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In The News

Buddha Inc? A Mindfulness Path For India To Reclaim Soft Power

NEW DELHI — Despite India’s recent progress, its international influence is not commensurate with its size, might and tradition. India is often criticized for being unable to punch above its weight, or even according to its weight. Time and again, we have noticed that economic strength and military might have their limitations. The potential for Indian soft power, however, is enormous, but has remained underutilized. On the occasion of Gautama Buddha’s birth anniversary, I posit that India should reclaim Buddha and his philosophy, including his practice of Vipassana, as an Indian ideological, philosophical and lifestyle export to the world at […]

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In The News OneShot

Watch: OneShot — Men Working In A Backyard

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/qxUNvx5QDpc expand=1] OneShot — Men working in a backyard, 2014 (©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:

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In The News

A Dangerous Analogy: Islamic Terrorism As Reality TV

Today’s terrorism is different, with a specific way of scripting the violence that echos popular culture. Of course, these aren’t actors. Especially, the victims.

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Eyes on the U.S. Geopolitics

Russian Poker? Why The New Cold War May Be About To Thaw

-Analysis- MOSCOW — The list is long: the scandal around the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, an unprecedented expulsion of Russian diplomats, sanctions leading to the fall of the ruble and a hit on aluminum giant Rusal, retaliatory sanctions, strikes on Syria and over-the-top rhetoric of official Moscow during and after all-the-above crises. […]

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In The News

Made In China? America First? The Tech Arms Race Is On

In the age of Trump, there are innumerable issues and arguments that go unnoticed or underreported because this president is sucking up the oxygen of the entire American media universe, with his indecisive tweets and resulting indecisive policies. This is one of those topics that escaped the public eye. It centers around Trump’s announcement to […]

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In The News

Next On The Korean Peninsula: Trump And Pyongyang Nukes

Kim Jong Un’s historic call for peace also included an unspoken message to U.S. President Donald Trump: North Korea won’t surrender its nuclear weapons easily. The agreement Kim reached Friday with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in declared “a new era of peace” and sought a formal end to the seven-decade-old Korean War. While it said both countries committed to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, it gave no details on concrete steps to achieve it. More ominously, North Korean’s state-run media released a commentary shortly after the agreement was announced calling on the U.S. to drop its “anachronistic hostile policy” and “bad […]

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In The News

En Français, Please

The language situation in Canada“s predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec can lead to baffling bilingual signs like this one at the Montreal airport.

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In The News

(Even Older) Boomerang Children Weigh On Parents’ Well-Being

More and more young and not-so-young people are returning home to live with their parents. A phenomenon which is hard on their aging parents.

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In The News

Cali Murder Inc, A Colombian Drug Cartel War May Be Back

Expected to return to Cali after serving prison time, some old gangsters will find a ‘new generation’ of criminals running businesses in town. Will that mean trouble,

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Eyes on the U.S. Society

Why Americans Still Haven’t Mastered The Work-Life Balance

-Analysis- WASHINGTON — Americans love to contemplate – and legislatively promote, to whatever degree possible – the virtue of hard work. Here in the United States, we already work more hours per year than our English- speaking counterparts in Britain, Canada and Australia – not to mention those enviable denizens of European social democracies, who enjoy the kind of leisure time only our highest-paid workers can afford. So perhaps it’s not surprising that several new pro-work policy ideas are enjoying attention on the left and the right. On the right, work requirements for Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance represent […]

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Eyes on the U.S. Geopolitics Ideas

Kisses For Macron. Cold Shoulder For Merkel?

The German chancellor’s upcoming visit to Washington will be a sober affair, particularly in contrast to the glitzy, red-carpet welcome the White House gave her French counterpart.

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Future Ideas

China’s BAT Tech Giants Giving GAFA Run For Their Money

Upstarts no longer, the so-called BAT companies — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — are a force to be reckoned with.

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In The News

Letter From Damascus: How Geopolitics Unfolds In My Backyard

Alaa, a civil society worker in the Syrian capital weighs in on the impact and the perception of civilians on the ground toward foreign intervention in her country.

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In The News

After Sargsyan Resignation, What Next For Armenia-Russia Relations?

MOSCOW — Following a series of demonstrations against the political class that began across Armenia on April 13, the country’s prime minister Serzh Sargsyan has resigned. His duties are being temporarily carried out now by First Deputy Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan. In Moscow, the events in Armenia have prompted a public reaction from Maria Zakharova, […]

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In The News

President AMLO? Leftist Populism Smells Triumph In Mexico

Leftist presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is Mexico’s answer to Trump. AMLO’s details are vague, but his poll numbers are rising.

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In The News

Behold Tomorrow! Meet The Professional Futurists

GENEVA — One day last October, during the morning talk show on Swiss state broadcaster RTS, still groggy viewers were brutally awakened by a sentence dropped live on-air: “Schools train children who will be decimated by artificial intelligence.” The voice that dragged them out of their reverie belonged to a French doctor and entrepreneur named […]

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In The News

India’s Plague Of Systematic Rape Has Not Abated

Women’s bodies have become proxy battlegrounds for prejudice and intolerance, a brutal means of imposing power over a community or caste.

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In The News

Religious Romania

Romania is one of the richest countries I’ve set foot in when it comes to religious heritage. The central European state has history-packed cathedrals, exuberantly colorful churches — and in this case, beautifully peaceful monasteries.

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Future Ideas

Why Global Shipping Industry Must Climb Aboard Paris Climate Pact

Latin American states, as major sea-trading nations that are also vulnerable to climate change, must act now to find ways to curb shipping pollution.

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Future Ideas

Brace Yourself For The Digital Counter-Revolution

The world has mostly embraced technological advances. But as fallout over the Facebook data-breach scandal suggests, the reaction could get nasty.

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In The News

Ortega As Maduro? Nicaraguan Unrest Mirrors Venezuela

Protests in Nicaragua against a proposed tax hike to finance the social security system have revealed the people’s disgust with President Ortega’s regime. His brutal response does not bode well.

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In The News OneShot

Watch: OneShot — Sadr City Bus Stop

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/bu1gqxkrQ70 expand=1] OneShot — Sadr City bus stop, 2008 (©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:

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In The News

Not Just Starbucks, Why White America Calls The Cops On Black People

-OpEd- WASHINGTON — It’s good that Starbucks, with its announcement this week that it will close thousands of stores for a day of “racial bias training” in May, is taking steps in the right direction after a video of two black men getting arrested in one of its coffee shops went viral. But white America’s habit of needlessly calling the police on black people is not just a Starbucks culture problem. It’s an American culture problem. The tragic examples are all over the Internet. In McKinney, Tex., in 2015, after a neighbor called police about a pool party, a responding […]

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In The News

Latin America’s Misplaced Obsession In Measuring ‘Happiness’

The Colombian government’s fondness for ‘happiness’ polls may be an attempt ot distract people from poor basic services that are a public responsibility.

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Ideas Rue Amelot

Boston To Hamburg, Finding The Romance In Our Tinder Age

-Essay- PARIS — This is not news, but dating today is a completely different animal than it was even five years ago, as new apps keep arriving to create “matches’ between people online who may have never come face-to-face otherwise. Personally, online or off, the whole “dating” thing has never really been my strong suit […]

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In The News

UK Business Hates Brexit, But Opposes Second Referendum

LONDON — The plot to reverse Brexit is missing a key ally: U.K. business. Companies have been among the most outspoken critics of the split from the European Union, and have much to lose from a divorce gone wrong. But as a group of lawmakers tries to engineer a second referendum, business leaders are recoiling. “Business likes certainty and I can’t see how discussion of a second referendum helps create that certainty when the negotiations are not even concluded,” says Miles Celic, chief executive officer of TheCityUK, the finance industry’s lobby group. Businesses are uninterested in politics. They want commercial […]

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Eyes on the U.S. Ideas

Opioids And Unemployment: America’s Real Recipe For Despair

The U.S. may boast the world’s largest economy on one hand and a deeply problematic president on the other. But under the surface, things are bleak.

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Geopolitics Society

May 1968, Month One Of The Sexual Revolution?

France will be marking 50 years since the month-long student uprising that challenged the establishment on so many fronts. But some historians now question whether it was really the birth of sexual liberation.

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Economy Ideas Trump And The World

Economic History Lesson: Trump’s Protectionism Will Not Pay

The U.S. trade deficits that have prompted the Trump administration to raise tariffs have a result of the universal use of dollars and are unrelated to ‘unjust’ trading practices.

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In The News

Elections, A Favorite Prop For Strongmen

Even the most anti-democratic election can reveal much about the system.

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In The News

After Raúl: What A Post-Castro Cuba Could Look Like

With Castro’s retirement as Cuban President, Cuba is left to face ongoing issues of the communist party — primarily the shambling economy.

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Ideas Syria Crisis

Syria, Victim Of Western Errors Of The Recent Past

We should not be proud of of the insufficient response against the Damascus regime, but total inaction would be even worse.

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In The News

Sicilian Smiles

Our trip to Sicily came just as legendary Italian magistrate Giovanni Falcone was launching the widest-ranging anti-Mafia probe ever. This light-hearted moment in Palermo reminds me of the famous photo of Falcone and fellow magistrate Paolo Borsellino, each assassinated soon afterward by the Mafia.

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In The News

In Latin America, Politics Of Fear Makes A Comeback

Countries like Colombia, traumatized by decades of violence, have yet to shake off the tyrant’s favored arm of fear. Now it also spreads on social networks.

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In The News

How Western Strikes Against Syrian Regime Look To Syrian People

Better than nothing? Too little, too late? Settling their own scores? The people on the ground in Syria have no false illusions as to what’s at play with Western attacks in response to reports of the use of chemical weapons.

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In The News

A Flag And Signs Of Separatism In India

NEW DELHI — In the uproar over the southwestern state of Karnataka“s decision to have a separate flag for the state, New Delhi-based television channels warned that the move was a threat to national unity in India. Meanwhile, Bengaluru-based Kannada-language channels largely hailed the move, as simply a worthy symbol of Kannada pride. This latest example of the cocoons that hinder both journalism and India as a whole, depending on where people are looking from. This is not about patriotism or about being Indian, but about a disconnect in understanding India between the capital of New Delhi and a southern […]

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In The News

Rolex, Making Of A Worldwide Reputation From A Swiss Backyard

GENEVA — At a time when trust and truth are under attack, it’s somehow comforting to see that some reputations can still go untarnished. For the third year in a row, Swiss company Rolex has earned the designation as the company with the world’s best reputation, as awarded by the Reputation Institute, based in Cambridge, […]

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In The News

It’s Time To Stop Demonizing Big Data

Information gleaned from digital sources must be used in strict accordance with the law. But it’s too useful to simply vilify and disregard.

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Eyes on the U.S. Ideas Syria Crisis

Syria And The Troubling Parallels With 1914

From Saudi Arabia to Iran, Moscow to Washington and beyond, the rising global tensions over the Syrian war could explode in unpredictable ways.

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In The News OneShot

Watch: The Story Behind Iconic Holocaust Photo Of Warsaw Child

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dj8myWqT_nU expand=1] OneShot — Jewish boy surrenders, 1943 (Anonymous Nazi photographer​) The Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi occupation started in April 1943. Jürgen Stroop was sent by Himmler to pacify it. He documented the liquidation of the ghetto in a report that would later be used against him and other SS officers during Dachau and Nuremberg’s trials. This picture was one of the photos found in the report, and went on to symbolize the evil of Hitler’s Final Solution. OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow […]

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