2019
January
22
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

January 22, 2019
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Laurent Belsie
Senior Economics Writer

There’s something uniting about a movie theater. The lights go down, the screen flickers and comes alive, and for two hours we share, with complete strangers, a story that is usually far clearer than the world’s troubles that we have let fade temporarily into the background.

The ambiguity we find onscreen can be beautiful and alluring; not so the troubling questions swirling around those Catholic school boys and whether they provoked a run-in with a Native American elder. In a movie, an injustice has meaning; on a football field, a key blown call just seems grossly unfair and irreparable.

Today’s announcement of the film nominees for the 91st Academy Awards is another chance to come together. Sure, we’ll debate whether “Roma” or “Black Panther” is the better movie and if Glenn Close or Lady Gaga deserves best actress. But these friendly arguments, like the movies themselves, are something we share.

It’s disconcerting that the ceremony probably will have no host after comedian Kevin Hart pulled out because of old antigay tweets. (How old do one’s wrong comments have to be before society forgives them? Is there no host who can lead us through Hollywood’s big night?) But it’s not the first time. In 1969, when a deeply divided America was beginning to see student riots and to reexamine the Vietnam War, the 41st Academy Awards also had no host. Instead, Hollywood kicked off the event with Gregory Peck and a host of white and black A-listers: a reminder of our shared cultural heritage and how we still cheer our heroes on the silver screen.

Now to our five stories for today, including a look at Russia contemplating government after Putin and a nonprofit that gives custom-fit clothing to men in need.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Maxim Shipenkov/Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin waves as he leaves the Temple of St. Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on Jan. 17.
Thomas Mukoya/Reuters
Kenyan police arrived at the scene of an attack at the Dusit hotel compound in Nairobi, Kenya, Jan. 16. The attack, claimed by Somali-based terror group Al Shabab, has again tested relations between Kenyans and Somalis living in Kenya.

Points of Progress

What's going right
NASA/AP
This combination of images made available by NASA shows areas of low ozone above Antarctica on September 2000, left, and September 2018. The purple and blue colors indicate where there is the least ozone, and the yellows and reds show where there is more ozone. A United Nations report released on Monday, Nov. 5, 2018 says Earth’s protective ozone layer is finally healing after aerosol sprays and coolants ate away at it.

Difference-maker

Ann Hermes/Staff
Kenneth Wood (r.) searches for a suit at the nonprofit Sharp Dressed Man with the help of volunteer Jimmy Carmichael.

The Monitor's View

AP
Soldiers guard the site where a gasoline pipeline exploded on Jan. 18 in the village of Tlahuelilpan, Mexico.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Owen Humphreys/PA/AP
A snow-covered farmhouse in Teesdale, in northeast England, shows the effects of a band of wintry weather that brought snow and a risk of ice to large parts of the country.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Join us tomorrow when we look at the growing strength of the internet in Africa and how it also represents a growing threat to governments' grip on power in places like Zimbabwe.

More issues

2019
January
22
Tuesday
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