A vital source of agricultural crops, fish and shrimp, the Mekong Delta is Vietnam’s most fertile area. But it’s also the most fragile.
Month: August 2017
-Analysis- When the song came across my favorite German radio station this morning, my eyes rolled with the familiar lyrics: “Your candle burned out long before your legend ever will.” Still, with today’s 20-year anniversary of the death of Lady Di, Elton John’s prediction is holding up strong. Princess Diana’s “death by media” was a […]
Ultima Hora — Aug. 30, 2017 ACARIGUA — The political crisis in Venezuela is threatening freedom of the press in a new way. The daily newspaper Ultima Hora (“The Last Hour”) has printed its final edition — at least for now — after it ran out of newsprint stock. ” ¡Pausa Obligada!” (“Forced Break”) was […]
PARIS — What becomes of psychoanalysis in our hyper-connected digital world? The question is ripe, as new technologies capture the psyche and absorb the libido of each and every one of us. As relations among individuals are now broadcast to everyone, your relationship with yourself is fundamentally altered. This changes the status of speech and […]
From zoning laws and insurance polices to the realities of climate change, there are ways to prevent such widespread suffering. But it requires political will.
NICE — You can spot an IKEA store from a mile away: The classic blue-and-yellow box design of every outlet of the Swedish home goods giant is as much a part of its identity as the quirky names of its chairs and the meatballs at the snack bar. Get ready, though, because IKEA’s look is […]
-Analysis- Do GIFs have a place in serious publications? Where the hell is my giraffe emoji? Do androids dream of electric sheep? The digital world is presenting us with questions we never could have imagined we’d have to answer — and maybe we don’t. But there are also those brand new mind-boggling questions of a […]
What connects the violence in Barcelona and Charlottesville? Where have Western democracies gone wrong since the turn of the century?
João Lourenço succeeds José Eduardo Dos Santos, who ruled with an iron fist since 1979. But Dos Santos has been busy keeping his hands on the levers of power.
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North Korea, Time To Face The Music
-Analysis- As Kim Jong-un again edges the world closer to an unthinkable nuclear showdown, the tribulations of a humble music store owner in Berlin may help explain why it’s so hard to figure out what to do with North Korea. German daily Die Welt spoke last week with Andreas Schmucker about a court case pending […]
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Cassis Port To Starboard
I’ve taken shots of fishing boats around the world. There were the ever colorful luzzus of Malta and the Phoenician-inspired shapes of the vessels of Nazaré, The traditional fishing boats here in the southern French port of Cassis are called “pointus,” for their pointy shape.
Guests come to the Hauterive Abbey, outside of Fribourg, to get away from it all, take a few days to reflect, and keep quiet. Very very quiet.
Elle, Aug. 28, 2017 President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity may be plunging right now but his wife, Brigitte, is in hot demand, in part over a controversy surrounding her status as France’s First Lady. The latest issue of women’s magazine Elle features Brigitte Macron’s first public interview since her husband’s election in May. The weekly sold […]
-Analysis- BUENOS AIRES — Argentines are surprised when they hear Europeans are worried the dollar is becoming cheaper. But there’s reason for it. Cheaper dollars mean that foreign products will flood the old continent, which, of course, is good for importers. In Argentina, most people believe that a strong peso is better than a weak […]
-Analysis- It was the “Fight of the Century.” Or was it? As far as fighting goes, Saturday night’s $700-million mega-bout between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor — also humbly dubbed “The Biggest Fight In Combat Sports History” (capital letters matter) — was actually a tad more entertaining than Mayweather’s 2015 “Fight of the Century” against […]
AQAP, the local al-Qaeda branch, is determined to learn from its mistakes. They’ve learned that they can’t go too quickly and spill too much local blood.
Morning She wakes early, usually at 6 a.m., and fetches the newspaper. A morning without Sudoku is not a morning worth facing. After she solves the puzzle, she takes her medication, eats two sandwiches with butter and jam and climbs back into bed. Once she’s under the covers, Rosemarie Achenbach, aged 93, frees her laptop […]
Now on their third ‘Under the Pole’ expedition, French explorers Emmanuelle Périé-Bardout and Ghislain Bardout (and their two sons) just can’t get enough of the far north.
BEIJING — “Goodbye,” Ying told her third husband. “Oh,” he responded indifferently. Through their legal, but dishonnest, marriage, Ying earned 40,000 yuan ($6,000). Her “husband” was allowed to buy an apartment in Beijing, which in turn, nets him about one million yuan ($150,000) a year. Ying and her real husband Wang are a couple who […]
Restaurants around the world take the meat and dairy out of food to make traditional food trendy.
Millions drive past the favela of Vila Esperança, with its rampant unemployment and open sewers. But thanks to a three-meter high concrete wall, they don’t see it.
Take a bite out of this juicy scandal. In eastern Germany, there’s a contest for an “Apple Queen”, where the title goes to a lady who poses with the produce. For years, the town of Guben has bestowed the honor to a woman but last year, due to a lack of female entrants, local authorities […]
OGONI REGION — Stanley, 40, once considered becoming a fighter. He says he already has a small stash of Kalashnikov assault rifles hidden somewhere. He’s not boasting. That’s just how things are in the creeks of the Niger Delta. The youth have easier access to weapons than to schools and jobs. But instead of becoming […]
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Costume Curiosity
As the conductor of a traditional French choir, I was invited several times to the international music festival in Llangollen, in Wales, where I got to see costumes from around the world. Here, a singer from my choir studies a woman in a rural Welsh costume that includes an apron and a tall felt hat.
Climate change is already affecting people’s lives, even as some may try to deny it. If nothing is done to curtail it, the impact will be much more pronounced in the coming years and decades, not only for certain communities — in low-lying coastal areas, for example — but for entire regions. Fast forward to […]
In Lebanon, the country with the highest number of refugees per capita in the world, a cemetery for Syrian refugees is running out of burial plots.
In villages along the Huai river, in eastern China, cancer rates are 50% higher than in the rest of the country.
German daily Die Tageszeitung showed no photoshopping restraint on its Wednesday front page, in reaction to Donald Trump’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. With “Trumbo” — a portmanteau neologism combining the U.S. president’s name and fictional U.S. Army Special Forces soldier John Rambo — Die Tageszeitung spoofed the poster for the third installment […]
Mario Draghi didn’t give much away in his opening remarks at the 6th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences in southern Germany. In his highly anticipated speech Wednesday morning, the president of the European Central Bank kept mum on the most titillating topic in Europe: upcoming stimulus negotiations. However disappointing, his silence was not altogether surprising: […]
Discrimination and exploitation are deeply rooted in India. But rather than silently endure, some in the underclasses are raising their voices in defiance.
-Analysis- Even as the European Union has wavered on whether to let Turkey into its exclusive grouping, Ankara has flexed its muscles within the bloc. It has done so by using a shared tool and resource to fight crime: Interpol. Last Saturday, Spanish authorities arrested author Dogan Akhanli after Turkey issued an Interpol arrest warrant […]
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Germany, Time And Time Again
I live in France near the border with Germany. The proximity has meant that my wife and I have visited Germany 32 times — yes, 32. On these trips, we were able to discover many of the country’s hidden jewels, such as this church, St. Bartholomew’s, on the western shore of Bavaria“s beautiful Königssee lake.
-OpEd- CARACAS — The Venezuelan regime has established, slowly but surely, a full-blown dictatorship. How did we get here? In 2005, the opposition boycotted parliamentary elections to protest bias by the National Electoral Council (CNE). This withdrawal gave the government total control of parliament for five years. The opposition only decided to return to the […]
-Opinion- Two European cities, two terror attacks. In Finland, 18-year-old Moroccan Abderrahman Mechkah is suspected of stabbing two women to death and injuring eight others in the southwestern city of Turku on Aug. 18. Mechkah is believed to have been specifically targeting women but also ended up wounding the men who tried to defend them. […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Donald Trump’s presidency has produced a proliferation of Eeyores. It’s not their (our) fault. However dismal one’s view of current American politics, Trump is sure to expose it, with a tweet or the lack of one, as a naive and rosy fantasy. Each day, we adjust our sights down. Each day, the president forces our gaze lower. Some conservatives might take comfort in the prospect — wish, really — of a President Mike Pence assuming office before the current occupant’s term is up. The Indiana Republican is as dull and serviceable a politician as Trump is bizarre […]
PARIS — European nations are bracing themselves for the return of their citizens who had left to fight the wars in Syria and Iraq. “The EU member states most affected expect a slow but gradual rise of returnees,” noted a recent Radicalization Awareness Network (RAN) report submitted to the European Commissioner for Security, Julian King. […]
Choi fled to freedom in South Korea, where he has managed to turn his frightening experiences into a laugh-out-loud online comic strip.
LJUBLJANA — I have been traveling for a few weeks now, on a journey filled with inner dialogue. Searching first for long-desired destinations, I was soon digging deep into my childhood. It was a walk toward the past — a backtrack of the images and sensations that were important in forming my personality. Doing it […]
Tiny Luxembourg is taking a leading role in devising the laws necessary to regulate the business of space exploration.
A van rammed into pedestrians at Las Ramblas, a tourist hotspot in Barcelona, killing at least 13 and injuring scores of others on Thursday evening. The attack, which was claimed by terror group ISIS, underscores a growing technique of deadly assault — namely vehicles striking crowds of people. Police say they foiled a second attack […]