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New Delhi, India – On the morning of August 26, the Himalayan landscape above Nepal’s Rasuwa district changed in minutes.

A mass of ice and rock broke loose high in the mountains and sent a violent surge of water, mud and debris down the Lhende Khola River. The torrent travelled through valleys, swept away settlements and infrastructure and eventually reached the Nepal-China border.

What followed was not simply a flood.

It was a chain reaction.

By mid-September, more than 1,400 people had been reported dead and at least 6,000 remained missing in Nepal and across the border in Tibet. Twelve hydropower plants were destroyed, while roads, bridges and homes were buried or washed away.

The scale of the destruction has left scientists and disaster managers confronting a difficult question: How do you warn communities about a disaster whose trigger may occur high above them, in terrain that is difficult to monitor and where there may be only minutes to react?

Basanta Raj Adhikari, director of the Centre for Disaster Studies at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, described the event to Al Jazeera as unprecedented in size, affected area and mechanism. His estimate suggested that the energy involved was greater than that released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb, a comparison intended to illustrate the scale of the physical forces involved rather than suggest that the event was equivalent to a nuclear explosion.

For scientists who study the Himalayas, the disaster demonstrated how quickly an event originating in a remote, high-altitude environment can become a regional catastrophe.

And Nepal is not alone.

The warning problem

A warming climate is altering glaciers, snow cover, permafrost and high-altitude lakes. At the same time, roads, hydropower projects, tourist facilities and settlements have pushed deeper into mountain valleys.

That combination is creating a new risk landscape in which one hazard can trigger another.

An avalanche can block a river. A blocked river can form a temporary lake. A sudden release can become a debris flow. That debris can destroy a road or bridge, block another river and create another flood downstream.

The August disaster in Nepal showed how quickly such a sequence can unfold. It also exposed a weakness in the way early-warning systems are often designed.

Many systems are built around a particular hazard: rainfall, river level or glacial lake outburst flood. But the Himalayas do not always respect those categories.

In July, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, or ICIMOD, warned that a below-normal monsoon should not be interpreted as a safer one.

“The biggest misunderstanding is that less seasonal rainfall means lower flood risk,” said Saswata Sanyal, a disaster risk reduction specialist at ICIMOD.

“A drier monsoon can still be a dangerous monsoon,” he added, warning that seasonal averages cannot capture the cloudbursts capable of producing catastrophic flooding in mountain valleys.

The Nepal disaster went a step further.

The immediate trigger was not simply heavy rainfall.

Scientists have been examining an ice-rock avalanche and other possible processes that temporarily obstructed the river system before releasing a destructive surge. ICIMOD has described the event as an ice avalanche rather than a conventional glacial lake outburst flood, while other scientists have examined the role of local seismic activity and other high-altitude processes.

That distinction matters.

A warning system waiting for rainfall or a rising river may not provide enough time when the real trigger happens several kilometres upstream and above the line of sight of the communities below.

Kashmir’s warning signs

Thousands of kilometres away, scientists studying Kashmir’s Himalayas are seeing another part of the same problem.

A study published in the Journal of Glaciology this year mapped 155 glacial lakes above 2,500 metres (8,200ft) across the Himalayas in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The researchers found that the area of ice-contact proglacial lakes – bodies of water that form directly against the margin of a melting glacier, trapped by moraine ridges, bedrock basins, or ice dams – had increased by 26 percent between 1992 and 2024.

Five lakes were classified as having very high susceptibility to glacial lake outburst floods.

An outburst from those lakes, the researchers found, could threaten several thousand buildings, 15 major bridges, roads and a hydropower project.

More significantly, the study warned that hazards could occur in chains, with an upstream lake outburst potentially triggering secondary events downstream.

For Irfan Rashid, a glaciologist and associate professor at the University of Kashmir who co-authored the study, the implications extend beyond individual lakes.

Rashid recently told Al Jazeera that without action, the melting, thinning, and destabilisation of glaciers, seasonal snow cover, and permafrost along the Hindu Kush-Himalayas system would increase, and water shortages could become a major problem across the Upper Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra basins by the end of the century.

That is why the Nepal disaster resonates in Kashmir.

The landscapes are different, the rivers are different and the individual hazards may differ. But the underlying problem is increasingly similar: Communities living downstream of a rapidly changing high-altitude environment may have little time to respond when something breaks loose above them.

The challenge is particularly acute in places where roads, bridges and hydropower projects occupy narrow valleys.

Once a mountain river begins carrying enormous quantities of rock, ice and mud, infrastructure designed for conventional floods can quickly become irrelevant.

Pakistan has already begun building a warning network

The same concern runs across the western Himalayas and Karakoram ranges.

The Gilgit-Baltistan region in Pakistan-administered Kashmir contains hundreds of glaciers and glacial lakes, while communities and infrastructure sit along valleys exposed to sudden floods and landslides.

Pakistan has responded by expanding early-warning infrastructure.

Under a United Nations-supported programme, early-warning systems, evacuation shelters, disaster-management centres and other protective measures have been established in vulnerable valleys.

But technology alone cannot solve the problem. A sensor can detect a change. Someone still has to receive the message. Someone has to understand what it means. And people downstream have to have a route to safety.

That last part is often the weakest link. A siren is useful only if the people hearing it know where to go. An automatic warning is useful only if it arrives before the flood. A satellite image is useful only if the information can be converted into a decision quickly enough to save lives.

This is why disaster scientists increasingly talk about anticipatory action rather than simply disaster response.

“The era of preparing for a single, predictable hazard is over,” Sanyal said earlier this year. “Anticipatory action and early warning must now be the foundation.”

The infrastructure trap

The Himalayas are also becoming more heavily engineered.

Hydropower is central to Nepal’s economy. Roads are being expanded. Border crossings are growing in importance. Tourism is pushing deeper into remote valleys.

The benefits are obvious. So are the risks.

The August disaster struck an area where hydropower infrastructure was concentrated along the river corridor. At least 900 workers were believed to have been inside tunnels and other facilities in the aftermath, making rescue operations extraordinarily difficult. Two workers were eventually pulled alive from a hydropower tunnel nine days after the disaster.

The question is no longer simply whether infrastructure can withstand a flood. It is whether planners have adequately considered what happens when a flood is carrying an enormous mass of rock and ice, when a river changes course, or when one mountain hazard triggers another.

For decades, engineering risk assessments have often relied on historical records. But history becomes a less reliable guide when the physical conditions producing disasters are changing.

A river that flooded once every several decades may no longer behave according to the same pattern. A glacier that appeared stable from satellite imagery may sit beneath an increasingly unstable slope. A lake that was considered remote may suddenly become a threat to a road, village or power plant hundreds of metres below.

The border problem

There is another complication that no satellite can solve on its own.

Borders.

The Himalayas are divided among countries with different political systems, security concerns and approaches to sharing information. But rivers do not stop at international boundaries. Neither do floods.

The August disaster reached the Nepal-China border and damaged the Gyirong crossing, an important trade and pilgrimage route. The disaster also raised questions about how quickly information about hazards in high mountain areas can move between countries.

This is where regional cooperation becomes more than a diplomatic slogan, experts say. A sensor positioned in one country can provide warning to people in another. A satellite image collected over one mountain range can reveal a developing hazard that threatens a valley downstream. A river gauge can provide critical information before floodwaters reach a settlement.

The technical capability already exists in many cases. The missing piece is often the architecture connecting it.

A 2026 assessment of Himalayan disaster risks has argued for stronger monitoring, early-warning systems and regional coordination because hazards are increasingly interconnected.

The idea is simple: Information about a mountain hazard should not stop at the same line where a political boundary begins.

From Nepal to Sikkim to Kashmir

The August disaster in Nepal isn’t a tragedy belonging to one country, point out experts.

The Kashmir Himalayas study has already identified lakes capable of producing destructive outburst floods and has warned of cascading processes.

Northeast India’s Sikkim provides another example.

After the 2023 South Lhonak glacial lake outburst flood killed dozens and damaged major infrastructure, India expanded monitoring and mitigation efforts.

Today, 40 high-risk glacial lakes have been identified in Sikkim, including 16 placed in the highest-risk category, with authorities working on drainage, flood-retention and other protective measures.

But the lesson from each disaster is broadly the same: Waiting for a disaster to prove the risk is the most expensive form of preparedness.

The Third Pole test

The Himalayas are sometimes called the Third Pole because they contain one of the world’s largest concentrations of snow and ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic.

Major Asian rivers depend on water originating in these mountains. Hundreds of millions of people live downstream.

That makes the changing Himalayas not only an environmental issue but a security, infrastructure and humanitarian one.

The August disaster demonstrated the most frightening version of that future. A mountain can collapse without warning. A river can become a weapon of debris. A hydropower tunnel can become a trap. A border crossing can disappear in minutes. And by the time people downstream understand what is happening, the water may already be there.

It’s a future that a region stretching from northeast India, spanning Tibet, Nepal, Kashmir and Pakistan, can no longer ignore. Yet disaster management remains largely divided by national boundaries. That contradiction is becoming harder to navigate.

The next glacial collapse could begin in Kashmir. It could begin in Pakistan’s high mountains. It could begin in Sikkim, Nepal or Tibet.

Wherever it starts, the same question will follow the mountain downstream: Who knew, how early did they know, and did the warning reach the people in time?

For a region entering an era of increasingly complex mountain hazards, that may be the real measure of whether the Third Pole is prepared.

Folks confuse the medicine with the symptoms when they ask for dollarization or argue against it, as if the magic wand of switching to the dollar would cure the deep debt and the fiscal imbalances of the broken State-led model that crippled Venezuela.

Marcos Planchart wrote on this site last week that “it is certainly not the paper where the bolívar is printed the element that corrupts people or destroys the economy: it is the system behind it.” I agree with that sentence entirely. However, dollarization is not the first decision. There is a sequence that comes before it, and it is the sequence, not the currency, that determines whether any of this holds.

Antonio Ecarri and Steve Hanke want to change the unit of account. Planchart wants to keep it and repair the institutions standing behind it. Both are arguing about the currency. The currency is the second question, and it answers itself once you have answered how to fix the fiscal imbalance. 

Those imbalances have four fixes: a legitimate and credible government, a closed deficit, restored conditions for private investment, and an open and transparent market for trading bolívares and dollars. Or you can dollarize. Notice that the first four require no change in the unit of account at all.

Here is the simplified mechanism: A government running a deficit it cannot finance has the Central Bank issue bolívares to cover it. The new money goes looking for dollars and for hard assets, and the rate moves. Running an official rate alongside the market one does not stop that. It only decides who captures the difference.

Dollarization is a reasonable destination after the fiscal work and a ruinous substitute for it. Do the work and you may not need it, because the inflation it was sold to cure will already be gone. Skip the work and it will cost you more than the bolívar does. Redundant or ruinous. There is no third case.

The three consequences, one at a time

Planchart lists what the case for dollarization claims: eliminating inflation, forcing fiscal discipline, eradicating corruption. Take them in that order.

First: it does eliminate inflation. This is Hanke’s most popular claim, and it is true. Ecuador dollarized in January 2000. Inflation averaged 39% a year through the 1990s and 2.9% from 2003 to 2024. The policy does achieve inflation reduction, and it does so quite fast.

Now notice what that concession costs the other side. Inflation is the entire platform. It is why the argument is popular in Caracas, and why anyone is listening to Ecarri in 2026. The harder thing to see is this: if we stabilize the fiscal accounts and jump-start private investment, inflation can be tamed and the case for dollarization goes with it. You cannot sell a cure for a disease the patient no longer has.

Second, it does not force fiscal discipline. Ecuador ran deficits in twelve of the thirteen years from 2013. The one exception was 2022, by four hundredths of a percentage point. Public debt went from 19% of GDP in 2011 to 64% in 2020, and Ecuador defaulted that year. It is 54% now. Growth averaged 6.4% a year from 2011 to 2014 and 1.4% from 2015 to 2019.

The mechanism is the one Planchart names himself. He warns that dollarization leaves a country “even more vulnerable to external shocks, such as a sudden plunge in oil prices.” That is precisely what happened to Ecuador after 2014. Oil fell, Ecuador could not devalue, and the shock had nowhere to go except the budget, and from the budget into debt and into lost growth. He states the fear and never uses the country it happened to. It is the best evidence in his own case and he leaves it on the table.

The deficit does not disappear when the currency changes. It simply has to be paid in a currency you cannot print.

Dollarization took away the printing machine, not the deficit, so the adjustment fell on debt instead of on prices. Ecuador does not show that dollarization is harmful. It shows that it is not enough. Of its two defaults, 2008 is the weaker example: it fell in a surplus year and was a choice rather than a financing crisis.

Third, regarding corruption, Planchart has already answered it, and I will not repeat a good argument badly. The exchange differential was never an oversight. It was an instrument. Change the currency and the people who built it still hold the pen.

What getting the sequence wrong costs

Planchart says a failed dollarization would force the government into more debt and severe cash shortages. He is right. Here is the size of it.

We ran the model with the same economy twice from the same starting position, $13.4 billion of reserves in 2026, changing one thing. Dollarize now on today’s deficit, alter nothing else, and the state’s dollar position will fall through zero in the third year and reach minus $24 billion by 2034. Dollarize after fiscal consolidation, with private investment recovering, and the same position accumulates to plus $127 billion. Same reserves, same model, one difference.

The deficit does not disappear when the currency changes. It simply has to be paid in a currency you cannot print.

Why 576% inflation sits on a deficit near 6%

Planchart gives the number: inflation reached 576% year on year in July. The mechanism above explains the direction. It does not explain the size, and the size is the interesting part.

The bolívar base has collapsed; measured at the parallel rate, it was around $15 billion in 2011 and 2012. In July 2026, it was $1.7 billion. The base that can be monetised is a ninth of what it was.

In 2013, Gino Bettocchi and I wrote about a State running a consolidated deficit of 15% to 20% of GDP, including PDVSA and FONDEN. On the narrower central government measure that is still published, the deficit has roughly halved since then, from 9.9% in 2012 to 5.8% last year. A far smaller deficit now carries the inflationary force that an enormous one carried then, because there is so little left to dilute. That cuts against both camps. It is not evidence that the bolívar is cursed, and it is not evidence that only the dollar can fix it. It is arithmetic about a very small base.

Where I actually disagree

Planchart wants to keep the bolívar permanently, in part to preserve room for industrial policy. The unit of account does not carry that weight, in either direction.

What breaks or holds a monetary regime is the deficit, private investment, and the institutions behind them. Those three decide the outcome, whether prices are quoted in bolívares or in dollars.

The argument about maintaining the unit of account in bolívares is about the State’s capacity to protect and nurture strategic industries. But industrial policy is paid for by a State with fiscal room, and Venezuela has neither. It becomes possible after stabilization, not instead of it.

Without credible rules, there is no private investment. Without investment, there is no oil and no tax base. Without revenue, there is a deficit. And a deficit breaks any exchange rate regime, whether it is denominated in bolívares or in dollars.

Planchart may well be right. His is a claim about what Venezuela becomes over the medium and long term; mine is about what stops the bleeding now. Our hope is that between the two visions, readers get the order of operations.

His best line is that starting dollarization under chavista rule is like handing the reconstruction of the oil sector to a man who helped destroy the electricity grid. I would make it structural rather than personal, because it is an argument about order.

Stage one is not monetary. It is a legal framework credible enough that private capital comes back. Without credible rules, there is no private investment. Without investment, there is no oil and no tax base. Without revenue, there is a deficit. And a deficit breaks any exchange rate regime, whether it is denominated in bolívares or in dollars. Once those policies are in place, they will open the market and the premium will close on its own. Then, the decision about Venezuela adopting the dollar formally can be taken calmly, from strength, rather than desperately as a rescue.

In 2013 we wrote that the choice was reform or hyperinflation. Maduro chose hyperinflation, and it ran from 2017 to 2021. The 2026 version of that choice is not dollar or bolívar. A currency is imported. A State is built.

“The Kangaroo Peg” was written by Gino Bettocchi and Jesús Bolívar, Second Year Policy Analysis, Harvard Kennedy School, 2013, advised by Ricardo Hausmann. The thirteenth year update, with both figures, the model and its sources, is available here.

You can also track all macroeconomic metrics in the UnoPago monitoring website.

STOCKHOLM: Sweden’s national election results showed a dead heat ​on Sunday, with a partial count by the election authority indicating a one-seat majority for the opposition center-left bloc that could halt the Nordic nation’s drift away from its liberal heritage.

The bloc, headed by the Social Democrats’ party leader Magdalena Andersson, was expected to win 175 seats in the 349-seat parliament, the Riksdag, based on votes from 4,853 of Sweden’s 6,312 election districts, the election authority said.

The right-wing governing bloc of Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson was seen winning 174 seats, with ballot-counting continuing.

The election, while unlikely to change the course of Sweden’s pro-Western and pro-Ukraine stance, will decide whether Kristersson’s push toward a hard-right clampdown on migration continues.

Given the closeness of the race, ‌the winner may ‌not be known for several days, after all overseas ballots have been ​counted.

In ‌a ⁠pre-election pledge, ​Kristersson ⁠broke a longstanding taboo and said he would bring into government the Sweden Democrats, a far-right party with roots in the Nazi fringe, as he aims to create a majority-right coalition.

Many voters on the right say a win would amount to an endorsement of policies that have helped to curb gang violence and cut immigration dramatically.

But some Swedes have expressed wariness, saying Kristersson’s invitation to the far right was a step too far.

“I think it will be a long night,” said Maria Malmer Stenergard, minister for foreign affairs and a member of Kristersson’s Moderate Party. “Maybe we won’t even ⁠have the results until Wednesday when the votes that have been cast abroad arrive.”

Kristersson, who ‌has trailed in opinion polls throughout his four years in office, ‌had been catching up in the final weeks of campaigning, with Andersson ​and her Social Democrats losing ground.

Critics say the Kristersson ‌government’s immigration policies, whose incentives and penalties press migrants either to conform more closely to Swedish cultural norms ‌or leave the country, are undermining civil liberties.

Electoral success for the Sweden Democrats would be welcomed by Europe’s ascendant far-right parties, which were bolstered by the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany’s win in a German state election last week.

The far right hopes for gains in upcoming elections across Europe, with the National Rally’s bid for the French presidency next year potentially its biggest prize.

‘DOESN’T ‌LOOK LIKE SWEDEN’

While voting on Saturday in Rinkeby, near Stockholm, the Sweden Democrats’ longstanding leader Jimmie Akesson said the suburb, home to one of the country’s biggest ⁠Swedish-Somali populations, “doesn’t look like Sweden.”

Sweden ⁠was long one of Europe’s most welcoming countries for immigrants until Kristersson came to power four years ago. His government abolished permanent residency for refugees, tightened welfare rules and stepped up expulsions of those without a right to stay.

The Sweden Democrats acknowledge that their party was founded in part by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the 1980s, but say they have eliminated such extremists from their ranks and have apologized for their past.

Cheers broke out at the Sweden Democrats’ election party after an updated projection from Swedish broadcaster SVT showed a much narrower gap than an initial exit poll, which had put the center-left opposition ahead with 51 percent of the vote.

“You cannot imagine how nervous I am right now. It feels like my life’s work is hanging in the balance,” said Ludvig Aspling, a member of parliament and immigration spokesperson for the Sweden Democrats. “It is going to be super tight. ​We still have a chance,” he said.

“It felt like a movie” — that’s what we all said in the days and weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, when a Michael Bay action film slammed uncomfortably into real life. But with the perspective of 25 years, what’s lingered for the most part aren’t the most literal depictions of the day, but oblique dramas that capture something more subtle: the free-floating anxiety of a nightmare. In our list, you’ll find titles that confront Sept. 11 directly, but others that bring to mind a deeper, broader canon of trauma.

‘Donnie Darko’ (2001)

Jake Gyllenhaal in the 2001 movie “Donnie Darko.”

(NewMarket Films)

Going to the movies in the fall of 2001 was a solace and escape for many New Yorkers, though the films themselves often had an eerie, unplanned timeliness that made them resonate in an unshakable way. You could ache for the cozy city of the past in “The Royal Tenenbaums” or grapple with the schism of everything suddenly feeling different in “Mulholland Drive.” Or you could envelop yourself in Richard Kelly’s moody “Donnie Darko,” a teen drama touched by metaphysical doominess in which plane engines fall from the sky and death wears a rabbit costume. The movie has since become an unexplainable piece of comfort for a spooked generation. In its weather, its soundtrack and the haunted stare of Jake Gyllenhaal, it evokes the weeks after 9/11, even if it anticipated them. — Joshua Rothkopf

‘25th Hour’ (2002)

Edward Norton in the movie “25th Hour.”

(David Lee / Touchstone Pictures)

Only months after the attacks, Spike Lee took on 9/11 with a boldness that only 15 years of provocative filmmaking — and a lifetime of loving New York — could sharpen into an artist. This interpersonal drama, about the fallout of a drug dealer (Edward Norton) going to prison, was deep in development when real-life events altered its trajectory. Lee insisted on including the American flags dotting lawns, the general sense of unease and, in a somber touch, a credits sequence featuring the Tribute in Light. Overwhelmingly, one scene takes place in a Tribeca hi-rise with a view of ground zero, and even though the conversation itself concerns a friend in trouble, it quickly shifts onto metaphorical grounds of guilt, responsibility and rage. There still may not be a better 9/11 film than this one. — J. Rothkopf

‘Munich’ (2005)

A scene from the movie “Munich.”

(Karen Ballard / Universal Pictures)

On the surface, Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” released earlier in 2005, may seem like his more obviously 9/11-coded film (“Is it the terrorists?” Dakota Fanning’s character asks). But “Munich,” which followed six months later, goes straight to the questions of terrorism and endless cycles of retaliation that hung over the period. Eric Bana plays Avner, a Mossad operative sent to hunt down the Palestinians whom Israel holds responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. As the revenge killings mount, the mission begins to eat away at him — and Avner’s belief in closure is shaken. Spielberg makes the contemporary connections hard to ignore. In a final scene, set in mid-’70s New York, after Avner and his handler Ephraim, played by Geoffrey Rush, argue over what they have done, the camera pans across the Manhattan skyline southward, toward the Twin Towers, which Spielberg had digitally added to the shot. — Josh Rottenberg

‘United 93’ (2006)

A scene from the movie “United 93.”

(Jonathan Olley / Universal Pictures)

Five years after 9/11, it still wasn’t clear whether audiences were ready for a Hollywood movie that directly re-created the attacks. Director Paul Greengrass, then most recently of “The Bourne Supremacy,” took on the hijacked flight whose passengers fought back before it crashed in Pennsylvania. He used a largely unknown cast and shot with an almost documentary immediacy, cutting between the plane and air-traffic controllers trying to make sense of what was happening. There’s no movie star to take charge, and Greengrass doesn’t inflate the passengers into larger-than-life heroes. We simply watch as they piece together the situation from phone calls and scraps of information and realize what they have to do. We know from the beginning that none of them will survive. Watching them slowly come to that realization is what makes “United 93” so devastating. — J. Rottenberg

‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)

Christian Bale in the movie “The Dark Knight.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

It was probably inevitable that the anxieties of the post-9/11 era would find their way into a Batman movie. In “The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan fills Gotham with bombings, acts of mass surveillance and questions about how far is too far. Heath Ledger’s Joker is an enemy who doesn’t play by the rules, attacking the city with no clear political goal beyond creating panic and chaos. Christian Bale’s Batman, meanwhile, builds a Patriot Act-like system that turns every cellphone in Gotham into a tracking device and uses increasingly brutal methods to stop him. Nolan folds all of that into a hugely entertaining superhero movie without turning it into a lecture. — J. Rottenberg

‘Man on Wire’ (2008)

Philippe Petit, as seen in the documentary “Man on Wire.”

(Jean-Louis Blondeau / Polaris)

By the time James Marsh’s Oscar-winning documentary arrived in 2008, the Twin Towers had been gone for seven years. The film recounts French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s astonishing 1974 stunt, in which he and a small band of co-conspirators secretly rigged a cable between the towers, allowing Petit to walk high above lower Manhattan. The movie never needs to mention 9/11 to feel devastating. We already know what became of those buildings. Watching Petit step onto the wire lets us see them differently, not as the site of catastrophe but as the setting for something beautiful and absurdly daring. A ghostly montage of the Twin Towers being constructed, set to composer Michael Nyman’s “Fish Beach,” brought New Yorkers to tears. For me, that feeling is also personal. I was living in New York on 9/11 and had been at an outdoor concert in the plaza beneath the towers just weeks before the attacks, so there was something especially moving about seeing them again as part of the city’s everyday life. — J. Rottenberg

‘The Hurt Locker’ (2009)

Anthony Mackie, left, and Jeremy Renner in the movie “The Hurt Locker.”

(Jonathan Olley / Summit Entertainment)

Has there ever been a better cinematic metaphor for the War on Terror than Jeremy Renner in a bomb suit, kneeling over a device in a Baghdad street while everyone around him scans the rooftops for danger? Kathryn Bigelow’s film narrows the Iraq War down to the nerve-shredding work of an explosives-disposal unit, with Renner’s Staff Sgt. William James almost eerily comfortable in situations that terrify everyone around him. The suspense often comes down to the simplest question: Is this thing going to blow up? Bigelow, the action expert behind “Point Break” and “Strange Days,” mostly leaves the larger politics offscreen and stays with the men doing the dangerous work, their detachment a survival tactic. Though initially little-seen, “The Hurt Locker” pulled off its own improbable feat, becoming, at the time, the lowest-grossing movie to ever win Oscar’s best picture — while Bigelow became the first woman ever to win best director. — J. Rottenberg

‘Margaret’ (2011)

Anna Paquin and Matt Damon in the movie “Margaret.”

(Myles Aronowitz / 20th Century Fox)

Kenneth Lonergan shot this seething, richly authentic New York City drama in 2005, when the rawness of post-9/11 NYC was already a part of everyday life. But the trauma feels ingrained in every frame, and there are shots of wary street life — an occasional flinch or look upward — that New Yorkers could watch and think: Yes, that’s what it felt like. The plot itself concerns a teenage girl, Lisa (Anna Paquin, never better), whose hyperdramatic tendencies are both recognizable and lovable. She is involved in a bus accident that results in a fatality and, with the crusading passion that so many people felt after 9/11, decides to get involved as a witness and truth-teller. The need to fix things — amid so much that was unfixable — is a marker of all the movies on this list. — J. Rothkopf

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2012)

Jessica Chastain, center, in the movie “Zero Dark Thirty.”

(Jonathan Olley / Columbia Pictures)

Perhaps the most explicit film on our list, Kathryn Bigelow’s daring military procedural about the 2011 midnight raid that took out Osama bin Laden was a political hot potato in its moment. Now with distance, it impresses as a skilled piece of political moviemaking, one that captures the era’s sense of moral compromise and queasy vengeance. It contains scenes of torture and goes deeply into the CIA’s planning and execution of the operation — choices that remain provocative. But the movie’s most lingering piece of drama is a silent shot of one woman crying in a cargo plane: a high-level analyst played by Jessica Chastain, who has accomplished the unthinkable but doesn’t feel relief. The fight will not end. Only a filmmaker who had just won Oscars and made history would have been granted the artistic freedom to make this movie, arguably Bigelow’s finest. — J. Rothkopf

MS NOW wants to offer news viewers a break when they feel overwhelmed.

The Versant-owned progressive-leaning news outlet announced Tuesday that it has entered a partnership with Calm, the San Francisco company that develops apps that help with sleep and relaxation.

Calm will be a part of MS NOW’s new direct-to-consumer product that launches Wednesday.

The digital platform, called MS NOW Membership, will make the cable channel available without a pay TV subscription for the first time, along with other offerings for those who sign up to pay $7.99 a month.

Among those features will be meditation exercises created by Calm to help users process the day’s events.

“They are designed not as an invitation to tune out, but as a way to reset, regain perspective, and return to the news with renewed focus and intention,” according to a staff memo from Marcus Mabry, senior vice president for content strategy at MS NOW.

MS NOW has also enlisted a group of mental health experts who will front programs only available on the MS NOW Membership platform, including former ABC News correspondent and “Nightline” co-anchor Dan Harris. Harris is the author of “10% Happier,” and host of the podcast of the same name. He will host two weekly streaming programs to help viewers absorb the news while managing their anxiety about it.

Harris had a panic attack while delivering a newscast on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in 2004. The experience led him to become a wellness guru. Therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab, pediatric psychologist Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart, and Dr. Joel Bervell, a physician, will also have regular programs on the site, along with MS NOW breaking news anchor Richard Lui.

The Calm partnership is part of MS NOW’s overall plan to have MS NOW Membership offer more than just streaming programming. The channel’s executives are touting the venture as a gathering place for like-minded individuals who are engaged in politics.

MS NOW Membership is also giving subscribers a chance to join live discussions with the network’s anchors and reporters. There will be a midday online forumwhere they can ask questions of Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Jen Psaki, Stephanie Ruhle and other on-air talent. MS NOW correspondents will take questions in the evenings.

“We have always understood that MS NOW audiences want more than just headlines,” said MS NOW President Rebecca Kutler in a statement. “They have follow-up questions. They want to understand not only what’s happening, but why it matters. These daily conversations are designed to deepen that relationship and make our journalism even more accessible.”

The initiatives come after research by MS NOW, which broke off from NBCUniversal last year. MS NOW is now part of Versant, a new company made up of former NBCUniversal cable channels that were spun off by former owner Comcast.

Kutler has said the company is committed to providing more experiences for its audience of “super fans.” On average, MS NOW viewers watch the channel nine hours per week, second only to Fox News.

Only Connect viewers were left ‘screaming’ at their televisions over the ‘obvious’ answer on Monday’s show

Only Connect viewers were all quick to say the same thing after the latest episode.

On Monday’s show, hosted by Victoria Coren Mitchell, viewers were introduced to the two teams, comprising of Culture Club and Ad Astra. It comes as BBC viewers have been left delighted over quiz Mondays with Only Connect followed by University Challenge.

Making up Culture Club were Charlie Brookfield, a consultant microbiologist, Viki Owen, a clinical scientist, and their captain, Hugh Adler, a consultant microbiologist.

Meanwhile, making up Ad Astra were David Howes, a retired RAF officer, Paul McMillan, an astrophysics lecturer, and their captain, Louise McMillan, a research development officer.

During the Connecting Wall challenge, Ad Astra were left stumped by one of the connections. The trio had difficulty with finding the final word in a group of anagrams for different types of starches and carbohydrates.

They were able to successfully find – top oat – potato, tapas – pasta, and eric – rice. Yet they struggled to find the final word to complete the connection, asking in frustration: “What are we missing?”

However, viewers at home were left ‘screaming’ at their televisions over the correct final word, which was beard – bread.

Taking to Twitter, now X, one person said: “I AM SCREAMING BREAD #onlyconnect” while a different account put: “#OnlyConnect Shouting BEARD IS BREAD!! over and over at my TV.”

Another viewer wrote: “Shouting BREAD repeatedly at the TV. #onlyconnect” while a different show watcher commented: “Only #onlyconnect has me shouting “Bread” at the TV.”

Elsewhere, a different fan put: “BREAD #ONLYCONNECT”, another viewer joked: “Shouting Bread at the screen like a lunatic ffs #onlyconnect” while a different viewer added: “Bread! F**king Bread #OnlyConnect.”

Meanwhile, another show watcher joked: “I don’t think I’ve ever said bread and beard so many times in succession in my life #onlyconnect” while a different viewer added: “How many people were shouting BREAD?? #onlyconnect.”