‘The common friendship behavior that has become strangely fraught’
Julie Beck at The Atlantic
A “boogeyman haunts the realm of friendship advice: the friend who vents too much,” says Julie Beck. Venting has “lately gotten very loud.” It is “complex; it can bring people closer, but it can also be emotionally draining,” but if “people avoid sharing problems with one another, their relationships risk becoming less rich — and less rewarding.” Friends “owe one another, at least, compassion, reciprocity, and the generosity to not assume that a friend’s problems are only burdens.”
‘Global health’s defining test’
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at Al Jazeera
In 2025, the “world experienced a year of both remarkable achievement and profound challenge in global health,” says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization. Science was “tested as never before, underscoring a fundamental truth: International cooperation is not optional.” It is “essential if we are to protect and promote health for everyone, everywhere in 2026 and beyond.” Health measures “demonstrate what multilateralism can deliver when countries choose collaboration over division.” Universal health coverage “remains our shared destination.”
‘On Greenland, Europe’s breaking point with Trump has arrived’
Dan Perry at Newsweek
For “years, Europe has responded to Donald Trump with a mixture of eye-rolling, damage control, and hope that the nightmare would somehow pass,” says Dan Perry. But the “latest rhetoric this week out of Washington, openly entertaining the use of force to seize Greenland, has snapped what remained of the illusion that this is merely bluster.” It “is an insult to Greenlanders themselves and a direct affront to the alliance system that underpinned Western security for generations.”
‘Can Pittsburgh rally to save its newspaper?’
Jim Friedlich at The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced “it will shutter the newspaper,” says Jim Friedlich. The “loss of a once great newspaper in a major American city is itself a civic tragedy.” The “fact that this loss was entirely preventable is even more unfortunate.” It is “no secret that the traditional print newspaper business is in sharp decline,” but to “save, reinvent, or perhaps replace the Post-Gazette, it is instructive to look at recent local news investment in Philadelphia and Baltimore.”
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
