In Jabel Mukaber, in East Jerusalem, relatives of Oday and Ghassan, the two Palestinians who attacked a synagogue this week, are ready to continue their fight.
Month: November 2014
Categories
Worldcrunch’s Weekend Staff Playlist #1
It’s Friday! Time to celebrate like Ricky Martin, who just got a wax figure of himself at Las Vegas’ Madame Tussauds. Can you tell which one is real? On another note, Worldcrunch’s staff comes from many different places so our music tastes are just as wide-ranging. So we’ve decided to create weekly and extremely varied […]
VIGEVANO — For one traffic warden in this northern Italian city, “a structure with a circular base, 30 centimeters in diameter and 30 centimeters in height, with an attached tray containing water” was illegally occupying public land. For the bar owner who put it there, it was just a doggy water bowl left as courtesy […]
Generali will be Europe’s first insurer to link use of personal digital applications and ‘big data’ to insurance rates. But in Germany, fears about privacy and ‘atomization’ of insurance.
Categories
Iranian Cleric v. Jewish Marlboro Man
TEHRAN — One of this country’s most prominent conservative clerics has chided Iranians for an array of modern “vices,” including divorce and choosing to marry later, which he said could draw God’s wrath on Iran. In his Friday sermon in the capital, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati also singled out Marlboro cigarettes that he said were imported […]
Gays and lesbians rarely come out of the closet in a society that has more generally been ‘anti-sex’ since the Communists took over.
A policy of war abroad, mixed with tighter border controls at home, won’t meet the challenge.
Categories
Russia Cracks Down On Offshore Tax Havens
Early on August 8, 1969, London police held up the traffic on Abbey Road for 10 minutes so the Scottish photographer Iain Macmillan could shoot the cover for the Beatles’ album that shares its name with the street. He took six photos of the Fab Four crossing the zebra stripes, one of which would later […]
HAMBURG — When Kathrin Fiesel talks about lunch breaks at her company, people can’t believe it: “You do what? You go dancing!?” Her employer, the e-commerce giant Otto, in Hamburg’s Bramfeld district, has for several months now been trying out alternatives to the classic visit to the canteen. One of the things they’ve come up […]
Peru, in particular, has had a key role since 1992, when it became the site of China’s first foreign investment. China also likes the fact that Lima puts so few ‘controls’ on commerce.
Categories
Illegal Crossing
Niagara Falls are far from being the most impressive waterfalls we’ve seen, but it comes with a couple of neat features. The Whirlpool Aero Car for example, which traverses the river above the Niagara whirlpool downstream of the falls. It’s also one of the few times we crossed a border without having our passports stamped: […]
This neighborhood on the Italian capital’s outskirts has erupted in clashes between longtime residents and undocumented migrants. It is part of a long and toxic history.
REYHANLI — At the beginning of this year, Jamal Maarouf was regarded as the new white knight of the Syrian insurrection. Over the course of just a few days in January, Maarouf and his men drove ISIS jihadists out of northern Syria’s Idlib province. Armed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, the leader of […]
BUENOS AIRES — The right to protection from arbitrary detention, known as Habeas Corpus, is one of humanity’s greatest achievements, the fruit of England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. Now, a group of animal-rights activists in Argentina is demanding its application for an orangutan, which they say is being “illegally deprived of its liberty” inside the […]
The kidnapping of a Colombian general is the clearest sign that FARC guerrillas may have entered in peace talks, but have yet to give up their war mentality and false populist ideology.
In Munich, a bizarre case of a woman who refused to bury her mother is raising a series of practical and legal questions.
KARACHI — In Pakistan and many other Asian countries, politicians are given preferential treatment on the roads, in airports, and in services while everyone else waits in line. So it’s not surprising that this lopsided system is breeding growing outrage. In a wealthy suburb of Karachi, where many high-profile politicians live, a small middle-aged man stands at a busy traffic intersection. Wearing a long a black gown with a sign that reads “NO VIP,” he says that while your house is yours, the public road is for everyone. With him is a group of around 50 protesters who have been […]
Categories
Desert Martians
I knew Wadi Rum in southern Jordan, had been used as a filming location: Much of Lawrence of Arabia was shot there in 1962, which made sense since the British officer himself passed through the region in the early 20th century. What I didn’t know was that since then, several science fiction movies were filmed […]
Reducing the strain on the environment, and opting out of a “growth-at-all-costs” logic, may be the only path forward for the future. And it will require the smartest new ideas.
-OpEd- BERLIN — As German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once wrote, the aggressor is always peace-loving. He wants to take over our land, our people, our resources without firing a single shot. By this same logic, the defender is always the aggressor. This truth has seldom been better illustrated than by events in eastern […]
Photo: Kickstarter One in five American teens suffers from a slight hearing loss and one in 20 from a more severe loss, in what are respectively 30% and 77% increases compared to 20 years ago, according to a study by the American Medical Association. The cause of this increase is believed to be the mass […]
Egypt is forcing civilians to move to create a buffer zone after terrorists hit again in the Sinai. From Vietnam to Algeria, such tactics have caused as much hardship as they’ve prevented.
BUENOS AIRES — Cash-strapped amid a deepening recession but still, in many cases, reluctant to take public transportation, Argentines are turning to car sharing or carpooling to move about. This relatively environmentally friendly practice is well-established in some U.S. and European cities, but is still embryonic in car-loving Latin America. In Argentina it is catching […]
Categories
Ask A Ghost
Legend has it that if you stand at the front gate of Dunguaire Castle and ask a question, you’ll have an answer by the end of the day. I don’t know who’s doing the answering, but I’d be more curious to hear from the ghosts of W.B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw, the two Irish […]
BEIJING — The Mexican government announced Nov. 4 that it had awarded its first high-speed rail contract to a Chinese-led consortium. But as the exciting news was still buzzing in the Chinese press, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto suddenly canceled the deal five days later. As the media later reported, the consortium led by China […]
RAQQA — Ever since ISIS captured the Syrian city of Raqqa in early 2014, residents have been consumed by fear and caution. The terrorist group has banned a dangerously long list of goods and behaviors, all of which carry a heavy punishment if violated. Most noticeably, ISIS has forbidden women from leaving their homes without the supervision of a male relative, and they must wear what is deemed proper attire, dubbed “the shield” — a long, loose dress that covers them from head to toe. Smoking is banned, while it is also illegal to sell tobacco, recordings of secular music, […]
ABU DHABI — The indefatigable Jean Nouvel, 69, can be proud of his project. For that matter, he is. The star French architect shakes hands, hugs, takes in all the praise with a stoic pride. The construction site is massive in scale. In the sand, under the searing sun, 5,000 people are hard at work […]
Polygamy is rampant, women are woefully underrepresented in politics and without the same land rights of men. But some Kenyan males have launched a surprising protest to any threats to their privileges.
The Vatican has revised its public restroom renovation to include showers for the homeless, as Pope Francis’ ambassador to the poor launches similar projects across Rome.
Categories
Central Safari
If you click on “show story map” at the top of this page, you’ll have a global view of the slides published so far, and begin to get an idea of how widely my wife and I traveled. Still, you may notice some gaps on the map — and Zimbabwe was the closest we got […]
WALIKALE — They swapped their firearms for spades, machettes and hoes. Until very recently, the young people here used to be members of armed groups in Congo’s North Kivu that boasted names such as Kifua Fua (Stuck-out Chest) or Raia Mutomboki (Revolutionary People). But on this Saturday in early November, they are repairing a road […]
Categories
Love Accessibly
A look at the German dating service created exclusively for people with disabilities.
-OpEd- BOGOTA — Mexico bleeds as criminal gangs kill the innocent and not-so-innocent, before the gaze of an impotent — or is it indifferent? — state apparatus. The latest victims were 43 student activists who disappeared in late September and, many believe, were shot dead and cut up by gangsters and policemen collaborating in the […]
Professor Asher Tishler has long been a highly respected researcher in both Israeli military and business domains. It’s high time for him to dish on those in the highest positions of power.
BERLIN — The problem weighs nearly 300,000 tons. Tubes, generators, a concrete containment shell. And there is a gigantic volume of steel and scrap material alone at the former atomic power station in Obrigheim in the state of Baden-Württemberg. The most dangerous work on the highly radioactive materials is done by robot. Nine years after […]
Categories
South Africa May Legalize Rhino Horn Trade
South Africa is facing its seventh consecutive yearly increase in rhino poaching and an unusual proposal for tacking the issue has come to light: legalizing the rhino horn trade. A rhino’s horn is made of keratin — the same material in our hair and nails — and is highly valuable in Asia, purportedly for its […]
BEIJING — The world now produces over four billion tons of waste every year. China buys some of it — mainly scrap metal, plastic and paper — to feed demand from factories and construction companies. Here on Dongzhimenwai, a street in downtown Beijing, people gather to sell their waste. Old ladies line up with carts of plastic bottles, stacks of newspapers and even bits of toys and metal kitchenware they’ve collected. The plastic bottles are melted down to make everything from acrylic clothing to electronics. Buyer Liu Aiguo explains what happens to this so-called trash once it’s in his hands. […]
A 6.6-billion-kilometer space mission flew with the spirit of Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral and some of the old continent’s other great achievements of vision and steadfastness.
When Grandmaster Flash wrote “The Message” and The Notorious B.I.G. turned out “Juicy,” it was not just a way to share a glimpse of everyday life in New York’s toughest neighborhoods, but also escape it. “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin” under” Grandmaster Flash raps, urging himself […]