The experience of visiting Antarctica is “unique and not replicable anywhere else on the planet,” said Claire Christian, of the environmental group Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, to The Associated Press. It makes a “huge impression on people.” But the deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship has highlighted the perils of tourism in Antarctica. 

Three decades ago, only 8,000 people a year set foot on the icy continent. Last year, that rose to 80,000, with another 36,000 seeing it from ships docked in bays. This “unchecked tourism growth” risks “undermining the very environment that draws visitors,” said two academics from the University of Tasmania at The Conversation.

Irreversible melting
When the first tourists set foot on Antarctica in January 1966, their mission was to “inspire people to become stewards for the planet, by exposing them to one of its most awe-inspiring places,” said The Independent. But some think the trip, with 57 guests, was a “mistake.”

Now, tourism to the “bottom of the world is soaring,” partly driven by fears that the frozen landscapes may be “irreversibly melting away because of climate change,” said the AP. Between 2002 and 2020, nearly 165 billion tons of ice disappeared each year, according to NASA.

Visitor numbers are “still small” but “growing so fast that scientists and environmentalists are sounding alarms.” The number could triple or quadruple by 2033, according to estimates by the University of Tasmania academics.

‘Loved to death’
Experts warn that more visitors will increase the risk of contamination and damage to the continent. Tourists threaten ecosystems by compacting soils, squashing fragile vegetation and introducing non-native microbes and plant species. And they can also disturb breeding colonies of birds and seals.

Visitors are currently advised to avoid touching the ground with anything but their feet. Some crews and passengers use vacuums, disinfectants and brushes to keep shoes and equipment free of bugs, seeds and microbe-carrying dirt.

The answer to Antarctica avoiding being “loved to death” may “lie in economics,” said the AP. Some suggest a rule requiring visitors to pay a tourism tax or a “cap-and-trade” system to limit the number of visitor permits for a fixed period.

Restless and armed with social media, unauthorized groups of teenagers across the country have been gathering for so-called teen takeovers. These loud parties can devolve into violence, exasperating community leaders and the police. And while adults worry about how to keep the chaos at bay, teens say the simple solution is to give them more to occupy their time.

What are teen takeovers?
In major cities, large gatherings of teens have “popped up in downtowns, parks and leafy neighborhoods,” said The New York Times. These teen takeovers, typically organized on social media and through word of mouth, can be “noisy, boisterous and, at times, violent.”

Their impact is often “amplified on television,” especially in “conservative media outfits like Fox News,” said the Times. Some of the panic over teen takeovers echoes “worries over ‘wilding’ in the late 1980s and ‘superpredators’ in the 1990s.” And there’s a lot of “dog whistling” about these being “Black kids who are gathering together in these large groups,” said Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor studying adolescent development, to the Times.

Many youth are going to takeovers because they “want a space to meet other people their age and have a good time on the weekends,” said The Washington Post. The takeovers “satisfy a craving for connection in real life, not through screens.”

How are some states responding?
The popularity of impromptu teen takeovers has “brought back a fierce debate over curfews in Detroit, Chicago and elsewhere,” said the Times. In Detroit, Mayor Mary Sheffield invited the organizers of two teen takeovers to her office. Together, they “hashed out ideas like late-night basketball at city recreational centers, new public space developments, and a new youth advisory board,” said Sheffield to the Times. 

In the nation’s capital, the D.C. Council recently voted 8 to 5 to extend the police chief’s power to declare special 8 p.m. youth curfew zones through 2028 while “adding guardrails to how police can enforce the measure,” said the Post. Mayor Muriel Bowser promised more youth programming, “responding to calls from lawmakers and community members who say teens don’t have enough to do at night.”

Supporters of Thailand’s former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra wait ahead of his expected release at Klong Prem Central Prison in Bangkok. Shinawatra was set to be released early from prison on parole following a corruption-related charge, raising the prospect of a return to the political spotlight.
Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty Images

In 2008, the author and cooking teacher Raghavan Iyer published his magnum opus, “660 Curries.” To “us Indians, a curry is a sauce-based dish,” he said, meaning “curry” as employed in Western instances like all-purpose “curry powder” is a term so general as to lose all significance. Here, curry is both a saucy dish across the subcontinent and a hyper-regional way of preparing said dishes.

Name your cooking weapon
Pick a base, and you are nearly guaranteed at least one recipe for it in this book. And more often, you will be bombarded with an array of options.

Lesser-known regional specialties are everywhere. Toovar dal (split yellow pigeon peas) is softened in a bath of unripe green mango, green bell pepper and coconut milk in a dish from the southwestern state of Kerala. Stressing the influence of the Portuguese colonizers, chorizo cooks with red kidney beans and black-eyed peas in a spunky chile-vinegar tomato sauce in a Goan adaptation of Brazilian feijoada. Here and in the book’s other chapters on vegetables, seafood, poultry and eggs, meat, and paneer, curry is no catch-all. It slips, shifts and adapts.

To the curry-sphere and beyond
Iyer cheated a touch with the book’s title because some chapters exist outside the sauce world. The final chapter, Curry Cohorts, dabbles in a touch of everything: rice preparations, including a Maharashtrian-style fried rice with peanuts and curry leaves; all manner of breads, such as poori, roti and naan; and even a mango cheesecake and saffron-licked green tea. 

“660 Curries” is an imposing endeavor. And, oh, how the book’s recipes work.