The country’s proposed reforms don’t consider the two elephants in the room, an expert warns: below-mimimum-wage teacher salaries and goals for graduates.
Month: August 2014
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Global Charts #2
It’s Friday! Time to check out some of the songs topping charts around the world: Greece: Taylor Swift, “Shake It Off” Bahamas: Ariana Grande feat. Iggy Azalea, “Problem” Botswana: John Legend, “All Of Me” Bahrain: MAGIC!, “Rude” Taiwan: G.E.M., “Like You” Source: Hot Music Charts
Ravens tend to have a bad rap. In the Middle Ages, because they fed on corpses after executions, they were associated with gallows. In mythology, two ravens symbolizing wisdom and intelligence were attributes of the northern god Odin. But ravens — and other members of the corvine family like crows, jackdaws and magpies — are […]
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Ferguson As ‘America’s Spring’
The death of teenager Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., has been getting plenty of attention beyond U.S. borders, and Arabic-language media is no exception. It has made Ferguson front-page news, while Twitter users have transliterated “Ferguson” into an Arabic hashtag. A recent Al Jazeera article, filed under […]
TEHRAN — Every evening, Youseph walks by the mosque in Tehran’s Fatemi Square. Before heading towards his house, he looks up at the portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that are on the walls of the building. Then he crosses the street and descends the hill to where he lives. […]
-Analysis- BOGOTA — Venezuela is in crisis — a tremendous one. Food and basic drugs are in short supply. The annual murder rate has reached 79 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world and a cold figure that covers a multitude of personal tragedies. Inflation is expected to reach a rate of […]
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Texas Cousins
When people hear the word “cajun,” they automatically think about Louisiana. But a small community of these descendants of French-speaking Acadian exiles also lives in Texas. The association “Les Acadiens du Texas” was founded in Beaumont in the late 1970s to preserve their history, which included traditional dances in not-so-traditional outfits.
The Russian hacking community is as ambigious as the country itself: admired and feared, all at once. A reformed hacker takes us into the bowels of the criminal Deep Web.
BUENOS AIRES — If there is a force more potent than Chinese work habits, it must be multinational competition. In Argentina, hundreds of Chinese grocery stores — the ones that, to the chagrin of local shops, are open 24 hours — have closed as large global supermarket chains have opened small convenience stores. Over the […]
Russia may be officially forbidding Western food on grocery shelves, but facing skyrocketing prices and shortages, it’s allowing Belarus and Kazakhstan to act as intermediaries.
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Synthetic Drugs A Growing Problem In Iran
TEHRAN — There are 100,000 drug addicts on the streets of Iran, the country’s Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli estimated Wednesday, saying that his agency had a “legal duty” to “pick them up” and send them to obligatory rehabilitation centers. He said $3 billion was being spent every year on illegal drugs in the country, and […]
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Lauryn Hill Releases Tribute To Ferguson
American singer Lauryn Hill has released a recorded version on Soundcloud of her track “Black Rage,” which she had only played live for the past two years. The former Fugees frontwoman dedicated the song to the residents of Missouri, where tension is still high after African-American teenager Michael Brown was killed by a police officer […]
India and Pakistan are arch enemies whose ongoing Kashmir conflict shows no signs of ending. So will the film kiss between a beloved Pakistani actress and an India heartthrob be censored?
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I Pictured You Taller
From a distance, mountains look more or less the same height. But in this picture, I’m pretty sure the summit on the right is none other than Mount Everest.
-Editorial- PARIS — On the Iraq crisis as well as on the others around the world, the European Union is in disarray, hiding its divisions behind a discreet veil of consensus. At an Aug. 15 emergency meeting called by France and Italy, the 28 foreign ministers congratulated themselves … for each other’s stubbornness. Because a […]
A former cook for the Free Syrian Army, Iftikar al Daye is the 100,000th migrant who has arrived in Italy since the beginning of the year, and a symbol of hope for fleeing refugees.
Move the shot glasses aside and make way for some stemware. One expert characterizes the Russian wine market as one of the “most promising in the modern world.”
ANSAN — It’s been over three months since the South Korean Sewol ferry capsized, killing 300 passengers onboard. It was a tragedy that sparked government reforms and national soul searching. But understandably, it’s been much more challenging for the families of the victims, almost all of whom attended the same high school. The temporary memorial that was created after the April 16 ferry disaster is a giant, air-conditioned tent with an enormous alter that holds framed pictures of the high school students who died when the ship went down. Flowers have been laid out in front of them, and there […]
After 15 years of living and working in the United States, a Die Welt correspondent says good-bye, not only to his adopted country but also to the pre-9/11 grandeur the U.S. once enjoyed.
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Traditional Warrior From 9 To 5
In the traditional homestead of Vula Zulu, near the South African border with Swaziland, we got to witness Zulu impi perform age-old war dancing rites. As in many other places, we were told that the warriors did not actually live in the village, but returned to their homes once the show is over.
A successful TV series is making Chinese people nostalgic for their rural roots, from which so many have fled. And the villages where the show has filmed are enjoying massive benefits.
Daniza doesn’t read the newspapers or check social networks, so she probably has no idea that people are searching for her. The brown bear made Italian headlines a few days ago after she wounded Daniele Maturi, 38, who was foraging for mushrooms in the woods in the heart of the Dolomite mountains. Maturi was bitten […]
COMRAT — In Comrat, the capital of the autonomous Gagauzia region in southern Moldova, time has stopped. Mud houses and damaged roads, some of which have never been touched by asphalt, make this town of 26,000 residents feel like something from the 19th century. To get closer to what resembles an urban atmosphere, visitors must […]
TEL AVIV — A summer of fighting in Gaza has reignited a wave of global protests against Israel. Companies operating in Israel — such as maritime cargo giant Zim and major food producers — are finding themselves under attack. But they are fighting back. “The move to a sweeping boycott of anything Israeli, the violence […]
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That’s It, I’m Leaving
This Galapagos marine iguana looks like he was just fed up with living on a volcanic archipelago.
Looking for family members who have emigrated to Europe, or in search of better opportunities, Congolese girls instead find themselves prey at the hands of human traffickers.
BOGOTA — How dirty can business get? In Colombia, it can get as dirty as a diaper. An investigation by the country’s Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC) has uncovered a series of illegal, coordinated price hikes in the highly lucrative diaper industry. Trade and industry inspectors started investigating price-fixing practices in late 2013, with […]
The news, quantified.
MOSCOW — The war in eastern Ukraine is being fought on several fronts — with deathly weapons and munitions on the one hand, and with competing interpretations of reality on the other. As the conflict drags on, it’s increasingly becoming a propaganda war. From the beginning, the Russian media has taken an active part in […]
MYITKYINA — This is a sacred place for all Burmese people. The confluence of the Mali and N’Mai rivers, known as Myitsone in Burmese, forms here in Burma’s northernmost state of Kachin. The converging rivers form the Irrawaddy river, which flows north to south over more than 2,000 kilometers. It’s a vital artery that the […]
Most plastic bags have suffocation warnings on them, but that’s no good for whales who can’t read them. Vets from Argentina’s Patagonian National Center (CENPAT) had to remove a giant plastic bag that could have suffocated a whale who was apparently “playing” — or, rather, struggling — with it, in waters off Puerto Madryn, Clarín […]
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C’est Ca La France!
Can you spot the Citroën deux chevaux parked next to that boat in the port of la Rochelle? Built from 1948 to 1990, the iconic “deuche,” as it is known here, leaves no room for doubt: It really is “la France.”
More than two million Syrian children have lost all access to education. In western Syria, one principal is looking to change things.
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New Guitar Center Prompts Worst Jam Ever
What happens when you mix a bunch of wannabe rock stars, a brand new music shop with probably the world’s best instruments and amps, and a lack of music cabins or headphones? The hilarious video below. It was taken at the new Guitar Center in New York’s Times Square that opened earlier in August, and […]
KARACHI — Khushboo Rafiq is the first person in her family not to pay a dowry, or bride price, to her husband Usman’s family. Khushboo works for an organization that advocates women’s rights. It was very important to her that her wedding represents the ideals and convictions on which she spends her professional efforts.” We used the wedding invitation to tell guests they should not bring any gifts,” she says. “We also made it very clear that no dowry was being paid. We also are donating our wedding dress to a charity for another couple to use in the future.” […]
Many countries agree that the U.S. politicizes the dollar by punishing nations who don’t abide by U.S. sanctions. With this American approach comes isolation, and the risk of the dollar being replaced as global currency.
-OpEd- PARIS — Here we are amid a global rise in military conflicts and political tensions — wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, the exclusion of Russia from the G8, conflicts in the South China Sea, Argentina’s debt default, among others. A century after the start of World War I, the planet seems to have […]
WHAKATANE — “Here, hang this around your neck, we’re nearly there,” says Keris Adams, handing out yellow gas masks to some 50 ship passengers. I’m starting to feel uneasy. It’s only a few kilometers to White Island, the only New Zealand isle with an active volcano. Even from a distance the island has something mystical […]
Hamas methods for getting information to and from its fighters can pose intelligence challenges for the Israeli army, preventing it from deploying its full technological capabilities.
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Global Charts #1
It’s Friday! Time to check out some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world: Finland: Cheek, “Äärirajoille” Colombia: Calvin Harris, “Summer” Burkina Faso: Floby, “My Lady” Lebanon: Maroon 5, “Maps” Russia: Lilly Wood & the Prick & Robin Schulz, “Prayer In C (Robin Schulz Radio Edit)” Source: Hot Music Charts