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Month: February 2016
Hip hop performers, flamenco stars and ballet and classical dancers all have a peculiar tenderness for their feet, which aren’t just work tools but extensions of themselves.
An ordinary room, or a dark hut in a rural village. A razor blade bought at a market will suffice, or a sharp knife, or simply a shard of broken glass. Sometimes needle and thread, or the thorns from a wild-growing bush. The women of the family restrain the little girl while a circumciser is […]
HAMBURG — Few will deny that the influx of migrants in recent months, mostly coming from Syria and other Arab countries, has shaken up German society. Reactions have ranged from pride in Germany’s ability to welcome refugees to outrage at the New Year’s Eve attacks against women by mobs of mostly North African men. But […]
SYRIANS FLEE ALEPPO AMID FIGHTING Up to 70,000 Syrians may be heading north to Turkey as a consequence of heavy fighting near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the figure was more likely around 40,000. “Now 10,000 new refugees are waiting in […]
What the World Health Organization has declared a global public health emergency is being met with inept government reaction. The enemy is a mosquito whose existence was once under control.
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Economical Camel
This Indian camel (or dromadaire, as we call them in French) had just been for a refill at the watering trough, drinking its usual 20 gallons at a time. Just so you know, contrary to popular belief, the water is not stored its hump, but in its bloodstream.
Niki Lauda is a Formula 1 legend. After the accident at the German Grand Prix at Nürburgring nearly killed him, Lauda was back in the driver’s seat seven weeks later. In an exclusive interview with Suddeutsche Zeitung, the son of Austrian industrialists speaks about his family’s attempt to derail his career, living with the daily […]
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February 5
Marco Rubio emerges as the international media’s aspirational GOP nominee.
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One Way To Drink It
Drinking from a traditional Catalan porró wine pitcher is rather challenging: Imagine drinking wine from a watering can, and your lips are never supposed to touch the pitcher … ¡Salud!
SYRIA TALKS COLLAPSE Opposing sides in the Syrian conflict have accused each other of being responsible for the collapse of peace talks in Geneva yesterday. French French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that the Syrian government’s offensive near Aleppo, backed by Russia, had “torpedoed the peace efforts.” The head of the Syrian delegation, Bashar al-Jaafari, […]
More than eight years after the beginning of the financial crisis, U.S. banking groups are dominating the financial world more than ever. This leadership has technical, political and legal grounds. But it also relies on one quintessentially American quali
Australia’s controversial policy of diverting immigrants to tiny Pacific Islands dominated the Australian media Thursday, after country’s highest court ruled it was legal for the government to fund and participate in offshore detention. The Sydney Morning Herald juxtaposed a photograph of an immigrant baby with the faces and votes of the High Court’s seven justices […]
Researchers have discovered that a trigger in certain genes is responsible for some people burning calories better than others. In the long run, the finding may help in the fight against obesity.
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February 4
PARIS — When Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made his momentous visit to Paris last week, an unlikely resident of the French capital was watching his every move. Farah Pahlavi, the 77-year-old widow of the Shah of Iran, told the Persian-language Kayhan newspaper she noted the irony “sitting hundreds of meters’ away from the Elysée palace […]
Amid fierce competition in the global film capital, a big movie chain opens an art-house theater in Paris that raises questions about the feasibility of independent cinema itself.
North Korea says it has been granted access to pursue commercial activities on Svalbard, the Arctic archipelago under the sovereignty of Norway but governed by a century-old international treaty. Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ane Lunde told the Oslo-based daily Aftenposten on Wednesday that Norway has not yet been notified of North Korea’s access to the […]
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Is A New Arab Spring Simmering In Algeria?
OUED EL MA — High tensions persist in Algeria, a week after police and security forces violently cracked down on protests in the impoverished central town of Oued El Ma. Algiers-based daily El Watan reports that the violent crackdown laid waste to houses and businesses and left the town largely devastated, and what the daily […]
JAPAN THREATENS NORTH KOREA TO SHOOT DOWN ROCKET Japan deployed destroyers in the Sea of Japan and missile batteries on land today, warning it would shoot down a satellite set to be launched soon by North Korea, The Japan Times reports. Pyongyang told United Nations agencies yesterday it would launch an “earth observation satellite” some […]
A new study shows income and asset inequality in China has reached epic proportions, with the top undertaxed and the bottom at grave social risk because of a lack of civil protection.
Die Tageszeitung, Feb. 3, 2016 “Right is the New Center,” writes Berlin-based daily Die Tageszeitung on the front page of its Wednesday edition, with a picture of a garden gnome giving the middle finger. The German daily, known for its tongue-in-cheek humor, features an analysis of a new political force to be reckoned with in […]
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Peeling Out The Middleman
There was no wholesaler, no packaging and no shipping between producer (these K’iche” vendors, of Mayan descent) and consumer (me) of bananas on the famous Guatemalan market of Chichicastenango.
Health authorities in Cúcuta, northeastern Colombia, are struggling to stop the spread of mosquito-borne infections like zika. And the blame game has begun.
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February 3
BUENOS AIRES — A battle over prized parliamentary office space for Maximo Kirchner, son of former Argentine presidents Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, has become a symbol of the defeated Kirchner forces’ bid to hold on to the last remnants of power. The younger Kirchner won a seat in the December general elections, but his leftist […]
Groping women obviously isn’t acceptable in the West, where decades of protest won more progressive cultural standards. But lost amid the furor is an understanding of refugee men’s humiliation without work, money or a chance of integration
IT’S CRUZ IN IOWA, CLINTON BY A HAIR In a humiliating upset for Donald Trump, evangelical Tea Party hero Sen. Ted Cruz won Iowa’s all-important GOP caucus with 28% of the vote last night, to Trump’s 24%. On the Democratic side, major media outlets are still characterizing the Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders matchup a “virtual tie.” […]
RIO DE JANEIRO — If the much-criticized but equally awaited Rio Summer Olympics have had one advantage, it’s that they have shielded the Rio de Janeiro construction industry from the massive layoffs seen elsewhere in Brazil. But as the August launch of the Games approches, so does the fear that some 35,000 workers are going […]
DAKAR — A cartoon of an early 20th-century Senegalese Muslim leader has sparked a nationwide uproar, with the vignette criticized by civilians and political leaders alike. The Paris-based African news magazine Jeune Afrique published a cartoon of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride Brotherhood, last week in which a passing Westerner asks why the […]
Daily News, February 2, 2016 New York’s Daily News labeled Republican candidate Donald Trump a “dead clown walking” on its photoshopped front page Tuesday, as the New York billionaire came in second after Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucus. “In the end, bombastic bozo Donald Trump’s predictions of an Iowa victory were all a big, […]
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Lord Of The Ring Roads
Before going there, I imagined Iceland“s roads to be in a rather rough state. But its main ring road was actually in good condition: Not a dot was missing from its center line.
The Muslim majority Balkan nation, liberated from Serbia with the help of Western forces in 1999, is no longer immune to the worldwide nexus of radical Islamic forces.
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February 2
-Analysis- PARIS — Defeated, the government doesn’t know what it wants! Defeated, the Socialist Party is again incapable of defining a clear line! Defeated, members of the center-right Republicans party are tearing each other apart as they seek to avoid the “trap” the Socialists are said to have laid for them. The staggering debate ongoing […]
SWEDEN — Stockholm-based daily Aftonbladet has identified and mapped an extensive list of Swedish citizens who have traveled abroad to support the terror group ISIS. “The Swedes Who Wanted To Die For Terror,” reads the front page of Scandinavia’s most read daily. Aftonbladet said it chose to publish the list, complete with names and photos […]
The Seguso family’s passion for glasswork burns brightly, even after 23 generations dedicated to the same painstaking but breathtaking craft.
BOKO HARAM TORCHES VILLAGE Islamist terrorists from Boko Haram razed a small village in northwestern Nigeria, bombing and setting fire to huts in a horrific attack that killed at least 86 people, officials say. A survivor hidden in a tree told AP journalists he could hear children screaming as they burned to death. The six-year […]
Islamist terrorists from Boko Haram razed a small village and two camps nearby Saturday in northwestern Nigeria, bombing and setting fire to huts in an attack that killed at least 86 people, officials say. On its front page Monday, Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust features photos of a child after the attack, and those of charred […]