Extraordinary Russian wealth has accumulated in London, much of it of questionable origins. Inevitably, it will be factored into British decisions in the showdown with Vladimir Putin.
Month: March 2014
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It Doesn’t Get More Irish Than This
A pint of Guinness maybe?
KIGALI — As the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide approaches, a “flame of hope” is being carried across the entire country, a symbol of reconciliation and faith in a better future. “I want to make sure that everything’s in order,” says the president of the Tutsi genocide survivors group in northern Rwanda. “The flame […]
Amid an ongoing public debate in France on end-of-life palliative care, doctors tell Le Monde how they secretly help their patients die.
BERLIN — Over the past week, the term “original inhabitants” has been used repeatedly to characterize Crimean Tatars, who seem to be the only inhabitants of the peninsula who don’t see a home for themselves in Russia. “The original inhabitants since the late Middle Ages were the Tatars,” a serious historian and professor of East […]
Images that made news, the news in images … around the world.
KIEV — In a widely viewed video, the head of Ukraine’s National Television channel can be seen being beaten by right-wing members of the Ukrainian Parliament for allowing the ceremony celebrating Crimea’s entrance into the Russian Federation to be broadcast live on television. Television executive Aleksander Panteleimonov was grabbed by his necktie, strangled, hit on […]
TEL AVIV — When Stanley Fischer left his senior post at the International Monetary Fund in 2001, he made sure to mention of one of his closest IMF friends and colleagues during his farewell speech. That friend is Alassane Ouattara, who served as Ivory Coast’s prime minister in the early 1990s before moving on to […]
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The Myth Of India’s Middle Class
NEW DELHI — As India’s national elections approach, the country’s middle class is the center of attention. Analysts cite it as the decisive demographic in the vote slated next month. It is true that the electoral weight of the middle class hasn’t stopped growing: according to the Asian Development Bank, the Indian middle class rose […]
SINGAPORE — As a popular tourist destination and a place with a high-income and multicultural local population, Singapore is a particularly fertile place for dining. The British magazine Restaurant recently published its list of “Asia’s 50 best restaurants,” and eight Singapore establishments made the list. Singapore is a place where people are much more open-minded […]
Below are some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world. Worldcrunch Pick British singer Kate Bush announced Friday on her website that she will play her first series of shows since 1979 in August and September across the UK. The first woman to top the British charts with a song of her […]
MOSCOW — As expected, the West reacted poorly to Russia signing an agreement allowing Crimea to join the Russian Federation. But will their threats of consequences really be felt? “We join Poland and the international community in condemning the continuing assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrety,” said U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who was […]
PALERMO — Italy was in shock again this week after a 2-year-old boy was killed in a revenge hit by the Sacra Corona Unita (SCU) organized crime syndicate on a Puglia motorway Monday night. The little boy, Domenico Petruzzelli, was one of three people, along with his mother and her partner — a convicted murderer […]
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A Forest Without A Tree
Fires caused by people are thankfully still relatively infrequent in the vast Yellowstone National Park, with just six to 10 per year. Most wildfires, such as the 1988 blazes that destroyed almost 40% of the park, are instead caused by lightning. In 1994, driving through a recently burned patch, we could only imagine what that […]
Shiran Ebadi, 2003 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, says Iran’s supposed reformist leader Hassan Rouhani has done little to improve human rights. Anyway, he doesn’t have final say.
The refusal to give up amid dire political and financial conditions – call it old fashioned Optimism – helped Peruvians turn into a growing economic force.
Complicated…and crucial to resolving the current showdown between Russia and the West.
Chinese tourists flood in, leaving behind filth and stretching public resources. And that’s just scratching the surface. A Hong Kong writer dissects growing tension between two cultures.
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Treating Cancer In War-Torn Syria
DAMASCUS — Syria’s medical infrastructure has crumbled, making traditional treatments hard to come by for patients still living in the country. That has left raditional herbal and medicinal druggists, known as Attareen, as the only real alternative to cancer patients and other long-term care patients trapped in Syria. Jawad, who has lung cancer, often visits Damascus’ Shaalan Market in search of tropical fruits. Readily available and costing between $8 and $14, Jawad and many of his friends who are also cancer patients have included these fruits in their daily diet. “During my online research for alternative cancer treatments, I found […]
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Soviet Disobedience
At the end of WWII, several monuments were built across Berlin to commemorate the Soviet soldiers fallen during the war. As imposing as this memorial in Treptower Park seems, I was unimpressed: I’ve always been circumspect about soldiers. So was my wife Claudine, who looks like she’s turning her back to these Soviet occupiers, who […]
TEL AVIV — Over the past few weeks, we have heard many members of Parliament calling on the government to block the sale of Israeli dairy company Tnuva to China’s Bright Food. Such a ban would be very bad news for Israel. We must first remember the basic principal that business decisions should be taken […]
PARIS – On March 12, Mustafa Dzhemilev, a leading figure among the ethnic Crimean Tatars, had a long conversation over the phone with Vladimir Putin. No doubt, they talked about the referendum that was set to take place four days later. According to what Dzhemilev reported to the Ukrainian media, the Russian president asserted that […]
A married man from the eastern Chinese province of Anhui was looking for some online hanky-panky. So the man, identified by the Market Star Daily as a forty-something named Mr. Zhang, reached for his mobile phone and clicked on “Shake”, a location-based social plug-in service provided by Weixin (Chinese for WeChat). Zhang began chatting, and […]
Proud of its more than 4,000-year history and heritage, Peru is starting to take exception to certain tourist pranks at venerable sites — most notably, the new fad of posing nude atop Machu Picchu, and sharing the photos online. The cases of in-the-buff visitors at the 15th Century Inca citadel, a UNESCO World Heritage site, […]
PEREVALNE — While Russian flags fly in Simferopol and people celebrate the “return home” in the main square, a few miles away in the village of Perevalne a strange calm has descended. For weeks now, the Ukrainian military regiments here have been surrounded by Russian forces, and armored vehicles have patrolled the streets. Pro-Russian activists […]
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Fishing Through The Ages
Among the most beautiful countries I’ve explored is my own. This is what we call la France profonde, literally “deep France” — the heartland. Aptly enough, the Château de la Bussière in the background is nicknamed the Fishermen Castle and features a collection of works of art related to freshwater fishing. There is still a […]
Argentine politicians may not all have liked Jorge Bergoglio when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. But from President Kirchner to her potential successors, all want a piece of the pontiff.
An orphanage in this southeastern city received more abandoned babies in a pilot “safe haven” program than anywhere else in the country.
SIMFEROPOL — Crimea’s economy is built on two main engines: tourism and agriculture. The current unrest and pending secession of Crimea to become part of Russia could dissuade many would-be vacationers from both Ukraine and Western Europe. A serious drop in tourism numbers could translate into a serious hit for the peninsula’s economy, which is […]
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Death Sentence For Fake Doctor
A 64-year-old man was sentenced to be hanged in Tehran after a court found him guilty of sexually abusing female applicants for the post of lab assistant in what turned out to be a fake medical practice, Jomhuri-e Eslami daily, reported Tuesday. Iran’s Mehr news agency reported that at least four female witnesses accused the […]
TREVISO — This kind of news is hard to swallow: the historic Beccherie restaurant in Treviso that created tiramisu decades ago, will close its doors March 30. Gone will be the original version of the legendary dessert that has become a worldwide symbol of Italian cuisine. That’s because the economic crisis has been tough on […]
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Bright China
I remember being mesmerized by Shanghai at night — maybe even more than by Las Vegas. Twenty years ago, the Chinese city also seemed to be at the vanguard of technology. That’s where I saw people using cell phones in the street for the first time.
With the world focused on Crimea and trying to figure out what Vladimir Putin will do next, we stumbled upon some old photos of the Russian leader. We couldn’t help notice a certain resemblance…
KASHGAR — The Matang nut cake and skewered kawap (mutton), an ancient Kingdom reduced to ruins in a desert, and the simple imagery of folk singing and dancing: These are the stereotypes most Han Chinese have of the Uyghur people. It made sense for me to travel to find out more in their native land, […]
Egyptian writer Haytham El Wardany’s latest work offers a novel approach to dealing with the capital’s overwhelming excess of aural stimulation.
PARIS — Will Syrians pay for the Ukrainians? Will the millions of victims of a protracted and bloody conflict in Syria suffer the backlashes of the situation playing out in Ukraine? Sadly, the answer is yes. Posed in these simplistic terms, the question might seem odd. But in reality, the growing hostility between Moscow and […]
BEIJING — The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has sparked rumors and conspiracy theories, and generally obsessed people — around the world. But with most of the passengers on board being from China, the most speculation is swirling around Chinese society, both on official news sources and in social media — particularly Weibo, China’s […]
Lopsided election results from North Korea to Crimea were among the notable numbers of the past 10 days.
Producers from Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia have visited the Colombian estates of producers to discover the social, environmental and aesthetic benefits of growing shade coffee.
More than 61% of Greeks aged 25 or younger are unemployed amid the country’s economic crisis. They are educated and demoralized, writes one young woman lucky enough to have work.