Materials used to make gift-wrapping paper are often not accepted for recycling, especially if it’s dyed, laminated or contains non-paper additives like glitter or plastics. Get creative when wrapping presents this year with old fabric, maps, sheet music, magazines, or newspapers. You can even use baking pans or festive reusable tins. What do you get that friend or family member who has everything? Donate to a charity or service organization that they support in their name. 

The events throw a spotlight on the religious strains in places like Nayabans since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the national level in 2014 and in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. Tensions are ratcheting up ahead of the next general election, due to be held by May. The BJP said it was “bizarre” to assume the party would benefit from any religious disharmony, dismissing suggestions that its supporters were largely responsible for the tensions.

Voter suppression is a well-documented fact of life in American politics. The GOP has welded it as a potent weapon to assure its continued domination of American politics. The even more terrifying reality is that voter suppression has the force of law behind it. Kemp in Georgia was the crudest example of that. As secretary of state, he could legally make the call about which votes could and couldn’t be counted. The lawsuits that were filed against his blatant voter suppression were at best stopgap efforts to blunt some of the damage.

Now, almost 50 years later, we can no longer ignore the obvious: that we failed to address many of the issues we faced in the ‘60s and’70s. We have spent an incredible amount of money; developed numerous social, economic, and educational programs; and otherwise tried whatever we thought would bring about major change with members on the lower end of the socioeconomical pyramid, and yet the results show our efforts have been underwhelming. 

Democrats raised concerns about Sessions’s acting replacement, Matthew Whitaker, who now oversees Mueller and once argued Mueller’s probe was going too far. They also questioned whether the removal of the top U.S. law enforcement officer was an attempt to undermine or end the investigation. “Congress must take bipartisan action to protect the integrity of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation,” said Steny Hoyer.

The alliance of rich, emerging and poor economies that sealed the Paris climate deal is falling apart. In 2015, the world’s top two emitters, the US and China, joined with Brazil, some small island countries and the European Union, led by Germany, France and the UK, to land the agreement. But climate change politics have shifted significantly since then, with two more big tilts this week. Brazil elected a staunch and radical anti-environmentalist president, while Germany’s Angela Merkel confirmed her exit plans

Part of running a campaign is also acting the part, and actors can be pretty good at that. Celebrities can have more talent in front of audiences, generally; and they may be more apt to deal with scandals more deftly, in part because the public assumes that scandals are simply part of their lives. Reagan himself was a skilled performer who used a combination of theatrics and performance in radio and television pseudo-events to basically play the part of a president. Yet, these same useful assets may prove to be a double-edged sword because celebrity, inevitably, brings scrutiny.

Both Bolsonaro and Mourão have defended the excesses of Brazil’s military dictatorship, which displaced and killed (intentionally or through diseases) thousands of Indians in the Amazon, amid an effort to build roads and hydroelectric dams in the forest. The armed forces have never recognized any wrongdoing. “If he wins, he will institutionalize genocide,” says Dinamam Tuxá, the national coordinator of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous Peoples, in a phone interview with Climate Home News. 

China is a nation that only an idiot would want to get into a trade war with. Because  China buys everything in  immense bulk and it can easily and quickly — in mere weeks, it seems — replace imported American products with those from a dozen other trade partners: in the UK, the EU, Eastern Europe, South America, and Australia. The painful reality is that America needs China as a bulk buyer of its goods far more than China needs the U.S. as a produce supplier.

In a report released this week, the ‘task force on displacement’ called for better data collection and analysis on climate migration trends, and finance to help those hardest hit. “The UN currently lacks a systemwide lead, coordination mechanism, or strategy on disaster displacement, including related to climate change,” wrote the authors, who mostly represent UN agencies. They called on Secretary General Antonio Guterres to develop a response.