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Issue 7/ Summer 2024

Every journalist knows the importance of having a timely “news hook” for a story, but the question of geopolitical relevance is often just as important in deciding what gets published. As a “local magazine for the world,” New Lines recognizes that readers’ curiosity about new topics drives their interest in long-form writing. This issue’s cover story explores the legend of the mermaid goddess of Lake Kivu, delving into the socioeconomic and scientific complexities surrounding the lake’s methane reserves. Other highlights include the exploitation of African soccer hopefuls, the impact of the war in Gaza on U.S. elections, the cultural legacy of poets Mahmoud Darwish and Avrom Sutzkever, the evolution of children’s literature in China and the debate over vaccinating wild gorillas in the Congo Basin. Enjoy the issue!

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 The Promise and Threat of Lake Kivu

The methane-filled waters of Lake Kivu, which borders Rwanda and Congo, hold out the promise of energy and profit in an area of deep poverty. But extracting the gas may fuel conflict, and has the potential to cause a natural disaster that would result in massive loss of life.

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The Medical Instrument Behind 135 Years of Women’s Pain

In 1889, French surgeon Samuel Pozzi, inspired by an American Civil War-era bullet extractor, invented an instrument to ease gynecological exams and provide better care for women. Despite causing debilitating pain, it is still used worldwide 135 years later.

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How the War in Gaza Is Shaping the 2024 Elections — And the Future of the Democratic Party

Midwestern states have become a proving ground for the Democratic Party. In cities and smaller towns in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, a growing Palestinian rights movement is pushing Democratic candidates to challenge their party’s position on Israel, and the movement’s successes are inspiring activists elsewhere in the country.

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China’s Picture Book Market Has Exploded, but Is It Fun for Children?

As thousands of children’s books are translated into Mandarin, China’s domestic market for young readers is also blossoming. Yet emphasis on traditional Chinese values such as education — both as an aim and as a vehicle to mold model citizens — is perhaps holding the industry back.

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How America’s Philosopher of Democracy Influenced India’s Leading Caste Reformer

Bhimrao Ambedkar helped write the Indian Constitution, campaigned against caste oppression, and remains a household name for many in the country. His democratic vision combined the pragmatist ideas of the American philosopher John Dewey with his novel Navayana or “new vehicle” form of Buddhism.

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Textbooks of Jihad

Alongside new textbooks, authorities in Sanaa have organized summer camps, in-school festivals and other educational activities that orient students toward the battlefield. As Yemen’s conflict nears its second decade, the Houthis are striving to place the next generation on a war footing and have shown no qualms about sending underage soldiers into combat.

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The Remarkable Overlaps in the Lives of Two Poets: One Chronicled the Nakba, the Other the Holocaust

Mahmoud Darwish and Avrom Sutzkever wrote sophisticated, modernist lyrical and prose poetry about the great 20th-century traumas of their peoples, the Nakba and the Holocaust, which they respectively survived. Their lives and the themes they explored in their poetry overlapped in extraordinary ways.

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Could Vaccinating Gorillas Be Our Best Shot To Stop a Pandemic?

After a wave of Ebola devastated the Congo Basin’s gorilla population in 2002, one American ecologist embarked on a quest to vaccinate the great apes and, he hoped, stop animal-borne diseases from spreading to humans. Could he convince the vaccine skeptics among his colleagues that it would be worth it?

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Are Vienna’s Dancing Horses Worth Saving?

For half a millennium, Vienna’s Spanish Riding School has passed down the secrets of horsemanship from one generation to the next. As the UNESCO-listed stable teeters on the verge of collapse, the question of what heritage is worth saving takes the spotlight.

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The Imagined Intelligence Seducing the Military

A genre of speculative fiction referred to as FICINT, a portmanteau of “fiction” and “intelligence,” is gaining traction in the world of military intelligence. Yet despite its claims to realism, its use of emotion is at the heart of its ability to influence the agenda.

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They Dreamed of Making It Big in Soccer. They Were Trafficked Instead

In West Africa, professional soccer holds out the hope of escape from poverty, unemployment and political instability. And each year, thousands of aspiring players are trafficked, paying money to fraudulent agents to attend tryouts that never existed.

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Why Americans Are Buying Underground Bunkers

As a growing number of people say they’re afraid of civil war and government collapse, business seems to be booming for companies that build underground bunkers, with buyers ranging from Silicon Valley billionaires to middle-class families. And some Americans are already living below the soil today.

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