The monumental Karl-Marx Allee avenue in East Berlin, was a flagship project of the reconstruction program in East Germany after World War II.
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Rebuilding Berlin
Month: April 2015
The Armenian-Canadian newspaper Horizon Weekly featured a man kneeling before the eternal flame of Yerevan’s Armenian Genocide memorial complex, as ceremonies are being held in the Armenian capital in remembrance of the Armenian genocide by Ottoman Turks, which began 100 years ago today. ABOUT THE SOURCE: Horizon Weekly is an Armenian-Canadian publication and is the […]
Why is debt-ridden Greece still spending more, per capita, on its military than any other country in Europe? And why are German companies so eager to sell them arms?
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TEL AVIV — One day, six years ago, while working on a documentary for Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, television producer Ronnie Sarnat came across a strange story. “I sent a crew to film testimonies of Holocaust survivors and the crew came back deeply distraught,” she says. “One of the survivors came out to them, crying […]
After the head of a kindergarten near Munich announced plans to tie the knot with her girlfriend, her work contract was terminated. LGBT activists (and parents) are outraged.
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Eurovision Contestants 2015: Hungary
Prior to this year, Hungary had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest twelve times since their first entry in 1994 — which was coincidentally the year they achieved their best result, placing fourth. This year’s contestant, Boglárka Csemer, who goes by the name Boggie, had already gained worldwide recognition in January 2014 with the music […]
EU EMERGENCY MIGRANT SUMMIT European Union leaders arrived in Brussels for an emergency summit Thursday on the migration crisis, following Europe’s worst maritime disaster since World War II last weekend that killed hundreds of would-be immigrants in the Mediterranean Sea. There is a working list of 10 objectives that was put together earlier this week […]
CAIRO — There are two smiling European-looking 30-somethings waiting to welcome you to the new website, Liberland.org, while a hopeful-sounding logo proclaims, “Live and let live.” Formerly referred to as Gornja Siga, the seven square-kilometer state (slightly larger than the Vatican and Monaco) came into existence following a border dispute between Croatia and Serbia. The […]
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Landlocked Storks
There are some lesser known places that give you some serious “travel credibility,” like Belize, Swaziland — or Kaliningrad. Being home to a very large number of storks during the warmer months, the Russian enclave reminded me of Alsace, a stone’s throw away from where I live in eastern France.
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Extra! EU Summit On Mediterranean Migrants
La Sicilia, April 23 2015 EU leaders are due to hold an emergency summit Thursday to look for ways to quell the number of migrants risking their lives on journeys across the Mediterranean. Sicilian-based daily La Sicilia writes that ships, planes and surveillance programs will be used to combat the traffickers. Italian Prime Minister Matteo […]
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Muslim And Happy In … Brazil
The world’s largest Catholic country has a long-established and steadily growing Muslim population. With some rare exceptions, Brazil is a model for integration of Islam into a mixed population.
Even at 93, Oskar Groening must still be tried for his alleged crimes. But the real question is why German authorities didn’t try him decades ago.
People’s Daily, April 22, 2015 President Xi Jinping’s two-day visit to Pakistan this week was the first official visit by a Chinese head of state to its western neighbor in nine years. China’s state-run newspaper People’s Daily gave ample front-page coverage to the trip that concluded Tuesday, with four large photographs and the text of […]
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Roboski military outpost became infamous as the location of the 2011 bombing that killed 34 Kurdish youth, whom Turkish fighter pilots had mistaken for PKK rebel troops. Now we see the latest news about Turkish soldiers killing mules, not men, in the same area near the Turkey-Iraq border. According to Ferhat […]
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Eurovision Contestants 2015: Greece
You’ve got to admire Greece and its strategic thinking: Choosing Maria Elena Kyriakou, a Cyprus-born singer, to represent the country is a very clever move indeed, and one that will without a doubt secure Athens a minimum of 12 points from the island. Ha, take that Angela Merkel! Of course, you could also be a […]
SAUDI ARABIA CALLS HALT TO YEMEN STRIKES, THEN STRIKES AGAIN Hopes that the Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Arab countries was ending its “Decisive Storm” campaign in Yemen were short-lived after reports of more airstrikes against Houthi Shia rebels emerged Wednesday morning, less than a day after Riyadh had indicated a halt to attacks. A local […]
PARIS — Opendesk.cc is an original website in more ways than one. First of all, its domain name in .cc is that of the Coco Islands, but also means Creative Commons, a license system used by those who believe in sharing “open source” material. Indeed, this concept of “free material” is also part of what […]
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Rocky Interpretation
The Eagle Mesa, the Sitting Hen, the Totem Pole, the Mittens … The sandstone buttes of Monument Valley lend themselves very well to man’s imagination. This here formation is called the Three Sisters, as it is supposed to resemble a Catholic nun facing her two pupils. To me it looks more like a gigantic “W” […]
They’ve known him from up close, and their insights help explain the mystery of the Russian president’s rise. And, perhaps, what he’ll do next.
On this southern European island, some of the hundreds of corpses have arrived from the latest migrant tragedy. They will be processed and buried without knowing their identity. It is not the first time.
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Eurovison Contestants 2015: Germany
Germany has had a hard time choosing its artist for the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Ann Sophie will have the honor of representing her country, but she was not the singer elected by the audience during the final rounds of Unser Song für Österreich (Our Song for Austria), the German contest to chose who […]
The best-selling novelist is adored by ordinary Chileans (and millions of readers worldwide) but has been shunned by the cultural elite of her native country. She is not the first successful person to get such treatment.
GARABULLI — Two unfinished houses on the sand, facing a Mediterranean sea in shades of grey. So this is where they left from. According to various Libyan sources, the vessel carrying more than 800 people left Libya on what became its fateful crossing between Saturday April 18 and Sunday 19 from this long stretch of […]
MIGRANT BOAT CAPTAIN ARRESTED Italian authorities in the port of Catania said Tuesday they arrested the Tunisian captain of the boat that capsized off the Libyan coast Sunday, killing around 800 people, Rome daily La Repubblica reports. He has been charged with multiple homicide. The captain was arrested along with a Syrian man believed to […]
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Extra! Deadly Attack In Barcelona School
La Vanguardia, April 21, 2015 A deadly attack by a student in a Barcelona high school was the lead story throughout the Spanish press on Tuesday. The headline on the city’s leading daily La Vanguardia reads: “Shock After The Murder Of A Teacher By The Hand Of A Child.” The newspaper reports that the 13-year-old […]
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Mexican Easter
Holy Week is the occasion of many colorful processions around Mexico, like here with this Paseo de los Judas Indultados (“Procession of Judas”) in front of Mexico City“s National Palace. Particular importance is given to Judas Iscariot — and an effigy of the man who betrayed Jesus is usually burned on the night of Easter […]
A German biologist spent two years on a project whose aim was to understand how people with Down syndrome think about the world. She wound up creating a magazine that capitalizes on their intelligence.
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Eurovision Contestants 2015: Georgia
Nina Sublatti, Georgia’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, wrote the song she will perform, “Warrior”, in just three hours in the middle of the night. This seems incredible when you know the lyrics are made up of such beautiful prose as “I’m a warrior/Isolated/World gonna listen to me/Violence/Set the free/Wings are gonna spread […]
-Analysis- TURIN — Thousands of people — calling them people, i.e. men, women and children, is the first step — have died in the Strait of Sicily since 2010. Sunday saw the worst tragedy yet, but it was not the first, and unfortunately it won’t be the last. Many of these people are fleeing the […]
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FULL MOON IN TAURUS – April 20-26
This New Moon encourages professional initiatives. For those working on their own or in the communications sector, from Monday it will already be possible to make new contacts or small movements that will prove useful to your business. Peace of mind comes to love, where recent discussions have been silenced — each in their own […]
EMERGENCY EU SUMMIT AFTER MIGRANT TRAGEDY European Union leaders are holding an emergency summit in Luxembourg to discuss a common response to the ongoing migrant crisis. But the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini warned ahead of the meeting that there was “no easy solution, no magic solution,” the BBC reports. This comes just one […]
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Extra! Mediterranean Tragedy Seen From Italy
La Repubblica, April 20, 2015 “The Migrant Apocalypse.” Rome-based daily La Repubblica, like other newspapers around Italy and the world, featured the deadly accident in the Mediterranean Sea on the front page of its Monday edition. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called the traffic of undocumented immigrants a “new slave trade.” The newspaper featured both […]
Newspapers around the world featured the tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea on the front pages of their Monday edition, after as many as 700 migrants reportedly died when their boat capsized. Sunday’s tragedy is believed to be the worst maritime disaster in Europe since World War II. ITALY FRANCE GERMANY CHILE U.S.
No one knows why the people of Morne-à-l’Eau in Guadeloupe have chosen to bury their dead in these checkered black-and-white tombs — perhaps because both black and white are colors of mourning in different parts of the world? Anyway, the famous cemetery’s design naturally brought me back to my chess-playing days.
A German journalist suggests that the conversation around feminism has taken a terribly wrong turn. First you must ask the right questions.
The UK’s second-largest city has struggled to reinvent itself for the post-Industrial age, but it’s now looking to thrive as a startup hub known as the “Silicon Canal.”
Locals used to cook their food in bubbling pools of steaming groundwater. Now a project is underway to turn it into electricity.
-OpEd- BOGOTA — Once upon a time our cities had physical spaces and institutions that allowed people of different social groups to mix and interact, at least to a degree. Downtown cafés attracted politicians, intellectuals, traders and students. Churches — back when people still attended mass in significant numbers — were another place where people […]
REYKJAVIK — “Welcome to the Bloody Gate …” The solemn announcement is made by Asthor Agustsson, a local tour guide who could easily pass for a Viking warrior. The ten tourists with Agustsson appear awestruck, walking along a path that traverses two abrupt cliffs, covered in snow, with a large frozen lake in the distance. […]