For those in the gay, lesbian and transgender community rejected by their own loved ones, a shelter in the Colombian capital offers comfort, but also practical support to build a new life.
Month: February 2014
Sochi Olympics, World War I and other events near and far have prompted some interesting quotes in recent days.
HANGZHOU — It’s well known that nobody in Wahaha, China’s biggest beverage empire, dares challenge the word of Zong Qinghou. But the cult of personality surrounding the group’s founder, dubbed the “beverage king,” goes much further: There are reports of how employees at a Wahaha dealers’ meeting shout Viva Wahaha! Viva Zong Qinghou!, and the […]
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Inside Egypt’s War On Journalists
Accused of producing “false news” in the country, 20 Al Jazeera staff members have been detained in Egypt. What’s driving the crackdown? What will defenders of free press do now?
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Monkeys And Vodka: Clubbing in Dubai
A chic nightclub in the glittering, moneyed Gulf city of Dubai, has found itself in very hot water for allowing a monkey onto its premises. The concern? Animal abuse. Photos showed the monkey attached to a leash and wearing a t-shirt. One image showed the monkey being force-fed vodka. Dubai nightclub’s pet monkey causes major […]
With French unemployment at record levels, times are tough for clients and workers of an unemployment agency in one of Marseille’s poorest, most crime-ridden areas.
Though chances still remain low, Israel wants to be prepared as threats grow of a major global boycott of its goods, like what happened in South Africa in the 1980s.
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Rouhani Slams ‘Semiliterate’ Critics
With his rapprochement policy and chummy tweets in English, Iran’s Hassan Rouhani has carved out a rather pleasant public image since being elected president last year. But don’t tell that to his conservative critics in the Iranian parliament. Rouhani lashed out this week at critics of the Geneva accords as being “semiliterate,” the Farsi-language Prague-based […]
Its early adopters swear by the SF-based car-service app. But as Uber expands internationally, local cabbies in Milan and Paris are fighting back. Will rickshaw drivers in Bangalore be next?
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Immutable Greece
I took this picture during the first of our 11 trips to Greece. We had driven our Simca Aronde down through Italy, then onto the ferry that had just been inaugurated between the southern Italian port city of Brindisi and Igoumenitsa in Greece’s northwestern Epirus region. Then up to the mountains we drove: on narrow, […]
DELHI — The weather is cold and damp in Delhi, but the city’s chief minister has spent the night sleeping on the streets. Arvind Kejriwal’s head is wrapped in a grey scarf when he steps up to the microphone in the square behind the parliament building. He is surrounded by ministers and leading members of […]
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Video: Girl ‘Cries Stones’ in Yemen
The Yemeni television channel Azal has posted a bizarre video online of a young girl crying small, dark stones. With her condition labeled a medical mystery, 12-year-old Saadiya Saleh has been a source of unease for her village, where some wonder if she is possessed by the devil or ill with an unknown contagious disease.
Looking at the heirs of Latin America’s major business families, it is the best and worst of times – but it’s just about time for them to take charge.
With rumblings that young people are disenchanted with the social network, a reporter visits the Harvard University campus where Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook 10 years ago.
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Key Opposition Leader Allowed Home
The former presidential candidate Mehdi Karrubi, detained since backing anti-regime protests in 2009, has reportedly been released from detention and given house arrest, following months of speculation over whether or not Iran would free certain dissidents or political prisoners. The politician’s son Hossein Karrubi told the semi-official ISNA agency that “in security terms conditions have […]
MBALLING — Some 20 people, all officially cured of leprosy, are sitting together at the functional rehabilitation center in Mballing, Senegal. But seeing them calls to mind the ancestral fears linked with this disease: club foots, mere leg or arm stumps, hands without fingers, misshapen faces, washed-out eyes that can no longer be opened. The […]
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A Monk’s Peace Of Mind
When we went to Sri Lanka in 1992, conflict was raging between the country’s central government and the separatist Tamil Tigers, based in the north of the island. All our hotels were guarded by army soldiers, and there were tanks deployed in the parks of the capital Colombo. This monk looked to be prepared for […]
The new freedom of the Asian nation, also known as Myanmar, has drawn global investors in a race to profit from new development. But Burmese workers and farmers suffer the side-effects.
One tortured by the regime, another by Islamist rebels, both offer evidence of the worst kind of brutality that reigns in Syria today.
A few months back, it would have made front-page headlines around the world. Now, the encounter between Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, is largely being presented as “routine” diplomacy in Persian newspapers. Monday’s edition of reformist Aftab-e Yazd […]
After building Beijing’s Olympic Park for the 2008 Games, a Chinese-American urban planner and Israeli architect continue to help develop green cities in a largely polluted China.
Is shooting dolphins for gastronomic delectation really worse than the way livestock are treated before becoming supermarket steak? A debate reaches from Japan to South America.
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Flowing Volga, Still Life
Ten years had passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when we took a river cruise on the Volga … but in some places, there was no way of telling. This church, which had been abandoned under the Communist regime, remained unrepaired. The landscape of open pasture and haystacks brought back childhood memories of […]
A new French law targeting clients of prostitutes has focused attention on the changing call-girl business. Here’s another world, of ‘escort boys,’ with both male and female customers.
-Commentary- BEIJING — Reports about rich Chinese men snapping up French chateaux for big bucks have been prolific lately. Many Chinese are astonished that these French cultural relics are available to private buyers at all, much less foreign ones. But I believe this represents not so much how open France is but rather how closed […]
Read the news by the numbers: tourism stats, baby-naming bonuses, Toyota sales and more.
Since the end of the Cold War, from the Middle East to Africa, almost every military intervention carried out by the world’s top powers leads to regime change. But rarely to stability.
Three musicians, a divisive Middle East leader and a soccer legend were among those to whom we bid farewell this past month.
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Inside The Mind Of A Syrian Jihadist
KILIS — Mohammad, a jihadi rebel from northern Syria, is describing his wedding night. His family had insisted on a non-religious ceremony. At the reception, just as his relatives began to dance and celebrate, he went home. “The music made me uncomfortable,” he says. Believing in the same religious tenets that have led extremists to outlaw music and singing in jihad-held areas of Syria, Mohammad chose to spend the night at home with his sister. On this day, in Kilis, across the border in Turkey, the 35-year-old former salesman is running late, but makes a courtesy call to say he’s […]