WorldcrunchAlthough conventional warfare makes headlines, a more insidious conflict also warrants attention. Cyber warfare, in its many forms, is arguably still in its infancy. But the new-age combat is a growing concern — so much so that the latest NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, chose to focus on cyber defense. The list of government agencies, […]
You won’t find gold or weapons stored deep in the granite caves of Switzerland’s Bernese Alps. Instead, the mountain range holds more precious treasure — servers and hard drives.
Members of Sri Lanka“s Hindu minority have a religious custom where they tie a piece of colored cloth to a line. Every knot signifies a wish.
Police officers probing the attack on a priest in the quiet northern French town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray were led to an unusual location in their investigation: Telegram, a messaging application that has 100 million active users worldwide. With both private and public chats, the application’s flexibility, as well as its policy on privacy, makes it attractive […]
LINYI — Dr. Yang Yongxin first garnered attention a decade ago when he opened the “Young People Risk Behavior Intervention Center” in this city in the eastern province of Shandong. The “risk behavior” in question was not drugs or sex, but wasting time online. The Nanfang Daily reports that Yang, who used to work in […]
Capital flows back into Latin America suggest Brazil’s economic free fall may have stopped.
France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his bid to become the Republican party’s candidate in next year’s presidential election. He did so despite his previous claim that he wouldn’t run again. (See our Extra! feature for more) Sarkozy will focus on tax and budget cuts, stopping economic migrants and “organizing Islam,” according to French newspaper […]
Brightly-decorated Sicilian carts don’t just look great. The scenes carved in the wood of the carretti siciliani used to be a good way to teach history, and pass on folklore, to illiterate workers.
Libération, Aug. 23 Former right-wing French President Nicolas Sarkozy, 61, announced he’s running for the 2017 presidential election. “What is worse is that he may win,” leftist newspaper Libération lamented on its front page. The daily has a point: Socialist President François Hollande faces record unpopularity, making re-election an uphill battle if he plans to […]
After the Indonesian defense minister compared LGBT people to a nuclear threat, Islamists targeted a gay community that used to be widely tolerated.
BOGOTÁ — Suicide used to be rare among the native communities of Vaupés, a region in eastern Colombia with the largest proportion of indigenous residents. That’s not the case anymore. Decades of hostility between the region’s native inhabitants and outsiders has had devastating results. El Espectador sent me to investigate this increase in suicides, now […]
ACCRA — It’s a hot and humid night in this capital city and a long line waits at the entrance of Papaye, Ghana’s top fast-food chain and a symbol of the country’s burgeoning middle class. But the restaurant seems closed, its neon lights turned off. The restaurant’s staff struggle to turn on the generator. A […]
To deal with daily traffic jams in the Indian city of Jaipur, locals and tourists alike turn to fast and cheap rickshaws that can weave through clogged city streets.
INGOLSTADT — Math is the first class of the day. Only two students, who are clearly aces at math, are raising their hands to answer the teacher’s questions. Almost everyone else is dozing off. But Mahmoud, who is seated in the first row, appears to be wide awake. He does not, however, raise his hand. […]
Since its creation, the Hebrew state has adapted to a permanent terrorist threat, thanks to a dynamic model of which the central elements are intelligence and the involvement of the civil society.
-Analysis- BEIJING — As the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro come to an end, the Chinese delegation’s “failure” seems to be a foregone conclusion. Even in gymnastics, where it had excelled in the past, China won only two bronze medals, making it the worst performance of the past decade. The first reaction of the […]
The third of a three-part series of oral histories from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, so close and yet so far away from the Olympic spotlight.
The humanitarian drama of the besieged city deepens. The people are simply not able to trust the alliance between Assad, Russia and Iran. And the West just looks on.
Small-scale miners on the island of Lombok and elsewhere in Indonesia are playing a dangerous game by using mercury, a toxic heavy metal, to extract gold.
TEGUCIGALPA — The Central American countries of the “Northern Triangle” (Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala) have long battled gang wars and drug-related crime that have left the region’s cities among the world’s most dangerous. Individual attempts in the past to defuse the crisis, including local gang truces and national crackdowns on drugs, have been largely […]
WARSAW — Even as change spreads from such historically Catholic countries as Ireland and Mexico, same-sex marriage rights still look to be years away in Poland, home to a diehard traditional Catholicism that some say was even too pious for Pope Francis. The 2015 Eurobarometer survery found that just 28% of Poles favored same-sex marriage, […]
Aug. 19 is World Humanitarian Day, an annual United Nations tribute that often goes by unnoticed. This year is different: It falls on a week when we’ve been acutely reminded of both the world’s humanitarian crises, and the danger aid workers face every day. Yesterday the world was shocked by the photograph and video of […]
TBILISI — The Georgian capital is built upon a hill, sandwiched in the midst of towering peaks. The same can be said about this country, wedged between powerful regional neighbors. As Georgia’s economy and aspirations rise, Tbilisi’s growing middle class is flocking to private schools to educate its children. There’s just one problem: some of […]
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Aug. 19 Philippines’ maverick president Rodrigo Duterte has declared a new war of words against Senator Leila de Lima, whom he accused of being an “immoral” woman with a “very sordid personal and official life” and linked to the illegal drug trade. “If you are bent on destroying me, please have the […]
These two Peruvian women in traditional clothes were taking a break from a nearby festival, watching me watching them.
-Analysis- RIO DE JANEIRO — Andrew Zimbalist’s Circus Maximus is a book well worth a read. In it, the author — a U.S. economist specialized in the sports industry — argues that there’s a growing consensus among economists that playing host to a mega-event like the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup is a […]
The second of a three-part series of oral histories from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, so close and yet so far away from the Olympic spotlight.
While many of us are immersed in the Olympic drama in Rio or enjoying a summer vacation escape, a photograph from Aleppo has brought a jarring reminder of the horrific war still raging in Syria. The image shows a dazed five-year-old boy, covered in dust and with an open head wound, sitting in an ambulance […]
No, it’s mostly not about censorship …
Ask anyone in France about Brittany, and there’s a good chance they’ll tell you how bad the weather is in the northwestern region. Looks like blue skies to me!
-OpEd- BERLIN — The ministers of the interior of Germany’s 16 federal states have presented their plan against terrorism. Among them, the abolition of the dual citizenship and a public ban on wearing the burqa. As far as is known, no dual citizenship holder has committed a crime of a terrorist nature. The number of […]
Trump is supported by 1 in 5 younger voters, an astonishing and consequential collapse for the GOP.
Rowdy Rio crowds are upsetting both athletes and fans. But it’s a passion born from soccer stadiums, and is what a South American Olympics should look (and sound) like.