Worldcrunch
-Analysis- Bitcoin’s blistering price rise has broken a new milestone, passing the $10,000 threshold for the first time. It’s a considerable achievement given that the most famous of cryptocurrencies was worth under $1,000 at the beginning of this year, and first reached $2,000 just a few months ago. But it’s also a frightening feat. The […]
There is one land crossing out of Gaza, Rafah on Egypt’s border, and it is usually shut, confounding the life and travel plans of thousands of Palestinians.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump this week disseminated on social media three inflammatory and unverified anti-Muslim videos, took glee in the firing of a news anchor for sexual harassment despite facing more than a dozen of his own accusers and used a ceremony honoring Navajo war heroes to malign a senator with a derogatory slur, “Pocahontas.” Again and again, Trump veered far past the guardrails of presidential behavior. But despite the now-routine condemnations, the president is acting emboldened, as if he were impervious to the uproar he causes. If there are consequences for his actions, Trump does not seem to […]
As September’s duo of deadly earthquakes made so painfully clear, Mexico is a highly seismic country. Sadly, there’s no accounting for the dangers of plate tectonics. But could human activity also be contributing to Mexico’s propensity for earth-shaking events? Quite possibly, according to the Mexico City-based newspaper El Universal, which reports that oil exploration in […]
BANGKOK — Luzviminda Siapo is telling me about the day her 19-year-old son was killed — that was just seven months ago. He was dragged from his home by 14 masked men and shot in the head twice. Witnesses say he was ordered to run for his life before being shot. “He just couldn’t run, he had club feet,” Luzviminda told me. I met Luzviminda along with The Philippines Human Rights Commissioner, Leah Tanodra-Armamento. The pair were visiting Thailand last month, sharing stories of Filipinos killed in the country’s so-called ‘war on drugs.” It’s been 16 months since Rodrigo Duterte […]
Whenever I go back to the boxes of slides from my two trips to Syria, in 1972 and 1996, and look at the archeological wonders, I inevitably ask myself: Is this still standing. Sadly, the answer is usually “no.” Years of civil war and looting have left the ancient capital of Apamea with a similar […]
-Analysis- BEIJING — Two weeks ago, a preschool in Shanghai was exposed for abusing toddlers. One young child was brutally thrown around the floor, while another was forced to eat spicy mustard. Then, last week, a kindergarten in Beijing run by the Red, Yellow and Blue (RYB) Education company, was found to have been injecting […]
Bolivia’s beaming president, as pictured (right) on Wednesday’s front page of Tarija-based daily El País, has good reason to smile: He’s just been cleared to seek reelection indefinitely. Evo Morales, 58, was first elected in 2005 following a period of upheaval that saw four presidents come and go in less than five years. Once in […]
The government’s placement of migrants could increase the population of Vaccarozzi di Erbezzo, a miniscule mountain village above Verona, more than tenfold.
-Analysis- A boat is drifting along the coast. There’s no captain manning it, no visible passengers on the derelict wooden vessel. The “ghost ship” is missing its rotor blade, making it look like it’s facing the choppy waters on its own. Eventually, it washes up on a Japanese beach. In its hull, eight bodies — […]
Vintage wallpaper and other Old World touches meld into chic Buenos Aires surroundings to push Home Hotel to be named the region’s top boutique address.
For years, Pyongyang kidnapped hundreds of people from neighboring countries, in order to train spies in foreign languages and cultures, or to steal identities. Today, their families are still looking for them.
Now Vitali Shkliarov has headed home to oppose Vladimir Putin.
Rohingya. Outside of Myanmar, it’s a simple word, though not necessarily easy to pronounce. Largely unknown until recently, its utterance now unmistakably evokes persecution, humanitarian tragedy, and what the UN said was “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” at the hands of government authorities and local militias. But inside the Buddhist-majority country, it’s a politically-charged […]
Over my years of travels, I’ve seen major changes to cityscapes around the world as new buildings arrive. Manhattan is obviously a different story.
BIR AL-ABED — “For 20 minutes, they kept firing at us. We couldn’t hear anything else because of the sounds of the gunfire. Everybody was running. Some were trying to escape and others were looking for their children — no one was spared, young or old. When the militants were done firing, one of them […]
Businesses in Colombia have been invited to display gay-friendly signs as a traditionalist society, slowly, grows more tolerant.
An exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Paris explores a key moment in the artist’s relationship with his models and his world over the course of a single pivotal year.
Islamists are known to target apostates. For the growing number of Muslim arrivals in Germany, a minority of those who have converted to Christianity say they are subject to attack.
NEW YORK — Should central banks embrace cryptocurrencies, or even pioneer their own? In a nutshell, no. Crypto assets are an unusual innovation, still in flux and often poorly understood. Trying to centralize them in a bureaucracy is exactly the wrong way to go. Yet China’s central bank claims it is working toward a blockchain-based digital currency. Singapore has already experimented in this direction. The phrase “Fedcoin” is sometimes bandied about, though I’ve seen no concrete sign of the U.S. Federal Reserve jumping on this bandwagon. In its recent quarterly review, the Bank of International Settlements asked central banks to […]
Droves of customers stampeding through large department stores on Black Friday was once a uniquely American phenomena. But the traditional day-after Thanksgiving shopping sale event has recently gained traction in other countries that have no connection to the American holiday. The insatiable consumerism that fuels American capitalism, it seems, is a more viable export than […]
In rural Russia, in a rustic dacha very similar to this one, the man who’d become the first person in outer space was born. The town of Gzhatsk, midway between Moscow and Smolensk, was renamed in 1968 to honor Yuri Gagarin.
Chinese tourist agencies will be severely punished for organizing tour groups to St. Peter’s Square and the Sistine Chapel (as well as the tiny Pacific island of Palau). The reason? Taiwan
DAMASCUS — It is across an immense desert, between oil fields and Mesopotamian archeological sites overlooking the Euphrates, where Syria’s future may be decided. The question, as Damascus makes more and more ground against ISIS and jihadists fighters, is the following: After seven years of a devastating war will the nation remain united? Or will […]
Building underground rail systems is a major investment, but increasingly it is one that is justified economically — and otherwise.
PARIS — Why does a nation of 75 million share a name with a holiday fowl? Is it mere linguistic coincidence? Some unsolved historical-ornithological riddle? A bad idea for a cookbook? Here is how Reference.com’s dictionary talks turkey: In the 1540s, the guinea fowl, a bird with some resemblance to the Thanksgiving avian, was imported from Madagascar through Turkey by traders known as Turkish merchants. … Then, the Spaniards brought turkeys back to the Americas by way of North Africa and Turkey, where the bird was mistakenly called the same name. Europeans who encountered the bird in the Americas latched […]
-Essay- When you’re living abroad, Thanksgiving can sneak up on you. So when my dad sent me a message Wednesday night — “About to run my last errand for Mom (hopefully)” — I had absolutely no clue what he could be talking about. Then, it hit me. He was out grocery shopping for the big […]
Slowly but surely, the Congress party is regaining its footing, and the scion to India’s political dynasty, the man who everyone gave up on, has newfound confidence.
Israel’s sexist family law is bent to demands of the country’s Orthodox community, including divorce requiring the man’s consent. But what if the husband is violent?
These days a certain four-letter expletive — arguably English’s naughtiest word — is bouncing around the European Court of Justice. But it’s not coming from potty-mouthed prosecutors: The obscenity lies at the heart of an unprecedented case over patenting vulgarity, Berlin-based daily Die Welt reports. It’s a case several years in the making. In 2015, […]
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti’s national army was abolished 22 years ago after a disastrous period of military rule ended in a U.S.-led intervention that restored democracy in the Caribbean country. Now, recently elected President Jovenel Moïse is launching a new recruitment drive and re-establishing an institution that’s still widely unpopular, as evidenced by protests in the […]
-Analysis- Are we witnessing “the twilight of Angela Merkel”? The question, asked Tuesday in Le Figaro“s lead editorial, is on everybody’s mind, both inside and outside Germany. To be sure, in her 12 years as German Chancellor, Merkel has never been as vulnerable as she now appears to be. The collapse of post-election talks to […]
-Analysis- BEIRUT — Since its independence in 1943, Lebanon has been exposed to the vicissitudes of the Middle East’s complicated geopolitics, from the creation of Israel, which led to a massive influx of Palestinian refugees on Lebanese soil, to the recent war in Syria, not to mention Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. Since 2005 and […]
This recent photo of nestling storks at an open-air museum in eastern France’s Alsace region shows that even 85 years after the stork brought me … I still can be quick with my camera!
Despite the growing list of powerful people toppled in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, the biggest names in Washington are still dodging real scrutiny.
Mugabe and Maduro share much in common, starting with the rare ability to gut the resources of a promising national economy and disregard the will of the people. But there is an important difference that may explain who survives another day.
Actually dude, cannabis plants grown in the northern region of Piedmont are quite low in THC content, which gives the high to marijuana consumption. But there are other uses. Dude.
-Analysis- Lord Acton’s famous phrase about the corrupting effect of power (and absolute power) should have come with a footnote about the “clinging” factor. On any given day, it isn’t hard to find someone in charge, somewhere in the world, using all their wits and energy to hold onto power beyond any reasonable claim to […]
The sale and trade of women in Syria is not a wanton and senseless consequence of war. It is a consequence of a war economy in which nearly all warring parties and even civilians use women to secure profit, weapons, access or leverage in negotiations.
A key message at this week’s COP 23 climate conference: the fight against global warming requires protecting the natives who’ve known the rainforests for centuries.