India accounts for 20% of the world’s infant mortalities, and parents in this male-dominated society often reject newborn daughters. A milk bank in Udaipur helps to prevent the deaths of premature babies and to feed those abandoned at birth.
Month: August 2015
Arguments for blocking the car service Uber are based exclusively on the fact that it brings unwelcome competition to cab drivers, and not at all on the welfare of drivers and passengers.
Remember Gattaca? The superb film describes the contrasting fates of two brothers, one of whom was genetically optimized at birth. A few years later, in another movie, The Island, a community of prisoners discovers one day they are nothing but clones of super-privileged people and that their sole purpose is to provide fresh organs as […]
This week, we shine the spotlight on India: P FOR PICHAI Google’s surprise announcement that it was restructuring its businesses under a new parent company called Alphabet was a significant boost to India’s national pride, with much of the media coverage focused on Google’s new CEO, Indian-born Sundar Pichai. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick […]
This week’s currency setbacks for the world’s second-largest economy have created a financial ripple effect across the globe, with stock market nosedives and raw material prices dropping to dangerously low levels.
Hundreds of thousands of Asian university graduates in both the the U.S. and China are opting for startups and business ventures, not finance or industries, as the path to riches.
GREECE APPROVES THIRD BAILOUT After what the newspaper Kathimerini describes as “a tempestuous night of debate,” Greek lawmakers this morning approved the deal reached with international lenders for a third Greek bailout. It will now go to the Eurozone’s finance ministers, who are due to meet later today, and all eyes will focus on the […]
LlanfairÂpwllgwyngyllÂgogeryÂchwyrnÂdrobwllÂllanÂtysilioÂgogoÂgoch — or Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, for “short.” What looks like an authentic Welsh name (it means “Saint Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool and the Church of Saint Tysilio of the red cave”) is actually a 1860s publicity stunt meant to attract tourists to this village on the island […]
Videos and pictures showing female police officers violently reprimanding alleged harassers over the Eid holiday weekend in Egypt drew both praise and scorn.
What did Pompeii look like before Mount Vesuvius erupted? And what was on the famous Herculaneum scrolls? Modern technology can provide answers.
TEL AVIV — Despite its ongoing problems, the Palestinian economy has recently shown significant signs of recovery. It’s particularly evident after a period of deep recession, economist Yitzhak Gal notes in an article published by a Tel Aviv University journal. The Palestinian Authority has faced the threat of collapse and, with it, the destruction of […]
ISIS CLAIMS BAGHDAD ATTACK ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack in Baghdad that killed at least 76 people and wounded 212 this morning. A refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up inside the popular Jamila food market in Sadr City, a predominantly Shia neighborhood. It represents one of the biggest acts of violence in […]
Corriere della Sera, Aug. 13, 2015 The Italian navy rescued 52 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea Tuesday after a rubber dinghy sank. Spotted by a navy helicopter, the vessel appeared to be deflating and a ship rushed to the scene, rescuing the migrants. The survivors, who were taken to Lampedusa island, said that there had […]
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Aesthetic Canon
My 4-year-old daughter and my father could not look more 1960s if they tried, posing by — and on — a cannon on the square in front of the Prince’s Palace of Monaco.
STUTTGART — Experts are hailing it as a global novelty, and inventors are celebrating it as the “innovation of an era.” The new euro coins that will be released in spring 2016 have a ring of blue plastic minted into them, and the oddity is expected to make them a desirable export. Coins are typically […]
ISLAM QALA — It’s almost midday when, under a blazing sun, the first bus transporting Afghans expelled from Iran arrives. At the border crossing of Islam Qala, in western Afghanistan and 460 miles from the capital Kabul, two metal sentry boxes are built opposite one another. Over one flaps the Iranian flag, on the other […]
A Turkish journalist travels with an Alawite fixer to Damascus to understand what life is like in the Syrian capital as war in the country rages. Life goes on, but it’s not all grim.
BOGOTA — Spanglish: Is it a dialect? Ghetto talk? Whatever else it may be, Spanglish is now the brazen, no-nonsense fruit of two languages and cultures coexisting in the United States. It may sound a little crazy at times. For example, walking in a Latino area of New York one day, I saw a notice […]
CHINA DEVALUES YUAN AGAIN China’s central bank stunned global markets by cutting the yuan’s value against the dollar for a second day in a row, this time by 1.6% after deciding on a 1.9% devaluation Tuesday. It’s yet more evidence that the country’s economy may be in a worse state than the government claims. As […]
MINGORA — At 13, Hadiqa Bashir is herself just a child, but she’s already working to save girls from child marriage in rural Pakistan. Though it’s illegal in Pakistan, marrying young children to much older men is still widely practiced in the Swat Valley. Visiting Hadiqa Bashir today is a young girl, Shabana, who is with her mother. A white gauze covers her nose, and she explains the horrific reason why. “My mother-in-law asked my husband to complete his job today and she left the house,” Shabana says. “I had my young son with me, and my husband asked his […]
Clarin, Aug. 12, 2015 “Six municipalities under water and 20,000 affected in the province,” Argentine daily Clarin writes on the front page of its Wednesday edition, alongside a picture of people forced to canoe their way around the city of Salto, after heavy weekend rains caused severe floods in the Buenos Aires area. The cities […]
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Mauritian Melody
This group of Mauritian musicians were having a picnic on the beach, in the ocean breeze, to the sounds of the ravanne goatskin drum and the triangle — traditional instruments of the Séga genre.
A popular hot spot for European summer vacationers, the Greek island of Kos is now also a prime destination for undocumented immigrants from places like Syria and Pakistan.
With the recent Iran and Greece agreements, diplomacy has regained its prior glory. Three former diplomats say negotiation is all about balancing tenacity and flexibility.
Slow food, slow journalism, slow photography … Just when the world seemed to be getting faster and faster, some folks decided to cool things down. The Italians were the first to put on the brakes when a protest against the opening of a (fast food) McDonald’s in Rome, in 1986, morphed into the Slow Food […]
GOOGLE ANNOUNCES MAJOR SHAKEUP Google, arguably the most recognizable company in the world, has announced a surprising rebranding in which all of its business entities will exist under a new parent company called Alphabet. As part of the restructuring, Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai will become CEO of Google, and company founder Larry Page […]
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Extra! Forest Fires Rage In Portugal
Forest fires have been raging in Portugal for several days now. Tuesday’s headline in the newspaper Público reports that they have “destroyed nine thousand hectares in the last 10 days.” On Saturday the biggest fire of the year so far scorched Villa Nova de Cerveira and Monca in the northern district of Viana do Castelo. […]
The six Nigerian women had each risked their lives like so many crossing the Mediterranean. When they found each other in church in northern Italy, they discovered they had something else in common.
On our way from Lima to the world’s highest navigable body of water, Lake Titicaca in the Andes, we stopped in Arequipa and enjoyed walking in the arcade beneath the Municipalidad, near the Plaza de Armas. We were advised to spend a day or two in the city before heading higher into the mountains so […]
One of the poorest countries in the world is nevertheless setting big goals for itself and looking to richer countries for help. A 10-year, $70 billion plan aims to produce clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Til Schweiger may be Germany’s most popular actor-director, but right now he’s flat in the middle of the real-life, hot-button political issue of the day: immigration.
CAIRO — Etisalat, the smallest of Egypt’s three telecom companies, has gone no-holds-barred in its latest challenge to Vodaphone, “borrowing” one of the latter’s former mascots, a genie, to take several not-so-subtle jabs at the market leader’s star-studded, sing-songy Ramadan ad. In the Etisalat spot, a narrator asks the genie (who’s all decked out in […]
GUNFIRE AT FERGUSON ANNIVERSARY MARCH Police officers in Ferguson, Mo., shot and wounded a young man who reportedly fired his gun at them during an otherwise peaceful protest march to commemorate Sunday’s one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death at the hands of officer Darren Wilson. The suspect, who reportedly unleashed a “remarkable amount of gunfire,” […]
We can now have sexual relations without making contact with other humans. But do the 3D helmets, connected devices and animated dolls represent a real sexual revolution, or are they just sophisticated toys?
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Portugal In China
In central China’s Xi’an, we spent a memorable evening at a fancy hotel listening to traditional Chinese music. (The lady in the foreground was playing the guzheng, the one in the back the pipa). But what I remember most had nothing to do with the music: We were sitting next to Portugal’s then-President Mario Soares, […]
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Extra! Ferguson’s ‘Painful Year’
St. Louis-Post Dispatch, Aug. 9, 2015 “A Painful Year,” the headline in Sunday’s front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reads, above a photo of Michael Brown Sr. pausing after a five-mile march from his son’s memorial in Ferguson, Mo. The otherwise peaceful protest march to commemorate Sunday’s one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death at […]
Concepcion is the first place in Colombia where the vast majority of transactions involve electronic banking via mobile phones, staying well ahead of even northern Europe.
Thousands of asylum seekers are passing through the small Balkan nation on their way to the European Union, but the short journey is far more arduous than it seems.
Though now a bonafide global power, the Chinese mentality still struggles with questions of self-confidence. It’s time for the ex “Sick Man of Asia” to embody its true strength.
KATHMANDU — It’s not yet 7 a.m., but already there are tens of thousands of people gathered along the banks of the Bagmati river that runs through Kathmandu. This is the 100th week of an informal campaign to clean up the vital waterway. “In the world, we are proud of Mount Everest, and we are just as ashamed of our Bagmati River,” Bhanu Sharma, one of the leaders of campaign, says over a loud speaker. “It’s our responsibility to save Bagmati and help rid the country of the shame of this polluted river.” 

The crowd joins hands. Participants include senior […]