Responding to changing consumer habits, big box retail in Argentina have started converting outlets to offer an easier and cheaper shopping experience.
Month: January 2018
The male god of tennis cried (profusely) after his Australian Open win. Not just his tears, but the place he gives his family, show a different way to be a sports hero.
Even in a pre-internet era, the impact was almost immediate. Eddie Adams’ Feb. 1, 1968 photograph of Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a North Vietnamese prisoner hit the Associated Press wires, and would soon appear in newspapers in the United States and around the world. The graphic image stunned the public and politicians alike, quickly adding to the mounting opposition to the war in Vietnam. Some historians say it may have changed the course of the war itself. Adams, who would win the Pulitzer Prize for the image, had mixed feelings about the work. For a seasoned AP war […]
Russia’s imperial history is far from over for Vladimir Putin, who loudly declares that wherever Russians are is Russia. And the West should take him at his word.
Rising sea levels are already forcing thousands of South Pacific residents to leave their homes. But what happens when an entire country has to relocate?
Categories
Tintin And The Red Lanterns
Show this picture of red lanterns in the gardens of Suzhou to any Tintin reader, and there’s a good chance it’ll remind them of the cover of The Blue Lotus.
BAGHDAD — Her hands, covered in magnesium carbonate for a better grip, are white. Her face is flush. Her gaze fixed. Huda Salem, 20, exhales loudly — twice — into the already sweat-saturated air. Her face contorts. Then, a shout as she lifts 70 kilos of cast iron. Behind the young woman’s massive, muscular figure, […]
When a freshly inaugurated Donald Trump issued his infamous travel ban exactly one year ago, the message was clear, not only to Muslims but to the entire world, that the United States was suddenly a very different place. But in some way, the policy can be viewed as just an official confirmation of a disturbing […]
The Church and the Army are classic settings where hierarchies help commanders accumulate power. And then, what do they do with it?
Like so many people from gang-plagued Central America, Brayan sought safety by leaving home, even if it mean leaving his beloved mother behind.
ROCKVILLE — Her mom always smiled — except when the family made its annual summer drive to visit the grandparents in Magnolia, Arkansas. “The smiles were gone while we were traveling,” said Gloria Gardner, 77. It was the 1940s, and traveling to her parents’ hometown was not approached lightly after the family moved to Muskegon, Michigan, during the Great Migration. Stopping for food or bathroom breaks was mostly out of the question. For black families, preparing for a road trip required a well-tested battle plan in which nothing could be left to chance. There were meals to cook and pack […]
RIO DE JANEIRO — Every night at around 9 o’clock, Fabiana Escobar sits down in front of the TV and watches her life play out on the small screen: whether the police haul her away or her husband cheats on her again; how she beats up his lover; how the cocaine goes out and the […]
BEIJING — Over the past decade or so, “The Low-Fertility Trap,” a hypothesis put forth by Wolfgang Lutz, Vegard Skirbekk and Maria Rita Testa, respectively Austrian, Norwegian and Italian scholars, has worried many countries facing the risks of an aging population. This includes China. The theory suggests that when a country’s birth rate is lower […]
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Need A Smaller Boat
Mauritius has developed a certain fascination for the craft of ship modeling. In the island’s massive-miniature workshop, some 3,000 people make sure that every tiny detail, from mast to hull, is faithful to the original vessel of the past.
The global economy is doing wonderfully well. And yet, its key players are wary. Why? Because for all the good news about GDP growth, there are signs of deepening divisions in society, and a sense that for many people around the world, life will be harder for their children than it has been for themselves. […]
There are still plenty in the European Union taking a hardline against the Kremlin. But a counter bloc is emerging from the corridors of the European Parliament.
A court has upheld corruption charges against the former Brazilian president. Will it stop him from seeking to return to the presidency? He may get support from some surprising places.
Some see the invention of bogus-sounding professions as a sign that work has become less and less necessary. It may also just mean that capitalism is being transformed.
Already a victim of organized crime and drug trafficking, Naples is now also facing wanton violence from disillusioned youth.
LAUSANNE — A few decades from now, that steaming cup of coffee you enjoy (and rely on) every morning won’t taste the same. Climate change, a multitude of alarming forecasts tell us, is threatening the precious bean, prompting researchers and industrialists alike to work on ways to make the plant more adaptable. The trick is […]
Like it or not, some people are smarter than others. And pretty soon, robots will be smarter than all of us. We can ignore all of that, or start using brain sciences to level the playing field.
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Little House On The Canadian Prairie
Neither Mormon, nor Amish — just some actors bringing 19th Acadia back to life in the open-air museum of Village Historique Acadien in Canada’s New Brunswick.
The war in Syria has transformed the place women hold in the workforce, providing opportunities previously reserved for men.
Calling rulers like Venezuela’s Maduro or Nicaragua’s Ortega democratically elected leaders is to mock the real meaning of elections — and democracy.
A pig farm outside Buenos Aires is a carefully planned, self-sustaining and multidimensional business that shows how Argentina stays ahead in the competitive world of food production.
When the masses descend upon snow-covered Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering, Esther Heldstab is determined to swim against the tide. The purveyor of tourist mementos on the town’s main street is one of the few shopkeepers who won’t hand over their keys to multinational conglomerates who transform shoe stores and bakeries into lounges and cocktail party space for the week. While the likes of Zurich Insurance, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank take over prime space on Promenade, Heldstab and her sister who run Swissalp Fantasy at no. 79 — where the window display features a stuffed Bernese […]
PARIS — Ever heard of the Fermi paradox? In 1950, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Enrico Fermi, the famed Italian physicist and father of the first nuclear reactor, estimated the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way, based on the number of stars in our galaxy with a planetary system gravitating […]
FORT POLK — In training exercises in a mock Afghan village constructed here on a base amid swampland, the U.S. Army is applying the military lesson of the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq: Help your partners beat the enemy, but don’t try to do the fighting yourself. Letting others fight the battle hasn’t been the American way in modern times, to our immense national frustration. The U.S. military became bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, much as it had a generation earlier in Vietnam, by trying to reshape societies with U.S. firepower. For the military, the […]
GENEVA — His video, “I’m testing a blackhead vacuum,” has more than 200,000 views. The one entitled, “Baldness: my hair transplant” has been seen at least 440,000 times. But his bestseller remains “How to have a beautiful, well-trimmed beard,” with more than 800,000 views. Since he created his YouTube channel, The Winslegue Tutorials, two and […]
The authoritarian and religious men leading Saudi Arabia, Iran and India are using women’s rights progress for purposes other than helping women.
-OpEd- PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron recently announced his determination to take on so-called fake news, false pieces of information that are published in the media to reinforce a political agenda or a school of thought, can mislead public opinion, and can even change the way people vote. Macron has talked of controlling the […]
Countries like France and Spain, already known for their inhabitants’ longevity, needed three times as long as Brazil to double their percentage of older population.
TURIN — From vacuum-cleaner robots that clean your house all by themselves to virtual assistants that can keep track of every appointment in your work agenda to self-driving cars that will soon be circulating on the streets of our cities: One of the most important applications of Artificial Intelligence is the ability to make our […]
Colombian cultural officials have been busy trying to recover an ancient burial treasure displayed in a Madrid museum.
At first glance, it looks as though leaders of the world’s most powerful countries learned the lesson from the 1930s: Closing the borders is harmful. But in reality, protectionism has taken on new forms.
-OpEd- Over the past week or so, it’s been hard not to feel disoriented by what is constantly being thrown at us, in this hyperconnected planet of ours, and not to get the feeling from our social media feeds that the world might just be going mad. Let’s begin with the open letter signed by […]
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Saudi Arabia, If Oil Becomes A Curse
-Analysis- The unlikely rapprochement between the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia, orchestrated by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, seems to be a response to the rise of the Iran-Russia coalition. In this game of chess, the American decision to choose Jerusalem as the Israeli capital offers an interesting opening. This face-off between the four oil-giants […]
POZNAN — We’re in an old bar mleczny, a so-called “milk bar,” a gastronomic remnant from Soviet times where workers could get fed for very little. The lunch at this dining spot, situated in the central city of Poznan, will capture the essence of what would be a two-week trip around Poland. Mind you, this […]
As the world moves to reduce the role of hydrocarbons, Argentina must exploit the biofuels potential of its vast farming sector, not entertain dreams of becoming a regional oil power like Venezuela.
Egypt’s St. Catherine’s Monastery holds a treasure trove of ancient texts. But spectral imaging technology shows there’s even more there than meets the eye.