A truly international publication, AIR MAIL understands that this era’s strange, sometimes silly, often appalling news isn’t all pouring out of Washington, D.C., even though it can sometimes seem that way. The AIR MAIL Diary prefers to look further afield, rounding up the strange, silly, and appalling news that other countries are quite capable of manufacturing for themselves. Drawn from publications scattered across the planet, the Diary should prove the point that, when it comes to glib, secondhand global reporting, we can proudly hold our own.
We’ll be looking far and wide. For instance, AIR MAIL learned that, in Japan, 59-year-old Kazuyoshi Miura (“King Kazu”) became the world’s oldest professional soccer player when he signed with Fukushima United. And that closer to home, in New York City’s purely nominal borough of Staten Island, public talk of secession surfaced as soon as Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor. Sometimes the headlines alone tell you all you need to know (and maybe more): “Police Hunt for Pokémon Raiders Who Stole £10K of Trading Cards in ‘Heartbreaking’ New Year’s Day Burglary” (the Daily Mail), or—stop the presses!—“K-Pop Stars BTS to Reunite with March Album and World Tour After Military Service” (South China Morning Post).
