A female Islamist member of Parliament and an alternative-minded blogger have very different ideas about the role of religion in post-Revolution Tunisia.
Month: May 2016
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Pope Francis: No Fear Of Islam In Europe
La Croix, May 17, 2016 VATICAN CITY — In a rare interview, Pope Francis told French Catholic daily La Croix that there is no “fear of Islam” in Europe, and that the freedom to practice religion must be protected “not outside, but inside society.” The wide-ranging interview, published Tuesday, covered the Pope’s views on the […]
SPOTLIGHT: TRUMP AND THE ‘SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP’ It was 1946 when Winston Churchill coined the term “special relationship” to describe the uniquely close ties between the U.S. and UK: diplomatic, military, cultural, linguistic, economic… and yes, historic. The transatlantic amity dates back to the mid-19th century, when the two countries — one the world’s dominant empire, […]
A Sao Paulo cleaning lady turned to a group of architects in hopes of sprucing up her ramshackle home. The result was a prize-winning revamp that challenges conventional ideas about cost and aesthetics.
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Parrot Wants A Kiss — Video Quote Of The Day
Uber may have global ambitions, but the Mexican city of Guadalajara offers an example of how local resourcefulness can still hard to beat. By welding on extra features, including passenger seats, some Guadalajara entrepreneurs are turning electric rickshaws and scooters brought in from India and Italy into bike taxis that are giving Uber a run […]
BERLIN — Shortly after World War II ended, American cameramen filmed people living in Berlin. Technicolor, an expensive proposition at the time, showed people on the streets, apparently happy to have survived. The film shows the joyful faces of people, some sunbathing, others swimming in the river. But the footage is telling from what is […]
Are there clues to Donald Trump’s rise in the celluloid figure of Citizen Kane? It may be that the Orson Welles classic also points to the limits of the billionaire candidate.
SPOTLIGHT: CHINA’S SILENT ANNIVERSARY It was 50 years ago today that the Chinese Communist Party and its leader Mao Zedong released a circular that was bound to unleash a decade of violence that would kill more than 1.5 million people. It would come to be known as the Cultural Revolution, and the history books consider […]
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A Libyan Family’s Quiet Resilience
MISRATA — The weather is fair as the moon hangs over a family home in Misrata. The al-Rufai’s tiled courtyard, with its table and plastic chairs, and a vine shoot wrapped around the arbor, feels strangely peaceful this evening. Inside a dismantled Libya, the enclosure is an unexpected oasis, a welcome safe-haven against the chaos. […]
American forensics researchers place human corpses in so-called “body farms” to study their decomposition for a variety of sometimes surprising reasons.
NEW DELHI — The journalists gathered for an editorial meeting at their newspaper in the Indian capital. Their work includes hard-hitting reportage and investigative scoops that other publications in the country followed up on. The group of journalists are unlike most others. They live on the streets. And they are all under the age of 18. Their paper, a New Dehlhi monthly called Balaknama or ‘Voice of Children,’ publishes stories of children living and working on the streets. Exploring topics such as child sexual abuse, child labor and police brutality, the newspaper has doubled in size from its original four […]
PARIS — Imagine securing a loan in just minutes — without having to visit a bank, fill out complicated paperwork, sit down with a loan officer. What if it could all be done with a few clicks on a smartphone? For some consumers and small businesses in the United States, China, the Philippines, Mexico and […]
What has become of the generation of people born in 1946? Le Temps‘ Joëlle Kuntz ponders the past seven decades and the findings of a watershed study of her age group.
An exhibition currently underway at Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau museum showcases 300 artifacts from the ancient Mayan civilization.
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Call For A Fight — Video Quote Of The Day
-OpEd- PARIS — A sex scandal is again shaking up politics and media in France. Denis Baupin, a a Green Party member and vice president of the National Assembly, who also happens to be husband to the current housing minister, is being investigated after accusations that he harassed many women, including colleagues and elected officials, […]
SPOTLIGHT: FACEBOOK, POWER + HEAT By virtually any measure, Facebook appears to be an unstoppable force of both business and culture dominance. Not only has quarterly income nearly tripled to $1.5 billion, but Mark Zuckerberg’s company can now boast that its record 1.65 billion users spend an average of 50 minutes a day on the […]
Borrowing techniques developed by U.S. architect Michael Reynolds, a group of Uruguayan amateurs turned piles of trash into an innovative and one-of-a-kind education center.
-Analysis- BEIJING — An in-depth report recently published by this newspaper, titled Robot Industry Development, Great Leap Forward-Style depicted the sector’s troubling situation in China. The article, needless to say, triggered plenty of discussion. According to Caixin’s investigative data, China currently has as many as 800 robot enterprises, although this statistic already excludes those which […]
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Luxembourg, From Tax Shelter to Animal Haven
LUXEMBOURG — This tiny country has long been known for its unsavory status as a tax haven. But now Luxembourg may be on its way to forging a new title: as animal rights capital of the world. A new government bill aims to protect the “security and dignity” of animals, and recognizes that they possess […]
-Analysis- MUNICH — Where is Muammar Gaddafi’s money? Rebels pulled the Libyan dictator from a sewage pipe in his hometown of Sirte on October 20, 2011. He was bleeding from his head, and rebels and bystanders joined in beating him and clubbing his groin with a bayonet. Shortly thereafter, this bird of paradise among African […]
SPOTLIGHT: DEATH IN IRAQ As the attacks in Paris and Brussels have shown, ISIS is a very real threat to daily life in the West. But as unacceptable as the toll paid by innocent European victims may be, it’s always worth remembering who bears the brunt of Islamic terrorism: innocent Muslims. The latest case is […]
From the poor to the pretty rich, women are still stuck with the lion’s share of housework and child-rearing. By one estimate, if each hour of domestic work were paid at minimum wage, it would total 33% of France’s GDP.
Maxima Acuna, an illiterate farmer in the northern Peruvian region of Cajamarca, faced years of litigation — and police beatings — to protect her property from the bulldozing and toxic dumping of a US-based mining firm.
Why was President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s supposed ally forced out of the Prime Minister post? The answer lies in the particular ambitions of this Turkish leader.
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Honest Art — Video Quote Of The Day
SPOTLIGHT: D-DAY FOR DILMA’S IMPEACHMENT After weeks, months even, of political chaos, the Brazilian Senate will vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff later today. That is the scenario Brazil’s top media outlets are predicting, barring any last-minute twists. Of course in the mess that has become the impeachment process and criss-crossing corruption probes that have […]
The annual Kyotographie Festival creates a unique alchemy as world-class modern art occupies a timeless sanctuary.
Tempo, May 11, 2016 In the first public act after his apparent victory in this week’s presidential election in the Philippines, populist candidate Rodrigo Duterte paid a visit his parents’ tomb in his hometown of Davao. Images of the 71-year-old long-serving mayor sobbing at the tomb were on many front pages of many national newspapers […]
For the first time in 70 years, Americans have a chance to vote for an outspoken protectionist from a major party. How did we get here?
Zurich researchers have developed a questionnaire to help schoolteachers, social workers and police officers recognize signs of student radicalization.
BERLIN — During the last school year, some 18,000 young Germans began year-long adventures abroad, thrust into complete independence: suddenly, they were on their own, in a new environment, surrounded by strangers who spoke a language the students had only experienced from inside the safety of a classroom. Psychologists from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena […]