Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: The United States will reimpose sanctions against Iran at midnight on Monday, restoring economic penalties that were lifted under the 2015 nuclear accord and ratcheting up pressure on Tehran while worsening divides with European allies and other world powers. The sanctions are a consequence of President Trump’s decision in May to withdraw from an international deal that sought to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing pressure on the country’s shaky economy. Mr. Trump…

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The Guardian reports: Britain would run out of food on this date next year if it cannot continue to easily import from the EU and elsewhere after Brexit, the National Farmers’ Union has warned. Minette Batters, the NFU president, urged the government to put food security at the top of the political agenda after the prospect of a no-deal Brexit was talked up this week. “The UK farming sector has the potential to be one of the most impacted sectors…

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BBC News reports: China’s film authorities have denied a release to Disney’s new Winnie the Pooh film, Christopher Robin, it’s reported. No reason has been given for the decision, but it’s believed to be part of a nationwide clampdown on references to the beloved children’s character. Chinese authorities have been blocking images of Pooh on social media since last year, after the AA Milne bear became a symbol of political dissent. It’s after the Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been…

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Foreign Policy reports: Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, has quietly been trying to do away with the U.N. relief agency that has provided food and essential services to millions of Palestinian refugees for decades, according to internal emails obtained by Foreign Policy. His initiative is part of a broader push by the Trump administration and its allies in Congress to strip these Palestinians of their refugee status in the region and take their issue off…

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John Gray writes: In the last chapter of his autobiography The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European (1942), Stefan Zweig lamented a lost world of freedom: Before 1914, the earth had belonged to all. People went where they wished and stayed as long as they pleased. There were no permits, no visas, and it always gives me pleasure to astonish the young by telling them that before 1914 I travelled to India and to America without passport and without…

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Michael Weiss writes: In March 1986, Yuri Dubinin arrived in New York to assume his post as the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations. Dubinin’s daughter, Natalia, was already a diplomat serving at the Soviet mission, and she picked her father up at the airport and drove him into a city to which he’d never before been. (He wouldn’t stay long—within weeks of his arrival, Dubinin was reposted as Soviet ambassador to the United States and relocated to Washington, D.C.)…

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