As births by Israeli settlers tops Palestinians in the West Bank, the “demographic advantage” could vanish, and undermine hopes for a peace settlement.
Month: July 2016
Qawwali is Sufi devotional and mystic poetry that promotes a tolerant form of Islam. It dates back centuries, but is losing ground to popular rock and Bollywood music.
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — Having survived the coup attempt is not enough to put our minds at ease in Turkey. Turkey is on a road that doesn’t lead to a pluralistic and democratic system. We wake up to a new nightmare every day about our nation’s direction. What’s happening on Turkish soil is worrisome. But it’s […]
Pokemon Go isn’t even available in Egypt. That hasn’t stopped young hunters from tracking down the creatures.
How should we react in the face of the threat of Islamist terrorism? It’s a fine line to walk between the double threat of jihadism and our own worst instincts.
An estimated 4,500 Westerners have joined ISIS so far — leaving behind devastated parents who never saw the signs of radicalization. Here’s one story from Canada.
WASHINGTON — These are anxious times in America. Despite a steadily, if slowly, growing economy and the absence of a major war, people remain troubled by a sense of national underperformance and myriad social ills, most recently the surge in racially tinged fatal shootings committed by law enforcement officers and against them. A new Gallup poll reports that only 17% of Americans feel satisfied with the way things are going, the lowest percentage since October 2013 — and down 12 points in just the past month. For many, of course, a cause of concern is Donald Trump, who accepted the […]
SPOTLIGHT: A FRENCH HERO AND THE REST OF US When a murderous truck hurtled down a promenade in the French city of Nice last week, slamming into innocent bystanders and leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake, a 49-year-old man riding his scooter nearby threw his life on the line to stop […]
O Globo, July 22 Two weeks before the Summer Olympics begin in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is on high alert for risk of terrorist attacks aimed at the games. Friday’s edition of Brazilian daily O Globo is dominated by the articles and photographs of the dismantling of a group allegedly linked to the terror group […]
A video circulating showed a desperate attempt by someone on a scooter to stop the runaway truck in Nice. Most figured the scooter driver was dead. Here’s his story.
Categories
For Whom The Bell Tower Leans
My daughter Cécile had climbed the steps all the way up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She smiled for the camera, but you can tell she didn’t feel so safe close to the tilted edge.
LONDON — Britain’s departure from the European Union would have immediate far-reaching consequences for the British job market as hundreds of thousands of British and European Union citizens want to leave the UK to work on the continent instead, according to a recent survey by the StepStone global private markets specialist found. Some 600,000 British-based […]
With the third major terrorism attack on French soil in 18 months, the question “Why France?” is another way to measure the stakes that apply to us all.
SPOTLIGHT: STATE OF EMERGENCY, THE OBVIOUS ANSWER? If the whole world is always in a state of emergency, does that mean there’s no emergency? We’re not quite there yet, but an official “state of emergency” decree, with additional regulations and the granting of special police powers, is increasingly how governments react in times of crisis. […]
ISTANBUL — Turkish society was on the verge of a major disaster last Friday. If the attempted coup d’etat had achieved its purpose, we would probably already be facing a large-scale civil war today. During the coup attempt, which lasted about 12 hours, we lived through a miniature version of this civil war with all […]
Categories
On The Boat Again
The many rivers in Indonesia provide an endless stream of picturesque moments, like this man in Jakarta wearing a traditional caping conical hat.
Countries and industries around the globe must make the painful choice between lucrative fossil fuel exploitation and efforts to prevent climate change.
Pyongyang’s Mansudae monument — Photo: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen BEIJING — “This summer, cross the world’s most difficult border and visit a country with the highest index of happiness and security” reads the advertisement of the travel agency in Taiyuan, in the remote western Chinese province of Shanxi. “Experience the China we used to know!” On […]
In Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, home to many people of Turkish descent, opinions about Recep Tayyip Erdogan and last week’s failed coup that tried to oust him range from shock to skepticism.
Categories
Comfort After Defeat — A Video Quote
Categories
Trump’s World, Rio Threat, Sad Polar Bear
SPOTLIGHT: WORLD, MEET MR. TRUMP (AGAIN) Every four years, people around the world get a glance at those odd political spectacles, typically hosted in some mid-sized American city they’ll never visit. The U.S. national party conventions tend to get slightly bemused coverage abroad: candidates’ family values on full display, gray-haired delegates dancing to Dixie bands […]
Die Tageszeitung, July 20th Monday’s gruesome axe attack on a commuter train in southern Germany left many unanswered questions on the Wednesday front page of German daily Die Tageszeitung, as evidenced by its enigmatic headline made of just four question marks. On Monday evening, a 17-year-old man armed with a knife and an axe wounded […]
Categories
A Mormon State
A stone’s throw away from Salt Lake City’s Mormon Tabernacle is the Utah State Capitol building, the site where famously strict regulations on alcohol have been approved because of the Mormon religion that still dominates the state. I was surprised however to find that one could order French wine in the local restaurants.
PARIS — Donning a ribbon-trimmed red bowler hat and a white tunic embroidered with black in what turned out to be his last concert, Papa Wemba stayed true to personal code of conduct: Always look sharp. The tenor of Congolese rumba, who collapsed and died on stage while performing at a music festival in Abidjan […]
Jomhouri-e Eslami — July 19, 2016 As the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unleashes a major crackdown after the failed coup over the weekend, criticism across the border in Iran is rising. Tehran daily Jomhuri-e Eslami ran a front-page report Tuesday accusing Erdogan of “kickstarting a full-blown coup against opponents.” The highly critical […]
France is not only a target for ISIS. The country must also admit that terrorism profits from its internal fractures.
Categories
Corsican Siesta
On a warm Spring day at the southern tip of the French island of Corsica, it was time to go home and take a siesta.
SPOTLIGHT: ISTANBUL, STUDIES IN CONTRAST Taksim Square is both symbolic and convenient: Flat in the middle of the bustle of Istanbul, it can serve as a meeting point for locals and tourists — and protesters. It is where many of the most ardent supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gathered after tanks took control […]
Tourists can take a trip through time—and across the French-Italian border—in the 75-meter Monte Viso Tunnel, a footpath originally built during the Renaissance.
El Espectador, July 19th Tuesday’s edition of Bogota daily El Espectador reports on the Colombian Constitutional Court approving a measure to hold a national referendum on the recently signed peace agreement with the Marxist rebels, FARC. Above the headline “Green light for a referendum,” is a rather giddy photograph of Constitutional Court President Maria Victoria […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — The Republican Party came to life as the bastion of “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Speech, Free Men.” It was a reformist party dedicated to stopping the spread of slavery and to fighting a “Slave Power” its founders saw as undermining free institutions. The new political organization grew out of the old Whigs and reflected the faith that Henry Clay and his admirer Abraham Lincoln had in the federal government’s ability to invest in fostering economic growth and expanding educational opportunity. Its partisans embodied what John C. Calhoun, slavery’s chief ideological defender, described disdainfully as “the national […]
Recounting and reflections of the failed Friday night coup, and the mob mentality left in its wake.
NICE — There are still more questions than answers three days after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a 20-ton truck through hundreds gathered to see the Bastille Day fireworks on the city’s waterfront, killing 84 people and injuring more than 200, before being shot dead by police. Still, a portrait of the 31-year-old divorced father of […]