Bling and style are barriers that the Chinese-owned, Swedish-based company may not be able to overcome.
Month: July 2017
-Analysis- During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump had promised to improve U.S. relations with Russia. His supporters said it was just the kind of bold move the world needed as escalating hostilities between the two nations stood in the way of solving major global issues from Syria to cybersecurity. Trump’s opponents, to this day, see […]
Categories
French Naval Pride
We French call our country “la France.” But when we speak of “le France,” that’s the SS France — once the biggest ocean liner in the world. In my 60 years of travels, I’ve found myself twice in its wake: here in the late 1960s, off the pier of Cannes in southern France; and some […]
In between nuclear tests, Pyongyang is investing massively in its tourism infrastructure. A delegation visited Spain last month to study their resorts.
As more men are migrating into cities in search of a living, women are left with all the weight of the farming and family. That is not a sustainable model.
KARBALA — Inside the shrine and mosque covered by mosaics, the crowd is rushing to touch the silver edge of the martyr’s tomb. Among the crowd is Manjour, 37, who came all the way from Gurajat, India, to honor his “leader,” Al-Husayn ibn ‘Ali, the third Shia imam. Even as fierce battles and terror attacks […]
Perception (and treatment) of gays and lesbians may be different from transgender people — but in different ways, depending where in the world you are.
It is the nature of the job, not the people who occupy it, that is ultimately to blame for an endless series of scandals at the top ranks of Brazilian politics.
GENEVA — There are those few rare researchers through the ages so devoted to science that they have used their own bodies as a laboratory for their experiments. After inventing the hallucinogenic substance LSD, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann unintentionally, and then intentionally, took doses of the drug. In his autobiography published in 1980, Hofmann […]
-Essay- TAIPEI — I still recall the long journey I made in 1987 during my first visit in China, traveling in crammed buses with the smells of caged poultry on board. Through Guangzhou in Canton, and the famous mountain landscape of Guilin and Yangshuo in the southeast province of Guangxi, I recall being amazed that, […]
Many are up in arms after UNESCO granted a small Japanese island World Heritage Site status in June. On face value, Okinoshima Island, home to a 17th-century Shinto shrine, is a worthy World Heritage Site. But it’s not what the island has that has caused controversy — rather, what it lacks: There are no women […]
Guédelon, an attraction in Burgundy, recreates the Middle Ages in a way that aims to make visitors smarter while they’re having fun.
Categories
German Folklore In The Flesh
Is that you, Rübezahl? See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
The ‘brand’ of Il Duce is doing particularly well on Facebook and Instagram.
Geopolitical and historical intrigue could lead to war-mongering along the Indian-Chinese border, but an open conflict is highly unlikely.
-Analysis- PARIS — The nation of France has become a new sort of Ground Zero for Islamic terrorism’s attack on the West. Over the past 30 months, images have spread around the world of both wanton and targeted terror on French soil: from the January 2015 shooting at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices, to the […]
Jeanne d’Arc Girubuntu, a 22-year-old cycling champion, strives to be a role model and to inspire women of Rwanda to fight for their independence.
Like many in Argentina, psychiatrist Martín Reynoso was raised Catholic. But as time went on, his approach to the modern world began to involve meditation and mindfulness.
PALO ALTO — While his high-school classmates were blowing their money on Chipotle burritos and concert tickets, Truman Hale was saving up for a Tesla. In March of last year, after years of penny pinching, he plunked down a $1,000 deposit on a Model 3. Now a 21-year-old student at Arizona State University, he’s eager for more information about what will be his first car, which he hopes will be delivered before graduating in December 2018. “I want to only own electric cars,” he said. “I’m riding a bike because I’m saving for this car.” “The lack of information received […]
PARIS — As the editor of what we call a “digital magazine,” I must make lots of choices on any given day as the various streams of news — real and fake and often just pointless — criss-cross on my computer and smartphone screens. Save this, swipe that, assign this, ignore that. Just one of […]
When a woman doesn’t drink, we all suspect her of being pregnant. But what happens when that’s true?
A wealth of hidden, unfamiliar fruits could help protect Colombia’s embattled rainforests by luring peasants and settlers away from coca farming.
Categories
Floating By The Sugarloaves
Near Guilin, my wife and I hopped on a short cruise on the Li River. The makeshift houseboats built from discarded modern materials were interesting to look at, but clashed with the scenic surroundings of sugarloaf hills and gorges in southern China. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
Libération, July 24, 2017 Leading French daily Libération showed its support for embattled Turkish opposition daily Cumhuriyet, as a trial gets underway for 17 journalists and staff members on charges of aiding a terrorist organization. The front page for this special Libération with Cumhuriyet edition features a cartoon — a meaningful choice of expression in […]
In the south of Tunisia, near the Libyan border, an ancient dump serves as a cemetery for immigrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean illegally. But the living remain undeterred.
Scientists have the technology to bring extinct species back to life, give or take a few missing DNA strands. But should they?
-Essay- PARIS — For a superficial observer, it is one of the lesser-known cultural revolutions and a rather trivial one at that: the dramatic shift in the Western physical ideal, in just over a generation, from one skin ideal to another, from one tone to another. It is what we in French call “bronzage,” similar […]
High ticket prices and fancy stadiums are making the games of the national pastime off-limits for most of Brazil’s population.
SpongeBOZZ’s new album quickly shot up the German hip-hop charts, but his irreverence is telling, part of a growing trend to treat World War II as distant history.
Some 3,000 women gathered on the beach of Annaba to protest the mandatory wearing of burkinis — a reminder that women must choose for themselves and their bodies.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has done his best to stay close to the president, but that doesn’t translate into influence over American diplomacy.
PALMA — You live in one of those special places where people travel from all around the world to visit. A dream? More like a neverending tourist hell, says Venice resident Elisa Crepaldi. “Some of the most beautiful areas in the city are no longer accessible to locals. We have to renounce living in some […]
Colombian novelist William Ospina had advice for Fidel Castro, and now for Nicolas Maduro. Given the discontent with modern capitalism, Latin America must offer a realistic and democratic alternative.
And the rest of ours too…
Large technology companies need to be stopped before they crush our cherished freedoms, argues a new book by two French economists.
The Obama administration sought a Cuba policy aimed at helping ordinary Cubans. Trump is keeping most of the policy in place, with one wrong-headed exception.
In Indonesia, the heavy metal band Voice of Baceprot is turning and banging heads. But critics say this is not what Muslim girls should be doing.
-Analysis- LISBON — What a successful gamble for Lisbon: The European Commission is about to ratify the proposal to end Portugal’s excessive deficit procedure. The country will be joining the club of virtuous economies , against experts’ forecasts. The recovery is a remarkable achievement considering Portugal hit a virtual rock bottom in 2011. On the […]
The new season of Game of Thrones, which premiered Sunday, will surely be filled with all manner of sabotage, conspiracy, and politicking. The fictional world of author George R. R. Martin is essentially a timeless story of the pursuit of power as an end in itself. But that same show, it appears, is not only […]