As the ruble nosedives and Russia chokes on Western sanctions, the president –once compared to a bear or bull — now looks smaller to his countrymen in an unusual recurring survey.
Month: January 2015
FRANCE ITALY GERMANY BELGIUM SPAIN GREECE PORTUGAL UNITED KINGDOM TURKEY ISRAEL SAUDI ARABIA AUSTRALIA ARGENTINA BRAZIL COLOMBIA MEXICO U.S.
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Introducing The CowCam
Uschi, scratching herself on the leg, takes a picture of her udder. Fat Lola, who is mainly interested in eating, keeps her head down, which means the photos she takes are close-ups of grass blades. Only old Frida shows considerably more artistic talent, because she looks around while chewing her cud and takes in the […]
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Zulu Pompom
We saw another glimpse of Zulu culture in Swaziland, the landlocked country where a small portion of this community lives. The pompoms these dancers wear on their arms and legs are actually frilly goatskin bands.
Where the French Revolution took place, religious terror now haunts the streets. Today’s voices of free speech must turn to state authority to feel secure. What we need to do now.
Argentina’s electoral routine fosters inequality and injustice, enabling opportunists to cash in. It’s time for a new approach.
PARIS — The Jewish community in Paris lived through the manhunt for the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in a state of extreme tension. The hostage-taking Friday in a Kosher supermarket, which resulted in the death of four Jewish men, confirmed their worst fears. Francois Hollande called the act a […]
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To Be A French Muslim Right Now
PARIS — The terror attack against Charlie Hebdo has deeply shaken Muslims in France, and their dread is twofold. They fear not only for their own safety but also that the shooting might make it even more difficult for them to take their place in the national community, that it will fuel the rising Islamophobia […]
While the world tries to get its collective head around what’s happened in the French capital, life here is bound to change. One American journalist, and mother of two, in Paris sees it already.
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Paris Terror Probe Expands, 6 Things To Know
The situation has largely calmed in France, after a three-day manhunt came to a bloody end on Friday evening with a total of 17 dead on top of the three gunmen killed by the police in the final assaults. Here are Saturday’s key events. 1. FOURTH SUSPECT ON THE RUN The police are still looking […]
This thing called freedom lives in its most extreme form in satire, which by definition can never be blasphemy.
PARIS — First came the shocked reactions, not just form France but from all over the world, in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s cold-blooded killing of 12 people at the offices of weekly satirical paper Charlie Hebdo. But as events carried through to a hostage standoff and climactic showdown late Friday, which saw four more […]
A Chinese housing developer recently hired AIDS patients to threaten people with infection so they would leave their homes. It seems shocking, but discrimination in China based on HIV status is actually legal, leaving many patients little employment choic
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France Faces More Terror, 8 Things To Know
PARIS — Two days after the deadly terror assault on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, France lived through another day of violence, fear and national soul-searching. A pair of hostage standoffs culminated in simultaneous raids late Friday by police that killed the presumed authors of Wedneday’s attack, as well as a fellow Islamist terrorist […]
After the deadly attack against French magazine Charlie Hebdo, two other Paris-based news organizations, L’Obs formerly Le Nouvel Observateur and Worldcrunch, have collected those three plain words of support — “Je suis Charlie” — from 21 different people around the world, in their native languages. I Am Charlie …
PARIS — Like every Wednesday, they were all there, almost all. Gathered around sugar chouquettes and croissants at the large oval table that takes up the whole room, for the weekly editorial meeting — a fixed ritual since the founding of Charlie Hebdo. To the left, Charb, the editor-in-chief. On this Wednesday, Jan. 7, cartoonists […]
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The Lava Church
The expressionist style of Reykjavik’s Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland’s biggest church, can be initially unsettling. But it actually suits this land of volcanoes and geysers.
Uruguay shows again why it is one of the world’s most progressive countries, with the government’s recent pledge to aim to use only clean energy in the future.
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Your Prophet Is Not My Prophet
A French-Algerian writer launches a loud and clear message for whoever carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine.
Intellectual property laws in China are used (or simply ignored) for the short-term interests of Chinese companies. But that must change if the nation wants to compete globally.
Forty-nine years ago, the gondola traffic jams on Venice“s Grand Canal somehow seemed more manageable than today.
After the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, the reaction in Paris is raw: war has been declared on the values of the French Republic. First order of business: know your enemy.
PARIS — Initially a welcomed spark for a global economy in need of a boost, the drastic fall in the price of crude oil — losing half its value since mid-2014 — has now begun to destabilize markets and worry investors and political leaders around the world. Still, this rapidly evolving situation is prompting some […]
The “devs” who code our digital world are so rarefied and vital they can dictate their own terms. Companies do anything to recruit them, but like birds, they tend to fly. A look at this singular species.
PARIS — There’s a nice trompe l’oeil mural on rue Nicolas Appert here in the 11th arrondissement. I once stood in front of it for a little while on my lunch break, trying to make sense of the artist’s visual tricks. Today, making sense of what happened on that street feels impossible: Twelve people, among […]
PARIS — The brazen terrorist attack against the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo that left at least 12 dead Wednesday has shocked the nation and the world. But it doesn’t come in a vacuum, following a series of attacks in the past few years that have no parallel in any other Western country. There […]
YANGON — Burma is ready to boom. The Asia Development Bank estimates that per capita income in the southeast Asian country could increase sixfold by 2030. And another report predicts that the Burmese are poised for a level of economic growth far ahead of the global pace. The evidence of this newfound prosperity in Burma, officially known as Myanmar, is on full display at this Yangon shopping mall, where it’s easy to find products from Thailand or Hong Kong. Just two years ago, none of this would have been possible because foreign products were banned under the military junta. University […]
-OpEd- SÃO PAULO — The ongoing corruption and money laundering scandals at Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras have badly tarnished the image of the company. Once considered as a sort of national treasure, the public firm faces almost daily revelations about kickbacks paid to politicians from oil sales as part of a scheme to buy […]
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The Philosopher’s Corner
I was a young philosophy teacher in eastern France when we went to Berlin, then divided in two. My wife took this picture of me at the crossroads between Leibnizstrasse and Kantsstrasse — though Spinoza has always been my favorite.
The past year had lots of bad news, which had us saying lots of bad words, new and old: Ebola, jihadism, selfie. But as a reminder that local and national events often still hold sway, the Word of 2014 in Portugal was corrupção. Corruption was indeed on the lips and minds of Portuguese, as the […]
Though China is officially atheist, Christianity is growing, with believers now outnumbering communists. That’s good news for a huge Bible publisher that supports charities in China and Africa.
The U.S. offers the weakest worker protections, Brazilian employees are entitled to serious severance, the UK’s mandatory notice period is the longest. A quick tour of the global pink slip.
To the surprise of many, the family of legendary novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez sold his personal papers to the University of Texas. It’s nothing political – but all about posterity, and money of course.
The Pegida movement’s weekly Monday night protests against the “Islamization of Europe” were supposed to rally Germans to their cause. But it now appears to be having the opposite effect, as counter-demonstrations have sprung up around the country. “Pegida flops outside of Dresden,” Tuesday’s German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung’s declared, citing the eastern city where the […]
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A Mouse In The Garden
When we went to Florida’s Cypress Gardens in the late 1980s, the botanical garden theme park was trying to survive, threatened as it was by a nearby rodent stealing all its visitors.
-OpEd- MOSCOW — The dials of the propaganda machine were never properly calibrated. Instead of talking about fighting Ukrainian nationalists, who like nationalists anywhere are dangerous and unsavory, it was simply Ukrainians and Ukraine that Russians were fighting. Less than a year later, this indiscriminate approach has had identifable results. In an October survey of […]
LUCERNE — In 2001 Kurt Mathis bought the Haldigrat chairlift “spontaneously,” after he’d read about it in the newspaper. The previous owners, two brothers from the Swiss canton of Aargau, felt that running it no longer was worth it. “It was a little bit like when I decided to marry my wife,” the 59-year-old says. […]
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FULL MOON – January 5-11
(March 21 to April 19) This Full Moon plays havoc with your emotions, but brings to light the challenges. Arians who have recently made a new acquaintance will realize that the other party is avoiding them. If you’ve just started a new project, a co-worker or boss will slow progress. But you’re a testa dura, […]
A surprising take on China’s approach to education, and what it means for the country’s future.
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The Little Angry Giant
The Dol Cathedral in northwestern France is missing one of its two towers. Some say it’s because an angry giant once threw a menhir — Brittany’s trademark standing stone — that decapitated the cathedral before landing in a field. The Menhir de Champ-Dolent weighs 150 tons, so it’s fair to say that little boy wasn’t […]