A quick tour of the week’s news (and otherwise) from an old blood sport in Spain to a rising island in Pakistan and 15 hands that went up in New York City. And more…
Month: September 2013
NEW YORK — At long last, the members of the United Nations Security Council have reached an agreement on a Syria resolution. The West has agreed to give up on including language that Russia had furiously opposed — that is, to automatically sanction the use of force against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he fails […]
KURDS LAUNCH ISIS OFFENSIVEKurdish Peshmerga fighters are attacking ISIS on three fronts in northern Iraq and are gaining territory on the border with Syria, AFP quotes senior Kurdish officers as saying. Meanwhile, Turkey has sent 35 armored vehicles, including a dozen tanks, to the border with Syria, where fights around the Syrian Kurdish town of […]
BOGOTA — With the expansion of Chiribiquete National Natural Park, Colombia’s National System of Protected Areas has gone a long way to preserve an additional 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of Amazonian jungle. The importance of this new area is not difficult to measure. In those 27,800 square kilometers of jungle located between Guaviare […]
PARIS — As French lawmakers consider new legislation that would make it a crime to pay for sex, it’s becoming clear that we tend to know very little about the clientele of prostitutes. Based on the few reports that have been published on the subject, between 12% and 18% of men (and less than 1% […]
A week, it turns out, can be a long time in Iranian politics too. Cautious optimism about new reformist President Hassan Rouhani turned to genuine hope for a whole new era in Iran’s global diplomacy after a series of interventions last week in and around the UN General Assembly that culminated with Friday’s historic telephone […]
– Commentary- MOSCOW — Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of defense is many things, but lazy isn’t one of them. Dimitry Rogozin has been jumping from city to city — holding conferences about the construction of new warships and delivering grandiose critiques of the leaders of the Russian space program. Everywhere he goes, he […]
ISIS CLOSING ON BAGHDADISIS fighters are close to entering the Iraqi capital of Baghdad despite U.S. airstrikes in the area, with the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East saying that they are “less than two kilometers away,” The Independent reports. The newspaper also notes that ISIS and the al-Nusra front are working […]
-Op-Ed- Last week finally saw the epilogue of the eventful Bo Xilai affair. The former high-ranking official of the single-party state, both a member of the Chinese Community Party (CCP) Politburo and the most powerful figure of the Chongqing municipality, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in the Shandong province. But this legal […]
Over the past decade, the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa has become one of the main points of European entry for illegal immigrants. Even though the 90-mile open sea journey from Tunisia has already killed thousands, a new wave of refugees from Syria are following the same route. LAMPEDUSA — Two Syrian mothers with young […]
BERLIN — Angela Merkel’s triumph in the German elections has a paradoxical flipside, as her unprecedented political strength may wind up undermining even her own interests. The Chancellor is reminiscent of an introverted child prodigy who is streets ahead of all her classmates but stands alone in the playground because the others know they can […]
GENEVA — A musician and PhD in bioacoustics, Bernie Krause is on a mission to create a systematic organisation of the landscape of sound signatures. He sums it up this way: While a picture is worth a thousand words, a soundscape is worth a thousand pictures. “There was a time when I considered natural soundscapes […]
BEIJING — In October, a tour group of 20 of China’s top tycoons will be paying a different kind of luxury visit to America. The tour is organized by Gopher Asset, an asset management firm, and the aim is for these Chinese super-rich to investigate how Single Family Offices (SFOs) operate in the United States. […]
Watch France’s former first lady, ex-model and forever chanteuse Carla Bruni-Sarkozy blank on the lyrics (and the chords) to her most famous song Quelqu’un m’a dit during a benefit concert to combat … Alzheimer’s disease. After a brief pause at Wednesday’s event in Paris, Bruni-Sarkozy got back on track.
JOBAR — Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighter Abu Ali stood grinning and waving at me with his right hand. Two of his middle fingers were missing. “Look at me, I’m like a Ninja Turtle now,” he said, dry humor intact. It had been three months since I last saw Abu Ali, who used to fight on the front lines of Jobar, a rebel-held district in the eastern city limits of Damascus. “My rifle exploded,” he said, beginning the story of his last few months, of how he lost his fingers, preparing his extra-sweet tea. “This was back in June, while […]
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldrunch’s pick of the week is the British pop band Pulp. Its frontman Jarvis Cocker turned 50 this month, so we thought we’d celebrate his birthday by listening to Pulp’s legendary single “Common People”, which was released in May […]
ANGOULEME — What if, thanks to technology, you could literally dive into pictures? This technological prowess would make dreams of unexplored applications come true, especially with regard to defense simulation or the presentation of urban projects. Andreas Koch, a 54-year-old animation entrepreneur in France, has reinvented the 360-degree image. The idea is not altogether new. […]
RIO DE JANEIRO — Two minutes to midnight were long past when, at the end of Iron Maiden’s concert in Rio this past Sunday, lead singer Bruce Dickinson slipped backstage to get a cold beer after two hours of jumping from one side of the stage to the other. But what he cracked open wasn’t […]
SCHILTIGHEIM — We didn’t see the big grey sedan coming, before it had stopped in the middle of the parking lot in the downtown shopping center. There are a dozen little boys killing time between the parked cars, drinking soda and talking football. Welcome to the Marais housing project in Schiltigheim, on the outskirts of […]
-Analysis- NAIROBI – A dozen or more attackers stormed the shopping center, throwing grenades and shooting adults and children alike. They came to kill on a massive scale and with spectacular cruelty, setting up an agonizingly drawn-out hostage situation. What took place in the Nairobi shopping center was not only an attack on Kenya, but […]
PARIS — Five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it seems that we are passing through an unprecedented layer of thick fog. We see one country suddenly accelerating while its neighbor suffers a “sudden stop.” But this isn’t the first time. The world was consumed by the same sort of uncertainty five years after […]
WILL UK JOIN ANTI-ISIS COALITION?All eyes will be on Westminster today, where the House of Commons will vote on what the British media are calling the “third Iraq war.” Members are expected to support the the anti-ISIS coalition with strikes in Iraq, though Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said these might be extended to Syria in […]
PARIS – It was indeed a different face for Iran at this year’s United Nations General Assembly. Back in Iran, and elsewhere around the world, news outlets and regional analysts Wednesday were measuring the potential geopolitical significance of the first big strides onto the world stage made the evening before by newly elected Iranian President […]
MOSCOW – The Russian government is looking to change the law on mass communications, which could potentially have a serious impact on the way the media does business. Perhaps the most important proposal put forth concerns who can open and own a media company. Currently, media business owners must be legal adults, cannot be presently […]
BUENOS AIRES – Felicitas Pizarro’s huge smile is more than just glowing, it’s contagious. And now her life and her smile are about to enter radically new territory: Pizarro, a passionate amateur chef, is set to step up to the highest ranks of the foodie world, with the help of none other than British-born culinary […]
BERLIN – Germany has voted for stability and consensus. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s position has been confirmed with a convincing result. She has been entrusted with power for another four years, and will continue to lead the country with her cautious, considered politics. Strategy and long-term success form the yardstick for her short-term tactics. It is […]
SITAKUND — Welcome to one of the most polluted and dangerous coastlines in the world. On this murky stretch just a few kilometers from Bangladesh’s main industrial port, Chittagong, are dozens and dozens of beached ships. Sea carriers, oil tankers and huge containers that at the end of their lives — many that can no […]
ISIS-CONTROLLED OIL REFINERIES TARGETEDThe U.S. Air Force and those of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have continued to hit ISIS targets in northern Syria, including 12 oil refineries captured by the jihadist group believed to generate up to $2 million per day in revenues, the BBC reports. Fourteen terrorist fighters and five civilians […]
– Editorial- PARIS – Should the three massacres perpetrated this past weekend in Kenya, Pakistan and Nigeria be approached separately? The incidents would appear to be unrelated, but all is not so simple. In Nairobi, it took nearly three days to finally end the Westgate siege after al-Shabab, a Somali terrorist group, began their attack […]
The mainstream Syrian political opposition failed for nearly two years to draw in the Kurdish National Council (KNC), a muddled coalition of 16 Syrian Kurdish political parties. In what was hailed as a breakthrough, the KNC finally decided to join the Syrian National Coalition (NC) last month. Yet the decision will have little practical impact on Arab-Kurdish relations in Syria. Its impact will primarily play out abroad, giving both the KNC and the NC a boost in international credibility, rather than inside Syria. The NC was eager for the Kurdish bloc to join its ranks in order to address a […]
Imagine a future where all high school students could go on to study whatever subject they want, where a university isn’t forced to limit the number of applicants it can accept or base its enrollment policy on grades or finances, but only on the wishes of students. It’s the dream of an education revolution that […]
Categories
A MOOC World Tour
Photo: Laura A. Oda – MCT/ZUMA
Categories
Verbatim, Sept. 17-24
SAINT-LOUIS — The African Virtual University is hardly a new project, as it was first founded in 1997 by the World Bank as an ambitious attempt to expand higher education across the continent. It is now run by some 15 African governments, but officials have looked for ways to expand it as Africa looks to […]
BOCHUM — Katja stares into her laptop camera and bites her lower lip. “Hmm, yes…” She confirms that she understands how chromosome divisions work. In front of another laptop, her teacher Julia Wirth holds up a piece of paper with circles and Xs drawn in green and red pen. Meiosis and mitosis. Katja nods from […]
CEYLANPINAR – Instantly, spoons stop stirring in teacups and conversations freeze mid-sentence. A mortar has just been heard a few hundred meters from the main street of Ceylanpinar, a small Turkish town on the border with Syria. Through the window, everybody can see a cloud of black smoke rising up from Ras al-Ayn, the Syrian […]
Taking a measure of things lately, we can count a rejuvenated moon, Italian cell phone drivers, Chinese billionaires and more… (photo: dahlstroms)
Categories
Snapshot Of The World, Sept. 17-23
Kenyan mall standoff, underwater concert, and a vigil in Pakistan are among this week’s featured photographs.
The Somali Islamist outfit al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for the bloody attack on the exclusive Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Al Jazeera looks at the origins and objectives of the group that is one of a growing number of local organizations that falls under the global umbrella of al-Qaeda.
-OpEd- GUATEMALA CITY – In Guatemala, we know about the damage done by gangs and drug traffickers. We see them paraded across the national and international media as the embodiement of “evil,” with their steely glares and tattooed arms. But too often, simply blaming the gangs and drug trade ignores the complex set of elements […]