Worldcrunch
SCOTTSDALE — In this suburb of Phoenix, Carrie Lightfoot chooses her weapon of the day from a compartment stash under her bed. She’s spoiled for choice: six semi-automatic pistols and a revolver, not to mention the AK-47s and shotguns. The scene looks like something from old westerns, but Lightfoot embodies a contemporary America, where more […]
SPOTLIGHT: CHAD, THE TIME OF JUSTICE Since the post-War trials of Nazi leaders in Nuremberg, the world has wrestled with the task of bringing the worst of humanity to account for their crimes. It is a challenge that requires both courage from the individual victims and a commitment to justice by society at large. It […]
MUNICH — For a communal housing project, there are bound to be endless discussions over commons areas before the foundation stone has even been laid. There are also financial questions such as “can I sell the apartment if I have to?” But the most pressing point is just how many people will be living more […]
This monument on Minsk’s Island of Tears is dedicated to the memory of the Belarusian soldiers who died in the 1979-1988 Soviet-Afghan war.
FUWWAH — Stepping off a small boat as it docks along the Nile, Ahmed Khaled, a 22-year-old fisherman, looks dissatisfied. For the fifth time in just three weeks, he had carefully prepared the lures and rigs of his fishing equipment and set out in his sick father’s sailboat — only to come back empty-handed. “The […]
Competing Muslim groups are vying for official recognition from the Italian state — and a share of the country’s “8 per 1,000” taxpayer pie.
BUENOS AIRES — Brian Molina and Maximiliano Fernández, two of Argentina’s emerging rap stars, met in jail. Molina was 11 years old when he wrote his first song. It was May 2005, and he was living at the Borchez de Otamendi home for minors in Buenos Aires. When he performed his song for friends, teachers […]
SPOTLIGHT: IRAN TO BOYCOTT HAJJ PILGRIMAGE Tensions between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are once again threatening to escalate. The two archenemies are already entangled in proxy wars against each other, in Syria and Yemen, and diplomatic ties between the two have been cut since Saudi Arabia executed a Shia cleric at the beginning […]
On the front page of its Monday edition, Düsseldorf-based daily Rheinische Post ran a solemn picture of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande standing side by side at a cemetery in northeastern France, to mark “100 years after” the World War I Battle of Verdun. The Battle of Verdun was one of […]
The choir of traditional French music I was part of was often invited to folk festivals at home and abroad. One time in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, in southern France, I was picked as a judge for a bourrée competition, and ended up watching people dance for hours under a scorching July sun. Needless to say, the dancers […]
-Analysis- PARIS — There is something rotten in Europe. A kind of fetid wind, or foreboding gust, is blowing through. The far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) nearly won the presidential election, the best result for a far-right party since World War II. The FPÖ candidate, Norbert Hofer, might have shown the friendly face of […]
How a former fighter lost both his brothers: one to Bashar Al-Assad’s forces and the other to the Islamic State
A handful of producers are trying to boost the quality of coffee in Colombia, and improve rural lives in the process. They’d also like local consumers to be a bit more discerning.
France has long been an innovator in building materials, from the steel splendor of the Eiffel Tower to concrete to surprisingly resistant wood. Environmental factors hold sway.
A campaign to see Buddhism become the country’s official religion has exposed an ugly rift that could have serious consequences for the Muslim minority.
MUNICH — Rick Henderson, a 56-year-old American, took out his mobile phone to show a blurred, 10-second clip from BBC of a young woman in France who is surrounded by men, and is being groped from all sides. “They are like wolves,” said Henderson, a self-defense trainer in Germany, adding that “women should never be […]
BEIJING — Much has been made recently about Chinese real estate investors, who spend huge sums snapping up foreign property. Tencent Finance, a Chinese online magazine, published a report on the phenomenon this week, in an article titled: “Those Countries Taken Over By Chinese Property Speculators.” Here’s a breakdown. South Korea: South Korea‘s geographical proximity […]
A troubling tale of how the European Commision stalled the regulation of potentially cancer causing chemicals
SPOTLIGHT: BREXIT LANDS IN JAPAN Why would Shinzo Abe care what British voters think about Europe? The Japanese Prime Minister, currently hosting the G7 summit, joined leaders of the world’s other top economic powers in a surprise declaration today to urge the UK to vote to remain in the European Union in next month’s so-called […]
Not only is the Swayambhunath shrine near Kathmandu fascinating, it’s also swarming with monkeys — some more pious than others.
This African country produces more refugees per capita than any other. But there is method to the madness: Gambia’s dictator systematically banishes people and refuses to accept repatriation agreements. And he receives European funds for his services.
Since the conflict in Ukraine, Western military leaders are operating under the assumption that an armed conflict with Vladimir Putin’s Russia will eventually happen. Signs of tension are everywhere.
SPOTLIGHT: SHOULD OBAMA APOLOGIZE IN HIROSHIMA? When Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima tomorrow, the ceremony will include hibakusha, survivors of history’s only nuclear attacks. No doubt, each victim of the 1945 bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will have their own expectations of the American […]
The legacy of our time will not be our literary or architectural monuments, but all the plastic trash we leave to poison the seas and choke our future. Fortunately, change is in the air.
This week, President Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city that the United States nearly destroyed with a nuclear bomb in 1945. While the bombing is estimated to have killed as many as 150,000 people, Obama is not expected to apologize during his visit. It’s reasonable to ask, after more than 70 years, why not apologize for Hiroshima? One well-worn argument is that the bombing of the city (and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki that followed) was morally justifiable as it was the quickest way to end World War II — a conflict […]
Denmark, much like the Netherlands, is mostly flat. That helps explains why cycling has been the country’s transportation mode of choice for decades.
Too many Muslims keep to themselves, speak poor German and pass on their problems to the next generation. They harm themselves and therefore the rest of society.
Anyone can make and sell a colorful, cube-shaped 3-D brainteaser with six twisting faces covered by nine square stickers — just don’t call it a Rubik’s Cube. The Luxembourg-based European Union Court of Justice weighed in Wednesday on an intellectual property case that has puzzled Europeans for years, with a formal recommendation that “shapes with […]
OCUMARE — It’s midday on this Thursday, and hundreds of people are squeezing inside a supermarket in Ocumare, a poor city about an hour’s drive south of Caracas. Armed police officers are allowing people in, but just a few at a time, infuriating the multitude massed outside since dawn to buy corn flour at a […]
The far-right candidate may have lost the Austrian presidential election in the end, but the campaign has already changed the country for the worse.
SPOTLIGHT: PRIVATE LIVES, PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS A little Internet brush fire is spreading in China after a Beijing state-run newspaper published a long article saying that Taiwan’s new president Tsai Ing-wen is unfit for office because she is neither married nor a mother. Here’s a sample: “As a single female politician, she does not have the […]
While most Western prisons operate under strict surveillance, the Filipino penitentiary system functions through an unusual combination of prisoner self-management and gang oversight.