Worldcrunch
-Analysis- There is no set recipe for democracy. Still, we can agree that the ingredients must include basic guarantees of free speech and free elections: If you don’t have the right to speak out against those in charge — and eventually vote them out of power — you are living under some form of rule […]
Venezuelans are sloshing their way across the Táchira River to seek jobs in Colombia, or smuggle food and fuel. Out of sight, but very much in control, are a pair of powerful criminal gangs.
In India, a centuries-old custom comes up against basic demands for human rights.
Basic health care services are hard to come by.
With over 20 years of history, SK Gaming is one of the oldest and most successful e-sport teams known for their achievements in the shooter gamer Counter-Strike. Formerly based in Cologne, SK’s gamers now live in a luxurious house in the U.S.
According to legend, the rocks of Petra tou Romiou in southwestern Cyprus, is where the Greek goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite, was born. I’ll spare you the full (and quite graphic) myth of her birth — it may spoil the serenity of this coastline.
-Analysis- MEXICO CITY — He has been a staple of Mexican politics for decades, having twice sought the presidency. The message is always the same: the moneyed classes must be taken down. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a hardline leftist rabble-rouser, has come close twice to clinching the top office in a country dripping with oil, […]
-Essay- WASHINGTON — As I was driving back to Washington last Christmas, I needed the navigation smartphone application Waze to get me out of Brooklyn, onto the Verrazano bridge, then across Staten Island into New Jersey, and finally to the I-95 highway that leads to DC. By the time I got on the New Jersey […]
As head of the northernmost parish in the world, Leif Helgesen has a clear (and often chilly) view of global warming.
The economic and political tragedy unfolding in Venezuela should be a call to action for the rest of the region’s countries, especially with the early presidential election (April 22) looming.
WASHINGTON — You have perhaps heard the joke about the liberal who is so open-minded that he can’t even take his own side in an argument. What’s less funny is that on gun control, liberals (and their many allies who are moderate, conservative and non-ideological) have been told for years that if they do take their own side in the argument, they will only hurt their cause. Supporters of even modest restrictions on firearms are regularly instructed that their ardent advocacy turns off Americans in rural areas and small towns. Those in favor of reforming our firearms laws are scolded […]
CAIRO — I was four years old when, while visiting a relative at his home, he urged me to eat some food. He told me playfully, as children are often told: “Eat, you donkey.” But, according to my mother, I refused. It bothered me that he was asking me to eat in this way. I […]
My wife Claudine wasn’t immune to the charms of the stunning red coral jewelry made by artisans in the northwest part of the Italian island of Sardinia. If memory serves, she bought a bracelet at that very shop. With time, the brand of film I was using back then gave my Sardinian series, fittingly enough, […]
There are times when silence speaks louder than words, and right now — with the new escalation of violence in Syria, where airstrikes in a rebel enclave have killed at least 335 people since the beginning of the week — is one of them. That’s why the United Nations Children’s Fund reacted to the reports […]
LAUSANNE — There are books and newspaper articles, technologies promising relief, even theater productions devoted to the topic. Indeed, it seems like everyone is talking about insomnia these days. In Switzerland, insomnia already affects about a third of the population, according to a study carried out between 2009 and 2012 by the Center for Investigation […]
Five Russian-linked Twitter accounts are clearly favoring anti-establishment Italian parties Five-Star Movement and Northern League ahead of March 4 national elections.
Differently than places like the Netherlands or the state of Colorado, legalizing cannabis in Mexico is colored by the presence of drug cartels — and the absence of the state.
After a difficult 15 years, relations between New Delhi and Tehran are in need of improvement. The recent visit in India by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was key first step.
-Analysis- Good news for the people of Cape Town: “Day Zero,” when South Africa’s second most-populated city is expected to run out of water has been pushed back. But it’s only a very temporary reprieve. The city is now expected to go waterless — and confront all the chaos that it implies — on July […]
-Analysis- PARIS — It’s a plan of titanic proportions, with a budget of close to $1 trillion and transport projects, for both land and sea, on almost every continent. No single fund can finance it, and the development bank created for it brings together more than 60 countries. The “New Silk Road,” and the figures […]
Civil conflict has lasted so long in Colombia that many ordinary people now view gratuitous violence as customary, and in some cases even admirable.
-Essay- NEW YORK — I am of the view that incompetence, random error and sheer complexity explain most of the mistakes and strange events in our world, and that we shouldn’t readily jump to conspiracy theories. I’m pretty sure Neil Armstrong did walk on the moon, and still inclined to think (although not certain) that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, there is no Bigfoot and aliens have not recently visited humans on Earth. This exercise is not merely to pile up arguments for what you believe, but also to consider how and where you might be wrong. I recently raised […]
I speak German, so I’m no stranger to the way some languages will simply slap words together. Stopping at this yurt-looking visitor office on my drive up north through Norway, I eventually realized that the apparent gibberish Polarsirkelsenteret meant “The Polar Circle Centre.” Still, neither German nor Norwegian has got anything on neighboring Finnish. I’m […]
You just walked past a homeless man on the street, but you may try to help him if you see his story on social media.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/MMZ-KML_DwA expand=1] OneShot — War amputees soccer players, 2002 (©Pep Bonet/NOOR) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video.
-Analysis- PARIS — He is “a man of about forty-two years of age, of large build, but slightly round-shouldered. His massive head momentarily shook a shock of reddish hair, which resembled a lion’s mane.” This isn’t a description of Elon Musk, but of Michel Ardan, one of the characters in Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From […]
German-Turkish relations are a high-stakes affair. Not only does Germany count some three million residents with roots in Turkey, the two countries are strategic to both the global economy and international diplomacy. In recent years, however, the relationship has been fraught with tension, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently declared her desire to “reinforce” bilateral […]
BEIJING — An online game from Japan has become a hopping success in China. Unheard of until recently, Tabikaeru: Travel Frog — developed by the Japanese company Hit-Point — is suddenly all the rage, leapfrogging the competition to become the most popular free online game in China’s Apple App Store. Travel Frog requires little of […]
As another airstrike rained down in Syria, Fadi Al Dairi knew that those inside Kfr Nobol Hospital, operated by the British NGO ‘Hand in Hand,’ would soon be targeted.
-Analysis- PARIS — Michiel Van Aarnhem is a young and elegant advisor to the Dutch finance minister. He’s also an award-winning video producer. The educational video Bitcoin, Money of the Future?, which he made with his friend Jason Halbgewachs, a Justice Ministry official, took first prize in the European Central Bank (ECB)-sponsored Euro Video Challenge […]
LAUSANNE — Is wildlife a world of bullies? We like to imagine the relationships among living beings as a no-holds-barred struggle for survival, a twisted vision of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, conveyed by the political and economic doctrine of social Darwinism. And yet, examples of cooperation abound in the animal world. Mammals, insects and […]
Marvel all you want at Californian surfers, but this one-man Li River retailer on his bamboo raft is the real deal.
Researchers at the University Of Macerata used volunteers and online bots to help translated the 19th century children’s classic.
WASHINGTON — As he heads to Florida this weekend, President Donald Trump is following in the footsteps of former President Barack Obama, a man he loathes and a leader whose time in office in many ways came to be defined by mass shootings. Obama bequeathed on his successor an almost ritualistic response to gun tragedies, beginning with the 2011 attack on then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and ending with the 2016 Dallas attack that left five officers dead. There were 15 speeches from the White House, countless prayers for the fallen and more than a dozen visits to the crime scenes. […]
For Afghan asylum seekers arriving in cold Sweden, the transition isn’t always simple — but a new project is aiming to ease the way.
Bitcoin has proved popular in Colombia, especially in small retail operations. But is it being used by criminals?
PARIS — It all started with a video shot late last year on the banks of the Seine, between the Musée d’Orsay and Pont Royal bridge in the French capital. The video, which has gone viral around the world since first being posted by the daily Le Parisien, shows garbage collectors discovering with horror dozens […]
-Analysis- BUENOS AIRES — Everything suggests that in the future, the world may want practically anything Argentina can produce. The question is whether the response to this demand should be simply augmenting current productivity, or seeking wholly new approaches. Recently, we noted that China, the chief trading partner with which Argentina has just clinched a […]
India’s police and political leaders need to find better ways to halt regular acts of vandalism on Valentine’s Day by those who want to block Western influence.
-OpEd- PARIS — While leafing through the newspapers in an English pub last weekend, I was surprised to see The Sunday Times, hardly a tabloid, portraying the three fiercest Brexiters as “musketeers.” A rather flattering image assuming Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg — the three men in question — are not offended by […]