For the ordinary Mexican, the free-trade agreement has been a chance to build a modern country based on the rule of law, and, above all, a ticket to economic development. Without it, Mexico could quickly slide backward.
Month: March 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook is betting on AR, which he sees as potentially as groundbreaking as the smartphone.
Kim Sul-song, the Supreme Leader’s enigmatic half-sister, has extended her influence to new heights. Could she be the real threat to her brother?
LAUSANNE — A Swiss-based charity, Race For Water Foundation, wants to turn the PlanetSolar catamaran into a floating display of emerging hydrogen technologies. “That’s unprecedented on a boat,” says Alexandre Closset, CEO of Swiss Hydrogen. “For the first time, a full hydrogen chain will be installed on a boat.” The electric vessel, the first to […]
Iran built itself a lavish modern art museum in the late 1970s, only to end up stowing away a priceless collection after the Islamic revolution. Signs of reform could open up Iranians to Giacometti, Picasso, Warhol and Pollock.
It’s official: Norway has toppled Denmark to become the world’s happiest country in 2017. Or, to put in local linguistic terms, the world’s lykkeligste country. This year’s rankings, which came this morning to coincide with the International Day of Happiness, surely has left more than one Danish unhappy, or ulykkelig (yes, Norwegian and Danish languages […]
Monday’s edition of Die Tageszeitung features a front page that, at best, we can call overly creative. The Berlin daily’s editors unlikely photoshopped mash-up is a blend of two big stories from over the weekend : the death Saturday of rock’n’roll legend Chuck Berry at the age of 90, and the unanimous selection Sunday of […]
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Gilded Guardian
Behold this mighty Kinnari statue, half-human and half-bird, keeping an eye on Bangkok“s holy Wat Phra Kaew temple. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
Islam making major inroads in the east African nation. China pumping millions into infrastructure and industry. An Italian reporter gauges changes in the former colony.
-OpEd- SÃO PAULO — Any Catholic who has attended mass since Ash Wednesday will have noticed that the Church in Brazil is very concerned about the country’s environment. For the second year in a row, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil is using its annual pre-Easter fraternity campaign to sound alarm bells over the […]
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Online Resistance In Turkey
ISTANBUL — The smartphone’s video camera zigzags through the crowd. Amid a joyful brouhaha punctuated by applause, the young videomaker captures the first smiles and the excited faces, still stunned by the good news. “Asli Erdogan, Necmiye Alpay and Zana Kaya are free!,” the journalist comments as she films the scene. The date was Dec. […]
WASHINGTON — In blocking the administration’s second attempt at a travel ban from terror-prone countries, a federal judge in Hawaii laid the blame squarely on President Donald Trump and his advisers, who had suggested the policy was aimed at barring Muslims. A different politician might have expressed disappointment and moved on. But Trump, taking the stage barely an hour later at a rally Wednesday night in Nashville, let loose on the “terrible ruling” – and doubled down on the sentiments that got the policy into trouble in the first place. “The order blocked was a watered-down version of the first […]
Many adolescents watch hard-core pornography online long before having their first sexual experiences. This changes how they deal with their own sexuality. Here’s Daniel’s story.
Il Sole 24 ORE magazine, March 17, 2017 — Photo: Charles Ommanney “The Closing Of The American Mind,” reads the April cover of Il Sole 24 ORE’s monthly magazine IL. This month’s cover is a photograph at the fence between the United States and Mexico, as U.S. President Donald Trump vows to follow through on […]
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Merkel, Martial Arts And Trump
-Analysis- The German press coverage of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Friday is occasion for all kinds of scrutiny of public comments, handshakes, smiles and anything else that body language might tell us. But the encounter that may count more happens behind closed doors. And Merkel faces […]
There is a religious litmus test for teachers in schools in this eastern stretch of Democratic Republic of Congo.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ – We often confuse a phenomenon with its causes. We’re in the 21st century but we still believe that the problems we face are due to political personalities, whether it’s Donald Trump in the U.S., the combative former president Álvaro Uribe here in Colombia or Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and so many others […]
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Garden Of Mormon Eden
Taking a break from visiting Salt Lake City“s landmarks (including the Salt Lake Temple you can see in the background of this picture), we enjoyed a nice walk in the lush gardens at Temple Square. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
PARIS — Last month, I made my annual trip back to Taiwan around the Chinese New Year to see my parents. My mother, who is 86, has not being doing too badly even though she has a mild but progressive form of Alzheimer’s, diagnosed six years ago. She has continued to do her daily Qigong […]
The headlines this morning provide two bits of far-flung hope for those still shaken by Brexit and Donald Trump: the new version of Trump’s travel ban applied to six majority-Muslim countries was blocked by a judge in Hawaii; meanwhile, halfway across the world, Geert Wilders’ far-right party suffered surprisingly disappointing results in Dutch parliamentary elections. […]
Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was credited with defeating Tamil guerillas, lost his bid for reelection in 2015. Now, his local fiefdom is suffering.
It is high time to provide a new perspective for Israel and offer the country a membership in the European Union. A uniquely German point of view on Middle East peace.
What Silvio Berlusconi’s 20-year hold on Italy tells those looking to bring down (as fast as possible) the marketing man occupying the White House.
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On Labor, Language And Headscarves
-Analysis- Most talk of the “changing nature of work” focuses on the shift to freelance labor, the fracturing of traditional office culture and the entitlement of pesky millennials entering the workforce. But the established workplace — wherever it may be — is still here, and there are plenty of new tensions that have nothing to […]
“GO VOTE (and send us a pic from the voting booth),” reads the front page of the Dutch daily Metro inviting young voters to go to the polls as the country elects a new parliament Wednesday. As the colorful front page shows, Dutch voters will be using red pencils to tick boxes on old-fashioned paper […]
After a work-related accident that progressively made him blind, Vladir da Silva discovered an unlikely skill and passion taking pictures that relies on other senses. He tells his story.
The Turkish president is using Europe to stoke nationalist sentiment back at home before a referendum to expand his own powers. Enough is enough.
TUNIS — Six years ago, the Tunisian Revolution sparked the Arab Spring uprisings and overthrew the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his notoriously violent police state. Now a nascent democracy, Tunisia is once again faced with the issue of police brutality. Tunis-based daily Le Temps reports that several local and international NGOs […]
The ACLU is spending millions on a new ‘People Power’ campaign. The civil rights group’s push is the largest piece of a sprawling ‘resistance’ moving faster than Democratic Party leaders can think.
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Fruits Of Labor
Brazil is a major banana-producing country. In Belem, the gateway to the River Amazon in the north of the country, these dock workers were unloading the day’s cargo destined for city markets. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
China eased its controversial one-child policy in late 2015. But there are still plenty of people, for one reason or another, who can’t have children and could benefit from surrogate woman willing to carry the pregnancy.
MOSUL — Leila Khaled hadn’t felt well that morning. It was the end of August, when the Iraqi summer sun had hit the walls and windows hard, like the wind in the middle of a powerful storm. Mosul was still in the clutches of ISIS. The war was still far away; it was being raged […]
-Essay- For the record, I am writing this from home. On a late winter Monday, with most of our crew either off-the-clock or working remotely, I decided to spare myself (and a few others) the day’s commute to hash out the news from our office in eastern Paris. So again, for the record: Yes folks, […]
Clarín, March 13 A concert for fans of Argentine music star Indio Solari turned deadly, and the grim details dominated front pages Monday of the nation’s newspapers, along with questions about bad planning and crowd control. “Another tragedy due to lack of controls’, reads today’s front page of Buenos-Aires based daily Clarín. At last Saturday’s […]
Being creative is often just a matter of connecting the dots — though they better be the right dots.
ALMERE — Founded in 1976, this city 30 kilometers from Amsterdam offers a glimpse into the future of the Netherlands. Leaving behind the tourist droves of the capital, a 20-minute ride on an Intercity train — equipped with WiFi — whisks you through windmills and farmland to reach Almere. Lying 3.2 meters below sea level, […]
With its new president, the United States may now become a massive new fiscal haven for global companies. But France, with its own upcoming elections, could lead Europe in undermining Trump’s plans.
MOSCOW — Slumped on the one of the fluorescent poufs in his Moscow office, a gothic T-shirt-clad Alexander Lyamin says he’s “stunned.” Founder of Qrator Labs, a Russian startup specialized in cybersecurity, and a staunch supporter of a free and borderless internet, Lyamin is seeing his world collapse around him. Located opposite a huge flour […]
Investigators in Mannheim, in southwestern Germany, have a real whodunnit on their hands, a brutal kidnapping-murder case — but with a twist. The victim is a five-kilogram Humboldt penguin whose lifeless and decapitated body was found last month in a local parking lot. The gruesome discovery came five days after the animal, of South American […]
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Pillar Of Faith
Among the ruins of one of the world’s oldest surviving Byzantine churches, about 30 kilometers northwest of Aleppo, stand the remains of the pillar of Saint Simeon Stylites. The fifth-century ascetic monk is said to have lived 37 years as a hermit, perched on a platform at the top of a column. More than 1,500 […]