Refusing to fund reconstruction efforts until attacks stop could be a solution to combat violence against civilians in war torn Syrian cities such as Ghouta and Alleppo.
Month: March 2018
-Essay- PARIS — Growing up in Northern California, acts of public protest were never far away. It felt perfectly natural for me to join fellow students in the annual “Day of Silence,” refusing to say a word in any of my classes to draw attention to discrimination against the LGBTQ community. My favorite English teacher […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON — The nomination of Mike Pompeo to be the next secretary of state signals President Donald Trump’s determination to quit the landmark Iran nuclear deal, which could cause it to unravel, according to national security and arms-control experts. If Pompeo is confirmed, Trump will have at his side an adviser who is equally […]
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Appetizing Art Deco
Wandering the narrow streets of Peniscola, a village in eastern Spain, I stumbled upon this quaint — if kitsch — house. Not only did it get me wondering how long it took to plaster all the shells on the facade, but I could almost smell the plates of seafood paella that came first!
MOSCOW — Rumor has it that Vladimir Putin is something of a techie. Though the man in charge at the Kremlin has been vague about his economic priorities after the March 18 presidential election, Igor Shuvalov, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister, says that Putin “is obsessively interested in new technologies and the digital economy.” During […]
Indigenous communities in the country’s Caribbean coastal area dug in for more than decade to keep their traditional lands from being trashed.
Voters in the northern town of Spirano helped put a hardline conservative in the senate. Only the man in question —Toni Chike Iwobi — is an immigrant from Nigeria.
In the place of narcissistic and subjective dignity wrongly invoked by procreation militants, we need a return to the transcendent and objective dignity of human nature.
TAMANRASSET — The rugged Hoggar mountains, stretching over an expanse of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, are home to a large ethnic Tuareg population that has long been marginalized at the hands of the country’s Arab majority. Algiers-based daily El Watan reports on a current dispute among Tuareg chiefs about how to challenge government […]
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Memories Of Mechanics Past
This photograph of a mechanic working in the rain in the coastal Moroccan city of El Jadida was shot from the hip. Discovering this image also takes me back to a trip 20 years earlier in Tunisia, one of the only times I ever needed to get my car repaired in 60+ years of travels.
PARIS — “Previously on President Trump …” We have gotten used to following the news from the White House as we would a prime-time television drama. This week’s plot includes the long-awaited boot for Big Rex. Did he know it was coming? Who said what to whom, and when? What does it mean for Vlad? […]
In their own silent but deadly way, cattle are contributing to climate change. Adapting their diets may be one way to ease the problem. Changing our eating habits is another.
-Essay- CAIRO — I dropped her off at the first of many stops that make up the long journey back to her home, and I went back to mine. We both like “homemaking;” we hoard the smallest of things, collect candles, eat what we grow – both of us are lovers of life, even fighters […]
Little room is left for the movement led by Alexei Navalny to challenge Vladimir Putin’s bid for reelection.
Planning experts from Denmark and the U.S. tasked with redesigning a Buenos Aires shantytown were surprised by some of its built-in people-friendly dynamics, which can be applied elsewhere — even in upscale projects
-Analysis- BEIRUT — More than 12 million Syrians have been displaced since 2011 — that is more than half of Syria’s pre-war population. And most want nothing more than to return home. Yet the situation in the country remains too unsafe at the moment. Whole cities have been destroyed, and many areas are cluttered with land mines and unexploded explosives, posing further challenges to the safe, voluntary and sustainable repatriation of refugees to Syria. Yet despite these risks, a small number of refugees do return to Syria each month. While this may seem like a positive development, research by the […]
By becoming president for life, Xi Jinping is bringing China back to its imperial history, taking advantage of the exceptional development of his country but also of America’s mistakes. But Chinese coming fortunes are still very much up in the air.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/tyJheSGhHUY expand=1] OneShot — Service at megachurch, 2013 (©Robin Hammond/NOOR) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
With the melting of the ice, maritime traffic is growing, which means new economic opportunities, but also some cold and hard questions.
HYDERABAD — Sex workers in towns and villages in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are often married off at a young age, or trafficked to larger cities. Statistics released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) place Andhra Pradesh second, behind West Bengal, for the prevalence of human trafficking. Many of those being trafficked are young girls, and the UN office says that in January alone, 939 minor girls were reported missing from the southeastern state. But one positive development is that a growing number of the women who have been victims of […]
BENGHAZI — They call it the “Café of the Displaced,” and it’s always full. “It’s because my customers followed me here,” says Ahmed, a smile on his face as he pours a clever blend of coffee, cream, cocoa powder and sugar. Everybody’s known Ahmed for years. And they know his story, which is also the […]
Open battles between major drug outfits are behind a series of recent killings at the National Autonomous University Of Mexico.
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Small Wheels Keep On Turning
Pious men keep on praying.
WASHINGTON — For the moment, at least, it appears to be a clear-cut victory — the biggest foreign policy win of his young administration. President Donald Trump has brought his arch-nemesis, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a.k.a. “Little Rocket Man,” to the table to negotiate away his nuclear arsenal. Optimists declared a major breakthrough. Even pessimists acknowledged that Trump’s hard line against Pyongyang, after decades of less forceful U.S. effort, played a significant role in moving one of the world’s most vexing and threatening problems in a potentially positive direction. But in the afterglow of the surprise announcement — […]
In Sunday’s stunning national elections, the former leftist stronghold near Naples joined the outsider revolt against the political establishment. What comes next, however, is still not clear.
The summer season in Greenland is fleeting. As the snow melts into the tundra, modern day Eskimo descendants reconnect with their ancestral habits. There is also the deluxe option for tourists.
-Analysis- PARIS — #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have made the past year a crucial one for women’s rights. Or at least it has, from our Western, Oscar-Night point of view. As the world celebrates its first International Women’s Day of what we can glibly call the “post-Weinstein” era of the feminist cause, a recent Reuters […]
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The Spy Who Came In From The Cold War
-Analysis- Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in critical condition, three days after they were found unconscious on a bench in the English city of Salisbury. The pair were presumably poisoned by what is so far referred to as an “unknown substance.” Britain’s counter-terrorism police have now taken over the […]
Just because trade balances tend to work in Germany’s favor doesn’t mean partner countries aren’t benefiting too.
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Watch: OneShot — Mother’s Comfort
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/Me_6ixAVhOQ expand=1] OneShot — Mother’s comfort, 2004 (©Andrea Bruce/NOOR) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
CAIRO — There are “forces of evil” that control Egypt’s media outlets, according to a statement issued last week by Public Prosecutor Nabil Sadek. To protect “national security” and prevent “spreading fear throughout society,” Sadek instructed public prosecutors and regulators to monitor media outlets and arrest anyone who disseminates or broadcasts false news. However, it […]
From both the left and right, populist leaders in Italy are again at the forefront of the movement around the world.
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Indonesian Shade
These are the Indonesian guards of His Majesty’s Kraton Guard Regiment, keeping an eye on the Royal Palace of Yogyakarta. But unlike some of their counterparts I chanced upon across the globe, they weren’t that imperturbable: The fellow on the right gave me a long, hard sideward glance as I took his picture.
-Analysis- PARIS — With his new sweeping round of protectionist tariffs on steel and aluminum, it looks like Donald Trump has decided to extend to the economic field the “madman strategy” he had already applied to the Korean Peninsula. That was the take last week from former CIA Director David Petraeus. Developed by the Nixon-Kissinger […]
An estimated 40,000 Venezuelans have taken up residence in Boa Vista, the capital of Brazil’s Roraima state. Many are roughing it in the city’s 53 public squares. And their numbers are rising.
BEIRUT – Russia’s proposal for a partial truce in the Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus is not a “humanitarian pause,” but a “humanitarian posture,” says Dr. Annie Sparrow, a critical-care pediatrician and public health professional. In Syria Deeply’s latest Deeply Talks, Sparrow and Mohamed Katoub, advocacy manager for the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), spoke with our editors about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the besieged Damascus suburbs. (Listen to the full audio here) Last week, Moscow called for daily, five-hour cessations of hostilities to allow for aid deliveries and medical evacuations. However, it usually takes a convoy between eight […]
The very notion of “political instability” is baked into democratic life. If you want something predictable and unchanging you can have a 17th-century French monarchy or 21st-century Chinese autocracy. Still, a look around European parliamentary democracies these days shows a particularly bumpy road ahead, as ideologies and party machinations are being side-swiped by an accelerating […]
The Russian president was a KGB agent in the city in the former East Germany when the Iron Curtain started to give way. The ghosts of the past are everywhere.
The city in the U.S. midwest has found a different way to make it in the modern economy.
In the southern city of Marseille, actor Selman Reda draws on his personal experiences to explore the ins and outs of being Muslim in secular France.