don’t always last as long as we think and they usually give us a chance to get our finances in order before things really start to shake up. That’s why it’s important to take the time to consider your options and make sure you’re prepared for whatever comes your way. Having an emergency savings cushion can help you weather any economic storms, so it’s worth beefing up yours before the next recession hits. It’s also a good idea to diversify your investments, so you’re not as exposed to any one particular market.

As the stock market slides and consumer confidence tumbles, Americans’ pessimism is rising. More than half of adults now say they’re pessimistic or afraid about the economy, according to a new CNN/SSRS poll. And the percentage who believe a recession is coming in the next year is near its highest level since the Covid pandemic.

While a recession hasn’t officially been declared (the National Bureau of Economic Research makes that call), many experts have raised their recession probabilities in recent days. For example, Goldman Sachs recently upped its chances of a recession to 45% in the next 12 months and JP Morgan has upped its risk of a global recession to 60%.

While these concerns aren’t necessarily valid, it’s important to understand what a recession actually means and how it could impact your financial life. That’s why we’re working on a new measure of recession fears, which will be updated more frequently and provide real-time insight into how these anxieties are evolving.