Worldcrunch
-Analysis- It’s just a coincidence, but the symbolism is too hard to ignore. Two days ago, as every year on March 8, the world was celebrating women for, among other things, their “economic” and “political achievements.” Earlier today, South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled that President Park Geun-hye must be removed from office over a corruption […]
The new U.S. president might want to think twice about taking a business-world approach to international affairs.
The northern state of Punjab is known as India’s bread basket. But in recent years, it has become a fertile ground not just for crops, but also drug abuse.
MEXICO CITY — The capital of Mexico delivers water unequally to its 20 million people. While residents of neighborhoods like Cuauhtémoc or Polanco suffer occasional water shortages — everyone does — poorer areas face routine shortages, reports Mexican newspaper La Jornada. One such place is Iztapalapa, where there can be no water for weeks, and […]
L’Esportiu, March 9, 2017 FC Barcelona’s stunning victory over France’s PSG last night at Camp Nou earned a succinctly shocked (and triumphant) front-page headline in the Catalan-language sports daily L’Esportiu. For those linguists keeping score at home, L’Impossible (“The Impossible”) reads exactly the same in the Catalan and French languages. Headlines in France, though equally […]
The Japanese diet is rich in carbohydrates, but widespread obesity has not occurred even through the country’s economic boom.
Venezuela is one of a handful of petrol states that imagined they could live it up forever off crude oil cash. After oil prices sank, decades of neglecting agriculture has now left a nation literally starving.
-Essay- PARIS — In 1949, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir published the landmark feminist book Le Deuxième Sexe (“The Second Sex”). The work is a challenge to anyone who chooses — or is assigned? — to read it, with almost 1,000 pages between two volumes. Revered for the clarity and force of its arguments, de […]
There are several such typical watering holes and fountains along the winding roads of Corsica. They come in handy when your daughter is thirsty. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
Feel the novelty fatigue growing inside? But it is not just the vintage feel of the reissued Nokia 3310 that makes it convincing, it is something deeper.
MUTWANGA — At the foot of mount Rwenzori, locals erupt in joy when they see their homes lit with electric light bulbs for the first time in their lives. Meanwhile, at the nearby Pic Hotel in Mutwanga, a small village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), tourists are finally returning. Over the past few […]
-Analysis- Will the world’s oldest conflict ever be resolved? There have been a few fleeting occasions over the past 25 years when both Israelis and Palestinians appeared eager to negotiate, and a solution seemed within reach. Alas these are now mere memories — so distant that their effects have largely worn off. Perhaps there has […]
Debate continues to simmer over the threats of “fake news’ and the civic and journalistic responsibilities of the world’s largest and most powerful social media platform. What does state censorship in China have to do with all of that? We asked ourselves that very question. January 17, 2018* It was a handshake nine years in […]
Romania has Europe’s highest infant mortality rate. The main causes of death are infectious diseases like tuberculosis and rubella, while VIPs make public claims that vaccines are dangerous.
I see a wisdom behind the slowness. I’ve learned that he must give the question full attention and respect, and won’t answer lightly.
Talent is distributed around the globe, opportunity is not. Visit to a finance-sponsored ‘datathon’ to find the next generation of quantative wizards.
During the Tito-era of communist rule in then-Yugoslavia, agricultural workers gathered every morning, tools in hand, and waited for someone to hire them for the day.
BEIJING — In Xi Jinping’s China, it is again a risky proposition to openly criticize Mao Zedong. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thought it had resolved the discussion in 1981 when it decreed that the reign of Mao, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, had been 70% good and 30% bad. But since […]
A day in the life of an Uber driver in São Paulo.
WASHINGTON — When President Barack Obama delivered State of the Union addresses without a full and detailed discussion of foreign policy, conservatives justifiably complained. We are a country at war, with rising, big power threats in an increasingly unstable world. All true. And yet when President Donald Trump said virtually nothing of substance Tuesday night on national security, conservatives by and large gave him a pass. Trump’s highlighting of the widow of slain Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens obscured the lack of substance on the cause for which Trump correctly said Owens gave his life. Repeating that we will eradicate […]
-Analysis- PARIS — How could something like this happen? Some of us have spent the past week trying to find out the facts (and comprehend the enormity) of Sunday night’s Academy Awards mega-gaffe, when La La Land was incorrectly announced as Best Picture. It turns out that the blame rests with the old school audit […]
This eternal battle in Spain in not just between man and nature, but among humans. The freshly slain body of a still bleeding wolf was found hanging from a signpost along a highway in northern Spain last weekend, reigniting the debate over the killings of the protected species, reports El País. Here is a photograph […]
This was the end of the road for us: Driving with my family from France in our Peugeot 404, our goal was to go as far north as possible, by way of Denmark and Sweden. What I didn’t know was that back then, about 100 kilometers north of the Norwegian capital Oslo, roads were in […]
But for some, politicians’ rising calls for unity ring hollow.
Modeled on Swiss-based nuclear research center CERN after the 1994 Oslo accords, the idea of the Amman-based facility is to use science as a way to learn to work together in the Middle East.
Beth sometimes sleeps for months. She suffers from a rare disorder — the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ syndrome. Her boyfriend Dan sits bedside every day. A different kind of timeless love story.
Repatriating people like Ismael Arciniegas, a Colombian executed in China for drug smuggling, could create a perverse incentive.
-Analysis- As China opened its markets and rose to become the world’s second-largest economy, foreign media focus has shifted from tales of political repression and exotic outposts to largely a business story. Corporate chiefs and bankers unpack the meaning of hard, cold economic figures, and the latest data revealing Chinese “expansionary territory,” with the odd […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Political junkies everywhere are getting used to the rush of watching election campaigns defy the laws of physics. Just a few weeks ago, the path looked all clear for François Fillon to become the next French President in the vote later this spring. By yesterday, the former center-right Prime Minister looked to […]
As the bombs continue to drop on parts of Syria, doctors struggle to give basic medical care to women, which then has ramifications for children.
ALBI — During a walk through the heart of the cathedral city of Albi, fruits and vegetables seem to be planted everywhere. And for good reason. A year ago, the city was given the objective of attaining food self-sufficiency by 2020. In concrete terms, the goal is to allow the 52,000 residents to feed themselves […]
Amazigh is spoken by around 10 million in Algeria. Despite its new official status, it is not mandatory in schools nor used in national government.
We traveled to the historical Spanish region known as Old Castile to soak in some of its timeless quiet for a night in the only hotel of a small village. A pack of howling stray dogs decided otherwise … See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
President Donald Trump’s address to Congress marked a change in tone, but his ambitious agenda will bring conflict with lawmakers down the road.