This one is for the History books: Sarajevo would be almost entirely destroyed during the Bosnian war some 20 years after I took this picture.
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So Long Sarajevo
Month: July 2015
Can bug by-products help satisfy the world’s growing appetite for animal proteins? The French founders of Ynsect think so.
“Nightmare For Our City” reads Friday’s front page of the Chattanooga Times Free Press from the Tennessee city of 173,000 after Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez, a 24-year-old man, killed four Marines and wounded two other people in a shooting at a military recruitment center and a reserve center. Abdulazeez was killed in a shootout with local […]
Photo: Arapahoe Co. Sheriff’s Department/ZUMAPRESS GREEK BAILOUT: NEW FUNDING, GERMAN ANGST The European Central Bank (ECB) is set to increase its aid to Greek banks by 900 million euros for a week, after the Greek parliament approved a new bailout program. MOTIVE UNCLEAR FOR KILLER OF 4 MARINES FBI officials said the motive of the […]
PARIS — Lance Armstrong has shown again he doesn’t know how to say he’s sorry (in any language), and clearly doesn’t know when he’s not bienvenu. The “welcome” has indeed been overwhelmingly nasty and negative for a much-hyped ride just two years after reluctantly admitting to doping, and stripped of his record seven Tour de […]
Under cover of darkness, right-wing militias felled a massive Lenin statue in Sloviansk. Now there’s talk of selling it to finance reconstruction in the war-damaged city.
“Wounded, He Continues Until Further Notice,” writes left-leaning Greek daily Efimerida ton Syntakton on the front-page headline of its Thursday edition after the Greek parliament approved a package of tough measures leading a third bailout deal. The he in question is Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who won a bittersweet approval late Wednesday of the […]
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had held one of the toughest lines against Tehran. He describes the quest for “efficient compromises for complex issues.”
Photo: Natsuki Sakai/ZUMA GREECE APPROVES BAILOUT, BUT TSIPRAS IN TROUBLE Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras won a bittersweet approval late yesterday of a package of tough measures — including an increase in sales tax and a pension shakeup — that will make a third bailout of the ailing country possible. But 38 members of his […]
Governments around the world — democracies and dictatorships alike — often change school textbooks and courses to fit their own agendas. From US history to Syrian schoolchildren, here are some textbook controversies in the news recently: EGYPT: TEXTBOOK REVOLUTION Egyptian news site Mada Masr reports that the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and […]
After a devastating leak and allegations of working with oppressive regimes, the Milan technology firm’s founder responds to the critics.
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Bamboo Orchestra
Having myself long been the conductor of a choir, it was only natural that I should snap a picture of this adorable orchestra of bamboo flutes in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Woefully under-regulated and sometimes abjectly illegal, waste incineration plants across China are raising resident hackles and, worse, releasing unknown levels of toxins into the air.
The language of the Nazis will now be offered as an official course in public high schools.
PARIS — With celebrations from the streets to social media, Iranians have broadly welcomed Tuesday’s deal between their country and the six major world powers to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of international economic sanctions. Still, there are differing views about how the accord will actually affect the lives of the […]
Photo: Ahmad Halabisaz/ZUMA IMF URGES MORE GREEK DEBT RELIEF The Eurozone must “go well beyond what has been under consideration to date” to relieve Greek debt, and it could even eventually forgive a part of it, IMF officials wrote in a report obtained by Reuters.
Athens must make some painful changes to survive and preserve its Eurozone membership. But the monetary pact needs to be fundamentally changed.
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Where The Sun Never Sets
As strange as it sounds, this daytime photo could very well have been taken at night: My wife and I were on our way back from Norway“s North Cape, where we watched the midnight sun go down, flirt with the horizon, and go back up.
Belarus will hold presidential elections in October, and President Alexander Lukashenko will face Tatiana Karatkevich, the first-ever female candidate. That is, of course, unless the all-powerful ruler changes his mind.
In the tent cities that arose after the earthquakes, women are learning to protect themselves from sexual assault and violence in the camps.
A timeline of a standoff that long seemed destined to continue, or worse.
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Iran Deal, Greek Doubts, Part-Time Prince
HISTORIC DEAL INKED ON IRAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM After years of on-again, off-again negotiations, Iran and six world powers agreed Tuesday to a deal to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for an end to crippling economic sanctions. Together with five negotiating partners, Russia, China, France, UK and Germany, American diplomats had demanded a framework […]
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In The Name
If, like me, you believe in the truth of Latin roots, we can agree that the beautiful Corsican town of Bonifacio was aptly named: It means “well-fated.”
BUENOS AIRES — Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the 19th century activist and intellectual who went on to be Argentina’s seventh president, was a firm believer in the education. “May the entire Republic be a school,” he famously said. Sarmiento understood how education and the knowledge people gain from it can contribute to social equality. Little did […]
Overrun with prisoners sentenced for their roles in the country’s 1994 genocide, Rwanda had to find a way to deal with its massive prison waste and reduce energy costs. It managed both with a biogas system.
Venezuela, facing economic turmoil and the challenge of upcoming legislative elections, is inflaming a centuries-old border dispute with Guyana.
PARIS — After a marathon 15-hour meeting, Greece and the 18 other Eurozone members finally reached an agreement to avoid a “Grexit.” The Greeks will keep the euro and receive financial support in exchange for implementing a stringent program of reforms by Wednesday at the latest. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras welcomed the deal which […]
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Back On The Horse
Le petit-fils (grandson) is back from his vacation through seven states in the southeastern United States. He tells me that the horse head hitching posts I saw in New Orleans 23 years ago are still there — though they’re not used by the innumerable carriage tours that have now invaded the city’s French Quarter.
More men than ever do housework and care for kids. But when comparing household behavior of top male and female executives, a German study shows stark differences between the sexes remain.
GREXIT AVERTED, TSIPRAS IN TROUBLE AT HOME After a 15-hour negotiation that represented the longest European summit meeting in history, Greece and its EU partners finally reached a unanimous agreement to avoid a “Grexit” and keep the euro in Greece. European Council President Donald Tusk announced the success of the marathon negotiations this morning in […]
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Extra! La Razon On Chapo Prison Tunnel
La Razon de Mexico, July 13 “He left by this hole,” reads the front page of La Razon de Mexico“s Monday edition, a day after Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman’s escaped for the second time from a Âmaximum security prison. Guzman — who already escaped from another Mexican maximum security prison in 2001, […]
BEIJING — For Yair Sarussi, chairman of Israel’s Bank Hapoalim, China is getting closer by the day. “You can feel the Chinese everywhere,” he told Calcalist. “Almost every week I meet three or four Chinese companies interested to come to Israel.” The Chinese presence is felt mainly in Israel’s high-tech sector — with investment in […]
QAMISHLI — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad“s smiling face beams down from a large billboard on the central artery of Qamishli, a city in northeast Syria. But further down the road towards the city’s eastern suburbs, what looks imposingly over the avenue is a portrait of a triumphant-looking Abdullah Ocalan, the anointed leader of Turkey’s Kurdish […]
CARUARU — For months now, water taps in some of northeastern Brazil’s cities have been running dry. Not during certain hours of the day. Or certain days of the week. But all the time. Morning and night. Day after day, with the exception of just two days per month. And it’s not just residents being […]
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On Being Transgender In Egypt
CAIRO — Aisha was sleeping when her apartment was raided. She and three other friends had just moved in when the police came by asking if they had weapons or anything illegal. They said no, and were asked for their identity cards. Aisha and her friends are transgender women, but their identity cards say they […]
MOSCOW — Alexander Prokhanov loves to play the bad guy. But he’s no character actor. He is editor-in-chief, since its founding in 1993, of Zavtra (Tomorrow), a Russian ultra-nationalist newspaper that is fiercely anti-Western and anti-American, as well as clearly anti-Semitic and homophobic. In his mess of an office, Prokhanov, 77, invites us to sit […]
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Dairy In China, A Matter Of Distrust
BEIJING — In recent years, we have seen numerous Chinese dairy firms sign cooperation deals with and make acquisitions of foreign dairy companies. Such a strategy has thus helped introduce advanced technology into the Chinese market, and offer the advantages of low-priced international milk resources that allows China to compete against foreign brands’ milk-powder baby […]
SALINAS DEL REY — An endangered giant sea turtle has been found dead in Salinas del Rey in northern Colombia, having somehow traveled all the way from a zoo in Gainesville, Florida. The Colombian daily El Heraldo reported that the leatherback sea turtle, which appears to have died before reaching land, had been spotted by […]
From Facebook to Google, Baidu to VKontakte, the world’s biggest technology companies talk about their singular dedication to their users. Yet the road to becoming a global tech titan is inevitably lined with hard choices and conflicts of interest. Here are five prominent controversies where companies are accused of ceding to questionable demands of the […]
From Athens’ corrupt and radical politicians to the staid bankers and diplomats of Brussels, all are to blame for the crisis in Greece. An un-lesson for modern politics.