Folha de S. Paulo, Nov. 24, 2015 Brazil is facing its greatest ecological disaster in memory after a huge wave of mud, caused by the Nov. 5 collapse of a dam at an iron ore mine, has reached the ocean, pouring its toxic waste into the Atlantic, Folha de S. Paulo reports. The startling image […]
Month: November 2015
TURKEY SHOOTS DOWN RUSSIAN JET Two Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane this morning near the Syrian border after the Turkish military repeated warnings about airspace violations. This is the first time the armed forces of a NATO member shot down a Russian or Soviet aircraft since the 1950s, Reuters reports. The Turkish military […]
ISIS has banned the use of newly pressed 500 and 1,000 Syrian pound notes. Some fear its the start of a currency switch, though others say it’s a way for some to profit on money exchanges.
More consumer spending in the short term, and a demographic correction over time, but China’s loosening of its birth policies may be most powerful as a symbol.
Abort until a son is born. Having a girl is bad news in China and India, where female fetuses are too often aborted on purpose. But, according to a new German documentary, even Europe is not free of the horrid practice sometimes called “gendercide.” Die Welt reports that the documentary entitled So Long As It’s […]
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Russia Rebuilt
The village of Mandrogi, by the Svir River, is a tourist destination built in 1996 at the site of a village destroyed in World War II. The buildings, recreated in the traditional northern Russian style, house craft workshops and retail shops.
LONDON — What’s a politician most afraid of? British Premier Harold Macmillan’s famous answer to the journalist’s question is more relevant than ever: “Events, dear boy, events.” If you add the Paris death toll to the number of victims who died after ISIS bombed a Russian plane over the Sinai, that’s 353. And the previous […]
Argentina’s next president, the center-right Mauricio Macri, must be deft in reforming the economy of a society that has moved beyond a developmental stage, to one that sees itself as “at risk.”
LOCKDOWN, MANHUNT CONTINUE IN BRUSSELS The terror threat In the Belgian capital of Brussels remains at its maximum level, with the city entering its third consecutive day under lockdown, Le Soir reports. Schools, universities and most public transportation are closed, as the police continue to hunt suspect Salah Abdeslam, believed to have participated in the […]
German carmaker Audi has commissioned Etogas Ltd. to build the planet’s first power-to-gas plant to fuel cars with transformed wind and solar energy. Could this “windgas” technology make today’s electric cars obsolete?
BUENOS AIRES — Mauricio Macri’s victory in Argentina’s presidential election puts an “end to 12 consecutive years of Kirchner government,” the Buenos Aires-based daily La Nacion wrote in its Monday edition. On Sunday, Macri, the 56-year-old mayor of Buenos Aires, defeated his rival Daniel Scioli by some 51.5% to 48.5% in the second-round runoff. Scioli, […]
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Traditions On TV
Singing and dancing groups from all over the world, including the choir I conducted at the time, met in Middlesbrough, northern England, for the Teesside International Eisteddfod — a folk traditions festival so prestigious it was broadcast on the BBC.
Bewildering technology and savage capitalism fuels desperation and hatred against the West. War was declared a long time ago, and the underdeveloped world are the primary victims.
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On This Day – November 23
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Runners Of The World, Get Lost!
A feet-up mini manifesto deploring the modern (and very public) obsession with the sport of running. I’ll walk, thank you…
NEW YORK — French President Francois Hollande pledged a “pitiless” war on ISIS after Friday’s Paris massacre. Russian President Vladimir Putin says his nation is focused on “finding and punishing the perpetrators” who downed a Russian passenger jet over Egypt. U.S. President Barack Obama says the goal is to “degrade and ultimately destroy this barbaric terrorist organization.” How? That’s the question none of these men seems willing to answer. Here’s one idea that, while not optimal militarily, might hedge the political risk: Form a broad alliance, akin to the one that pushed Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in 1991, […]
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On This Day – November 22
Long after the days of Pablo Escobar and cocaine cartels, Colombia has regained the crown as world’s No. 1 producer of coca. It gives further urgency that FARC-government peace talks succeed.
In the wake of wanton terror, psychology replaces practically everything, from social life to and information. Emotion is now political — and strategic.
-Analysis- PARIS — The Nov. 13 attacks that saw jihadists slaughter at least 129 people in Paris raise two crucial questions: Who ordered these attacks? And who carried them out? The answer to the first is ISIS, the so-called Islamic State that spreads terror, slaughters Muslims and non-Muslims, destroys treasured monuments inherited from centuries and […]
Monica Maggioni, head of Italy’s Rai news service, recounts her meeting this week with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad inside his private Damascus villa: “He looks nothing like the defeated leaders of this era.”
An in-depth interview with the 45-year-old billionaire who has developed groundbreaking lens and smart-screen technology. Business, she says, is about distinguishing between rice pots and hotels.
JIHADISTS ATTACK MALI HOTEL Ten gunmen screaming “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greater”) stormed the luxurious Radisson Blu Hotel this morning in the Mali capital of Bamako, initially taking at least 140 guests and 30 staff members hostage, Reuters reports. Eighty hostages have since been freed, but citing an unnamed UN official, CNN reports that at […]
PARIS — One week after the Paris terrorist attacks that killed at least 129, here are some of the magazine covers from France and other countries around the world: FRANCE “How to defeat ISIS” — L’Obs “Our war” — Le Point “To souls, citizens” A reference to the French national anthem “La Marseillaise“ — Courrier […]
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Enough Rum For Everyone
On the French island of Martinique, the La Mauny distillery is one of the biggest in the Lesser Antilles. About 30,000 tons of sugarcane are ground there every year, to produce three million liters of rum. Cheers!
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On This Day – November 20
WASHINGTON — In a pair of public appearances this week, CIA Director John O. Brennan made clear that he blames leaks by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden for enabling terrorists to evade detection. “Because of a number of unauthorized disclosures, and a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to […]
After the attacks in Paris, Marc Simoncini, the founder of Meetic, asked French entrepreneurs living abroad, sometimes for fiscal reasons, to come back to France.
PARIS — The number of young French people applying to join the army since the Nov. 13 attacks has tripled. After first refraining from making these figures public during the three-day period of national mourning, the French Defense Ministry told Le Monde Thursday it had received 1,500 applications per day since Friday, compared to 500 […]
ZAGREB — The firepower displayed in Friday’s attacks in Paris, including multiple explosive devices and at least five Kalashnikovs, raises the inevitable question: Where do the terrorists’ weapons come from? Terror investigators and crime experts say the most likely source are Balkan countries, a vestige of the wars that consumed the region through much of […]
The power of “Big Tobacco” in a state-run industry in China is surprisingly similar to the hold that U.S. cigarette makers long enjoyed. Indeed, Chinese anti-smoking advocates are decades behind Western counterparts.
BELGIAN POLICE RAIDS IN BRUSSELS Belgian police conducted a series of raids in Brussels today to find information related to one of the Paris suicide bombers and also arrested someone during a separate house search, Reuters reports. FRENCH PM WARNS OF POSSIBLE CHEMICAL ATTACK ISIS could attempt chemical attacks in France and other European countries, […]
-OpEd- ANTALYA — Opportunism may be one of the accepted facts of life in foreign policy, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. The Turkish government is busy right now trying to make the most of two pieces of the Syrian crisis that have come to the fore: The recent flood of refugees to […]
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French Daily: ‘Face Of Terror’ Front Page
Libération, Nov. 19, 2015 “Abdelhamid Abaaoud, The Face Of Terror” writes French daily Libération on its Thursday front page, as French experts were trying to determine whether the suspected mastermind of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks was killed in a Wednesday police raid on a terrorist lair. At least two individuals were killed in the […]
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We’re All Dancing, We’re All Dancing
There’s a famous nursery rhyme about the bridge of Avignon, in southern France, that goes: Sur le Pont d’Avignon L’on y danse, l’on y danse Sur le Pont d’Avignon L’on y danse tous en rond (On the bridge of Avignon We’re all dancing, we’re all dancing On the bridge of Avignon We’re all dancing in […]
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On This Day – November 19
Dismissed and wooed as so-called millennials, a young French generation supplied both the targets and perpetrators of the Paris attack. Simple answers are nowhere to be found, though maybe this label will stick.
PARIS — France’s intelligence services no longer rule out what not so long ago seemed unthinkable: the emergence on its territory of a “Lebanon-like” terrorism which would see suicide bombs replaced one day by the deadliest of operational modes — truck or car bombings, possibly activated remotely. “We have to accept the reality,” a well-informed […]
Most of the many thousands of sex workers in Thailand walk the streets looking for clients. But one group of women wanted a safe home base, so they opened a bar where they can entertain clients.
FRENCH POLICE LAUNCH BLITZ, TWO DEAD Photo: Ying Qiang/Xinhua/ZUMA At least two suspected terrorists died and seven others were arrested in a large-scale French police operation early Wednesday in the rugged Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. The location of the raid is not far from the Stade de France stadium where three jihadists blew themselves up […]