The privately-run German postal service has more logistics business than any other single enterprise. Now it is taking its stab at competing in the Internet age – and the news business.
Month: July 2011
Concluding that the “hardware” of brain activity when we sleep is basically the same as when we don’t, Italian researchers have been able to measure brain activity of people who have remembered their dreams after waking up.
While a housing crisis grips the rest of Israel, the 22,000 inhabitants of this East Jerusalem settlement enjoy affordable rents. The political price for the controversial project is not so easy to calculate.
A R A B I C A ارابيكا A NEW ARMY*Syrian Colonel Riyadh al-Aasad announced in a video posted on YouTube the formation of the “Free Syrian Army.” Sitting with a uniform brandished with two stars on each epaulet, al-Aasad read a statement while surrounded by six uniformed soldiers. “The army’s job is to protect […]
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Yogic Flyers On A Mission In Switzerland
The Swiss federal government is developing the criteria for certification of practitioners of alternative medicine. To do so, they’ve mandated an association with a board member who is a yogic flyer.
The American fast food chain’s latest attempt to adapt to local tastes may make global bread connoisseurs shudder. In September, it will add French bread rolls to its breakfast menu. And by next year…a baguette sandwich.
Venice is falling apart at the seams – quite literally in some of its best-known places. Critics say unregulated tourism is destroying Italy’s beautiful and fragile lagoon city.
A joint project by NATO and the Karzai government has so far convinced nearly 2,000 Taliban to lay down their arms. But in Afghanistan’s Laghman province, some of those “converts” say they’re already considering going back.
Graffitist “OZ”, who’s been tagging Hamburg buildings for two decades, was sentenced again Friday to 14 months for continuing to deface property. An underground hero to some, criminal vandal to others, the spray painter insists that not even jail
A R A B I C A ارابيكا PALESTINIAN FEUD One of the most powerful men in the Palestinian Authority, Mohammed Dahlan, is under investigation on murder and corruption charges. Palestinian security forces raided Dahlan’s home near Ramallah on Thursday, seizing 16 weapons and 12 vehicles, and detaining 12 “illegal” armed men, Al Jazeera reported. […]
In recent years, authorities in Guatemala have tried to crack down on illegal child adoptions by foreigners. Corruption, however, is preventing the impoverished Central American country from eradicating the blight of child trafficking.
A pair of city councilors is urging Zurich to cut its decades-old ties with FIFA, soccer’s worldwide governing association. Not only do they say scandals have made FIFA bad for the city’s image, it’s also a waste of money.
Analysis: After the deadly Norway attacks carried out in the name of fanatical conservative ideology, it is time for Northern Europe to take stock of its increasingly extreme views on the political right: from rabid defense of Danish cartoons to the rise
The Russian President singles out need for “absolutely fair” parliamentary elections amid a regional vote-rigging scandal, and questions about whether he himself will run for reelection.
Op-Ed: By now, a resolution to Turkey’s most intractable internal conflict must include the PKK, which has both widespread popular support and blood on its hands.
Even before Norway’s Anders Behring Breivik singled out multiculturalism as an existential threat to the West, both political leaders and ordinary citizens were taking up the cause. To avoid more violence, it is worth understanding just what we a
A R A B I C A ارابيكا SNUBBED?“Trusted sources’ tell the Kuwaiti daily “The Gazette” that Jordan’s King Abdullah recently refused to meet with an envoy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The report comes the day after the King met in Amman with the visiting editors-in-chief of Kuwait newspapers. Jordan enjoys a reputation […]
Authorities in Bahrain have lifted the state of emergency first put in place in April, when police began cracking down hard on the country’s Arab Spring-inspired protest movement. Tensions, however, remain palpable as talks that were supposed to ease the
Criticism is quickly building after last weekend’s crash killed 35 on a high-speed rail line that had been touted by the government.
Israelis have traditionally considered Richard Wagner the “composer of the Holocaust soundtrack.” This week, the Jewish state’s top Chamber Orchestra faced the taboo head on, performing a Wagner piece for the first time in his native Ger
A handful of elementary schools in northern Italy have taken to teaching children about bird hunting. Environmentalists are crying foul and asking the national government to ban school courses that promote killing wildlife.
A R A B I C A ارابيكا DUMA The Syria Revolution Facebook group continues to post clips from protests around the country. The dates are impossible to verify, but here, the person filming a small nighttime march in the Damascus suburb of Duma makes a point of shouting the date as July 25th over […]
Greenpeace disputes the Russian government’s forest fire statistics in the region around Moscow. The controversy is especially charged following last summer’s blazes that decimated agriculture and killed hundreds when huge plumes of smoke blew into the ca
Street children in Egypt are easy targets for both criminals and police. Neglected and abused, they are still waiting for the promises of the revolution to trickle their way.
The top German luxury car brands are taking their longstanding showdown to Chinese showrooms. Mercedes, the best-known brand, has found itself playing catch-up behind BMW and Audi.
In recent years, European intelligence services have seen radical Islam as the region’s top terrorist threat. After the emergence of Norway’s Anders Behring Breivik, the threat of right-wing extremists is set to take on a new urgency across the continent.
Op-Ed: In view of the global consequences of even a temporary U.S. default, American politicians are being astonishingly irresponsible. That they have lectured Europe on economics is laughable.
In a second phase of their “indignant” protests, Spanish demonstrators call for an end to the “dictatorship of the financial markets” and let it be known the movement is here to stay.
The London-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) is concerned that the Pademrix swine flu vaccine may increase the risk of narcolepsy among children and teens.
A R A B I C A ارابيكا THUG BACKLASH*Thugs stormed the Helwan metro station in an attempt to rob the cashier but were thwarted by citizens, Egyptian news site Musrawi.com reported. The word “thug” has a particular meaning in Arabic. In Egypt, the word is “bultigiya.” In Syrian, they are called “shabiha.” Thugs in […]
Other disturbing clues to Norway’s suspected right-wing killer are still being unearthed from the 1,500-page document he posted on the Internet shortly before the attacks. He had plans to mark the killings with both a “martyr’s mass&
Norwegians are struggling to come to terms with Friday’s horrific massacre. A memorial service Sunday in the Oslo Cathedral drew tens of thousands of mourners. On the streets of the capital, passersby question the possible long-term effects of the tragedy
As China’s economy opens up, wealth is accumulating in the hands of a new generation of “very rich.” For the new owner class, money means more power and influence – but it can also breed resentment.
As the 10th anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks in the United States approaches, prominent Swiss politicians, intellectuals and media figures have created an Internet site to demand a new investigation into the events of 9/11.
Spurred by soaring unemployment at home and Berlin’s active recruitment of skilled workers, young educated Spaniards are heading for Germany like southern Europeans last century.
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Food Design: A New Eating Aesthetic
Design is not just furniture and objects of art, but also web pages, infrastructure, our bodies, and, now, even food.
The new President vows reconciliation, yet some villages in western Ivory Coast are still ghost towns as residents try to recover from terrible acts of violence.
Our correspondent dissects the famous lack of overt politeness in Russian society. But things may be getting a bit more pleasant, thank you very much.
Analysis: China’s approach to rare earth mining is putting it at odds with the WTO. China’s Economic Observer outlines where China’s gone wrong, and what it needs to do to set the industry straight.
A period of relative calm on the security front has given way to rising frustrations among about long-ignored economic problems. The result has been a series of online – and on the streets – protests.