César Pelli has designed some of the world’s best known skyscrapers. But he writes that the wonder of a beautiful city is collaboration over generations of many talented architects who care about the way people live.
Month: July 2017
They don’t hide in the abyss of the Dark Web. From Bangui, Beirut, Bordeaux or elsewhere, they use social media to promote their products and services. They are blood diamond community managers from the Central African Republic, traffickers of gems that cannot be legally exported and that are for sale on Facebook and Whatsapp. One […]
-Analysis- To win back Mosul, the Iraqi armed forces paid with their blood. But the difficult victory — obtained with the help of the international coalition — also marks a rebirth. Against all odds, the Iraqi army, federal police and anti-terror units have all been successfully rebuilt. Back in 2014, the Iraqi troops had fallen […]
Britain, Poland and even Germany are all examples of how having women in power doesn’t necessarily translate into greater social or economic power for women.
Government crime numbers show that since 2001, more than 2,000 ‘witches’ — most of them women — have been killed.
Our ability to forget helps us to learn, make decisions … and remember a face. This seeming paradox has intrigued writers and led to important new research on how the brain functions.
The French city of Nice was torn apart by the terrorist truck attack that killed 86 and left 458 injured during national holiday festivities. Victims struggle to return to normalcy.
PRISTINA — In front of socialist era high-rise blocks, Bill Clinton waves to the Kosovars. Kosovo Albanians built the statue in the capital, Pristina, in gratitude for the bombing of then Yugoslavia by NATO in 1999, which a few years later led to independence. U.S. and Albanian flags flutter alongside each other on the rooftops. […]
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One Tile At A Time
Hard at work under the Tunisian sun, these men were playing their small part in restoring some grandeur to the mosaics of the ancient city of Carthage. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
-Analysis- PARIS — “Paris sera toujours Paris …” When French singer Maurice Chevalier first released the classic tune in 1939, the aim was to brighten the mood of the curfew-burdened French capital as war approached, assuring them that “Paris will always be Paris.” Fast-forward nearly eight decades and another kind of showman has been trying […]
Nice Matin, July 13, 2017 This year’s Bastille Day celebrations will have special meaning in Nice, as the southern French city commemorates the first anniversary of the July 14, 2016 attack when a truck driven by a terrorist plowed into a dense crowd gathered to watch the National Day’s fireworks. The city’s largest local daily, […]
“I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.” These wise words were written by American author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, born 200 years ago on Wednesday. A quiet journal entry […]
It’s the big idea of the moment among certain economists and activists in the West: Universal basic income (UBI), a policy of allocating a fixed amount of money to every citizen, is seen by some as a way to confront rising unemployment — particularly in the face of automation — in developed countries. But while […]
Why does France want to share its annual national party with a president that American history itself is already rejecting? In the UK, instead, a petition against Trump’s state visit has a million signatures.
-Essay- Does anyone even read Henry David Thoreau anymore? Today, July 12, marks the 200th anniversary of the American poet and philosopher’s birth. And much is being said and written about him — not all of it flattering. His work is “anecdotal,” some say. Or “irrelevant,” “juvenile” even. To answer the initial question, I do. […]
Teachers and volunteers in a rural Daraa town are braving bullets and airstrikes to rescue books from beneath the wreckage and stock a new public library.
The declaration that he’d work with the Russian president on a joint cyber security unit shows that the man in the White House has a basic problem of understanding policy. And the consequences are real.
La Razon, July 11, 2017 Like other top Spanish newspapers, Madrid-based La Razon used its front page Tuesday to pay homage to Miguel Angel Blanco, a day ahead of the 20th anniversary of his murder by the Basque terrorist group ETA on July 13, 1997: “We are all Miguel Angel Blanco,” the daily’s front page […]
-Analysis- The recapture of Mosul by the Iraqi armed forces, with the support of the international coalition led by the United States, is a real achievement. ISIS has seen its biggest military conquest reversed, and its dream of an Islamic caliphate destroyed. But none of this means that the biggest terror organization the world has […]
-OpEd- BEIJING — Many Chinese films are awful. Who is to blame for this objective fact? An audience typically praises a film when they think it’s good and complain when it isn’t. Yet Feng Xiaogang, a famous Chinese film director, was lambasted at the recent Shanghai Films Festival for the following statement: “The reason why […]
Such disreputable figures as Lance Armstrong and John Galliano, Bashar al-Assad and Manuel Noriega have gotten France’s highest honor. That needs to change.
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Sardinia In Sepia
At some point during the late 1970s, I started experimenting with a different brand of film — Agfacolor — over the next decade or so. Good thing I usually stuck with my usual Kodachrome: The tones on this Agfacolor shot of a picnic, on a Sardinian cliff, have not aged well at all … See […]
-Analysis- On Sunday, the G20 summit concluded in Hamburg with a lot of hoopla but scant results. Seen by many as an opportunity for Donald Trump to advance his international agenda, the gathering of world leaders petered out when it became clear that few, if any, were willing to follow the American President’s lead on […]
Designers are starting to take global warming into account when planning buildings, particularly in seaside locations like Miami.
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Diamond Hunting In The Arctic
The pay is good. And much of the work is automated. But life at the isolated Gahcho Kué diamond mine, in northern Canada, isn’t for the faint of heart.
-Analysis- SAO PAULO — The G20, the club gathering the world’s biggest economies, is the offspring of two crises. First, the 1997 Asian financial crisis led to the creation of the group in 1999, as an annual summit for finance ministers and central bank governors. Their objective back then was to coordinate policies to stabilize […]
MUMBAI — Afreen Rehman, 28, is one of five Muslim women who recently took her case to India’s Supreme Court demanding a ban on a controversial practice known as “Triple Talaq,” or instant divorce. Afreen says she had been married just two months when her in-laws started harassing her about her dowry. “My husband and other in-laws started mentally harassing me, saying that he has a law degree and that any other girl would have brought a large cash dowry and a big car while I brought nothing,” she says. Afreen’s in-laws sent her back to her parents’ home. And […]
-Analysis- Hamburg is a sleepy place most days. When the G20 isn’t in town, the port city churns with the comings and goings of large, steel barges in its spacious harbor. To the millions of visitors who arrive in the city each year, for business or pleasure, Hamburg appears as a sort of peaceful locus […]
GENEVA — A high stack of papers dominates the desk of this president of a Swiss soccer club. “These are resumes from players. We get 50 of them every week, together with video cassettes of their feats. Sorting the good from the bad is an enormous task. And when the concerned party finally arrives from […]
BEIJING — Dream or nightmare? Chinese moviegoers will now see for themselves. Starting July 1, the anniversary the Chinese Communist Party, and through its 19th national congress in the fall, all Chinese cinemas are obliged by the government to show a propaganda film,The Glory and the Dream — Our Chinese Dream. The short video is […]
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Welcome To The Jungle
Not far from Belem, the gateway to the Amazon River, my wife and I (together with our fellow travelers from our organized tour of Brazil) stepped into the rainforest for a short walk — just enough to get a taste of it without having to fight off any anacondas. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s […]
AIX-EN-PROVENCE — Here, the vineyard traces the pathways of art. It usually is the other way around, whereby a well-known vineyard expands its activities (rooms for rent, a restaurant, exhibitions) to attract more wine buyers. But at Château La Coste, 15 kilometers from Aix-en-Provence in southeastern France, the cultural offer is so rich that people […]
PARIS — If you’re a woman living in a city, this has probably happened to you. You’re by yourself on a bus or a subway. Maybe you’re wearing heels and a dress, or just your boyfriend’s dirty old sweater. Suddenly you notice a man is staring at you, and won’t stop. Maybe he starts saying […]
As President Trump prepares for his first face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his plans for a reset with Russia are undermined by his own actions.
Beef is a big deal in Argentina. But in the Casa Rosada presidential palace, people (including the president himself) are now going meat-free. What gives?
Finally some serious competition for Tesla. Just days after Elon Musk said his American multi-billion dollar electric automobile startup would start producing its Model 3, the brand’s first mass-market electric car, a heavyweight automaker from the past declared “the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car.” By 2019, all new Volvo models will come with […]
Christian Assyrians have been targeted repeatedly through history — and found themselves under attack again by ISIS forces in Syria.
ALEY — Mohammad left his home on the outskirts of Damascus in 2013, gripped with a mix of guilt and anxiety. Though he was fleeing violence that is still ongoing in his hometown of Jobar, the 39-year-old father of four worried about how he would provide for his family. He had lived his whole life in the historic neighborhood that hems the walls of old Damascus, where he owned a thriving business — a workshop that pressed aluminum. But when the conflict broke out in 2011, he watched his enterprise shutter and his community unravel. Two years into the war, […]
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Norway, No Flash Required
The nice thing about northern Norway in the summer, is that the sun almost never sets. For a photographer, this means excellent lighting throughout the day (and night). Here you can see the colored gákti costumes of the Sámi people seem to pop right out of the picture. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World […]
For the first time since India established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, an Indian prime minister traveled to Israel. Narendra Modi’s historic three-day visit began today in Tel Aviv, where Benjamin Netanyahu personally welcomed him at Ben Gurion airport — a rare airport greeting from the Israeli prime minister. The airport pickup signifies the considerable elevation at which Indian-Israeli relations have been lifted to. The Asian giant has traditionally walked a tightrope between Israel and Muslim-majority nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have supplied it oil. India has also long lent support to the Palestinian cause, particularly under […]