Rescuers have recovered the bodies of seven people killed in a landslide in Norway last week, and they are still looking for survivors, the police said Monday. Three people remained missing after the disaster in the village of Ask, about 30 miles northeast of Oslo, the police said. Officials said the landslide…
Playing the ‘Green Lottery’: Life Inside Colombia’s Emerald Mines
I was half a mile into the mine shaft, and my heart was racing. Hunched underneath the low ceiling and hardly able to see, I was following along by listening to the splashes of the men’s steps in front of me. The water, dripping from above, was up to my ankles. Then…
The Virus Is Still Winning
Want to get The Morning by email? Here’s the sign-up. Good morning. A simple chart shows why the new coronavirus variants are so worrisome. This simple chart shows why the new variants of the coronavirus — first detected in Britain and South Africa — are so worrisome: The chart compares the spread…
A Year of Scandals and Self-Questioning for France’s Top Publishers
PARIS — France’s publishers are usually cloistered in newspapers’ genteel book sections or discussed with near reverence on television literary programs. But for the past 12 months, they have been under the harsh spotlight of muckraking online investigators and of police blotters. The Paris headquarters of the publisher of Proust and Céline…
Pope Francis Chides Those Traveling Abroad to Escape Lockdowns
Pope Francis on Sunday criticized people who traveled abroad during the pandemic “to escape the lockdown,” saying they were ignoring those who were suffering. In his weekly noontime Sunday address, Francis said, “I read in the papers something that quite saddened me: In a country — I don’t remember which — to…
Brian Urquhart, Troubleshooter for the U.N., Dies at 101
In a postwar era rife with revolutions, regional disputes and Cold War conflicts, darkened by fears of an East-West nuclear conflagration, Mr. Urquhart deployed and often led his lightly armed peacekeepers into war zones in the Middle East, Congo, southern Africa, Kashmir, Cyprus and other places. They sometimes failed to defuse explosive…
Tim Severin, Seafarer Who Replicated Explorers’ Journeys, Dies at 80
Tim Severin, a British adventurer who for 40 years meticulously replicated the journeys of real and mythic explorers like St. Brendan the Navigator, Sinbad the Sailor and Marco Polo, died on Dec. 18 at his home in West Cork, Ireland. He was 80. His daughter, Ida Ashley, said the cause was cancer.…
Coast Guard Suspends Search for Missing Boat With 20 Aboard
MIAMI — The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search on Friday for an overdue boat that was headed to Florida from the Bahamas with 20 people aboard, after the authorities said they had exhausted their efforts to find it. The boat, a blue-and-white 29-foot Mako Cuddy Cabin, departed from Bimini, the Bahamas,…
Conjuring Up the World Through the Sense of Taste
BANGKOK — My grandmother in Tokyo kept a pail under her sink. It was filled with what resembled wet sand. But from its pungent depths came what I considered to be the most miraculous of treats — a pickled carrot or daikon or, one of my favorites, a bud of a ginger-like…
The Philippines bars U.S. travelers after Florida becomes the third state to find the new virus variant.
The Philippines expanded its temporary ban on entry for some foreign travelers on Friday to include people coming from the United States, acting after Florida became the third U.S. state to identify an infection with the new, highly contagious variant of the coronavirus that was first identified in Britain. The Florida Department…
What to Know as Troubled Afghan Peace Talks Enter a New Phase
KABUL, Afghanistan — After four decades of grinding combat in Afghanistan, peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban have raised at least a possibility that the long cycle of violence might someday end. But that milestone is a long way off. The most recent round of discussions, which began in…
Happy New Year
Want to get The Morning by email? Here’s the sign-up. Good morning and happy new year. If you made any resolutions for 2021, we have tips on how to keep them. Last night, mostly in muted celebrations, people around the world said goodbye to a difficult year and rang in 2021. We…
Gibraltar Gets Its Own Last-Minute Brexit Deal on Borders
MADRID — The recent Brexit trade deal generated relief in Britain and the European Union, but some issues were left on the negotiating table — including what to do about Gibraltar, the British territory at the southern tip of Spain whose sovereignty has long been disputed by Madrid. On Thursday, the Spanish…
More than 500 vaccine doses were left out to spoil on purpose by a hospital employee.
An employee at a Wisconsin hospital intentionally removed more than 500 doses of coronavirus vaccine from refrigeration last week, rendering them useless, the hospital system said Wednesday night. The employee’s motive is unclear. The hospital, the Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wis., notified the local police department, which is investigating the incident,…
A German Town Warily Considers a Future Without a Deep U.S. Presence
VILSECK, Germany — There is a bar here called “Cheers,” and there are Halloween parties, decorated houses and trick-or-treating in October and turkeys at Thanksgiving. The mayor’s childhood memories include Hershey’s bars, jars of peanut butter and Wrigley’s gum. For seven decades, the rituals and rhythms of American life have interwoven with…
Are Backlinks Still Important for SEO in 2021?
Backlinks are still important for SEO performance because they are the foundation of Google’s original PageRank algorithm. There have been countless independent studies in the SEO industry proving the impact of backlinks on organic search performance. Now here’s the cool part: We’ve gathered all of these industry studies in one spot for…
The Amazon Stats That Every Retailer Should Know
In 1994, Jeff Bezos quit his job and set up Amazon in his garage. A year later, the first item was purchased from Amazon – a book. Within 30 days, it had made $20,000 per week in sales across 45 different countries. 25 years later, and Amazon is a household name. It…
What is a Quality Backlink? 8 Key Indicators to Look For
High-quality backlinks have 8 characteristics including relevance, traffic, authority, link profile quality, editorial standards, outbound link quality, indexation, and anchor text. In this guide, I’ll dive into each of those qualities so you only get the highest quality backlinks imaginable. Let’s dive in. 8 Characteristics of Quality Backlinks 1. Relevance You should…
Norway Landslide Injures 10 and Leaves 15 Missing
A landslide in a village about 30 miles northeast of Oslo injured at least 10 people and left 15 missing on Wednesday, according to the local news media. At least six people in the village of Ask were hospitalized and up to 200 were evacuated, the mayor said, according to Verdens Gang,…
England moves closer to full lockdown with millions more placed under the country’s tightest restrictions.
On the same day that Britain’s regulators gave emergency approval to the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, millions more people in England were told they will be placed under the country’s tightest regulations starting Thursday. Three quarters of the country’s population will live under England’s toughest virus…