Haisam Hussein

Hundreds of thousands of cases of dengue fever have been reported in Puerto Rico, and yet little attention has been paid to the problem. In 2009 and 2010, the eighty-eight recorded dengue cases in Key West were the serious inducement needed to find solutions.

For nearly thirty years, the Berlin Wall—a ninety-six-mile partition that separated West Berlin from Soviet-controlled Germany surrounding it—was the Cold War’s geopolitical line in the sand. But by 1989, the Soviet Union was weakening, and more than a million East Germans seized this momentum to protest against the state.

Not long ago, Syria’s prospects were looking good—tourism was rising, restrictions on the economy were being relaxed, and a historically icy relationship with the United States was (very) slowly thawing out. But the Arab Spring protests that began in late 2010 triggered a series of events that would reverse that progress and plunge Syria into a devastating civil war.