The digital revolution is shifting how societies are structured, and may lead to greater public oversight of government. But it could also have the opposite effect.
Month: May 2018
-Analysis- From Washington to Tehran to Pyongyang, the world’s attention this week has been consumed by nuclear diplomacy (and lack thereof). Talk of bad manners and misbehaving politicians, in light of such high stakes, might seem beside the point. And yet … Yesterday, in a closed-door meeting at the White House, special assistant Kelly Sadler […]
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Multi-Layered Selfie
Fellow travelers were posing next to Queen Elizabeth Park’s famous “Photo Session” statues, with the city of Vancouver as a backdrop. I added a layer to this already self-referential work of art: The shadow on the bottom right, next to the bronze statue of the photographer, is mine.
Beirut-based contemporary artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan uses sounds to shine a light, so to speak, on some of the darkest places on earth.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump yanked the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal this week and will reverse decades of policy in Israel next week, in each case acting on a campaign pledge and intuition that he argues has already proved more successful than traditional diplomacy. He is aggressively moving forward with his planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. This week Trump sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to visit the rogue nation for the second time to continue preparations and bring home three American prisoners released by the Kim regime in a sign of […]
Countries like France can either prepare, and make research into artificial intelligence a national priority, or allow themselves to become digital colonies.
Washington is threatening to use the so-called ‘Magnitsky Act’ to target Chinese officials for sanctions in response to Beijing’s mistreatment of the Uighur Muslim minority in northwestern China.
Smartphones have upended communication and consumption, leaving retailers to transform themselves to attract fickle, online buyers.
PARIS — “Remember the Eighth of May. History may recall it as the day the United States abandoned its belief in allies.” Edward Luce’s opening sentence in a scathing column penned Wednesday for the Financial Times is probably as close as anybody can get to capturing the European spirit following Donald Trump’s announcement that he […]
MUNICH — Most investors just don’t understand what it’s all about — and so the scenario almost always plays out the same: Sophia Yen enters a room full of venture capitalists, almost all older men, and starts to explain to them something about a woman’s period. “They find that a bit disgusting,” she says. “Viagra […]
The former German Chancellor has had a troubling second act in global politics.
Robotization, AI and other technological advances will change the nature of work in the coming decades. How will it play out in poorer parts of the world?
FANUC churns out 6,000 industrial robots per month, double that of its closest competitor. For a company on the cutting edge, it’s surprisingly conservative.
BEIRUT — Lebanon appears to be mobilizing for the mass return of Syrian refugees, disregarding warnings that conditions in their home country are not conducive to voluntary returns in safety and dignity. Last week, ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Lebanese President Michel Aoun asked the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to help secure the return of refugees. After the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) stated that it was not involved in last month’s return of around 500 Syrians from Lebanon due to conditions in Syria, the UNHCR’s representative to Lebanon, Mireille Girard, was summoned by the foreign ministry […]
After voting to ban metals mining, residents in the mountainous area west of Bogota are staking their future on farming and tourism.
A programmer in Turin decided to enter into a digitally-enhanced universe of his own creation — for an entire month — and lived to tell to the tale.
PAU — Not far from this southwestern French city, up in the snow-capped Pyrénées mountains that tower in the distance, there are bears. Still, even the most intrepid human adventurer would be hard pressed to ever spot one. Researchers believe there are only about 40 of the omnivores in the entire, 490-kilometer long Pyrénées range, […]
-OpEd- MUNICH — Donald Trump may have extended the grace period by one month, but make no mistake about it, he’s still holding a gun to Europe’s head in the tariffs dispute. The EU shouldn’t have any illusions: To get what he wants, Trump will continue his attempted extortion. And why not? It’s worked elsewhere, […]
Bright ideas to limit ways that motherhood so often leads to gender pay gaps and blocked careers for female scientists.
-Analysis- Nicaragua’s crafty caudillo, Daniel Ortega, has weathered the storm — for now at least. But his grip on power is certainly not what it was before the dramatic developments of the past two weeks. The student-led protests that erupted on April 18 against changes to the country’s pension system left 46 dead after a […]
The shift toward electric cars is picking up pace, but the road ahead has plenty of obstacles still.
Tim Cook’s company is a rock of common sense in an industry that’s gone rogue.
A popular tourist destination in the Adriatic sea is bracing for the construction of a floating, 400-million-euro regasification facility.
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Welcome To My Turkish Cave
The only thing more impressive than beholding the ancient troglodyte structures of Turkey’s Cappadocia region, was realizing that yes, some people still actually lived in them!
Israel’s offensive against the Iran nuclear deal could be an opportunity for European leaders to improve it.
CAIRO — On a hot summer day in 2012, two smartly clad Filipina women arrived at the JW Marriott Hotel on Cairo’s ring road, toting handbags in the crooks of their arms as they had often observed their female employers doing. They lingered in the lobby for hours over small cups of coffee as they […]
-OpEd- PARIS — Public opinion was outraged, and rightly so, by revelations from the so-called Paradise Papers investigation and the publication, before that, of the Panama Papers. But no one ever questions the root causes of these tax scandals. It’s not enough to complain and condemn. We must deal with the root causes of the […]
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Robot Brains Need Human Rules
Artificial intelligence is too useful and advanced and to ignore. But it also comes with huge risks, and should be limited accordingly.
SAN FRANCISCO — On Amazon, customer comments can help a product surge in popularity. The online retail giant says that more than 99 percent of its reviews are legitimate because they are written by real shoppers who aren’t paid for them. But a Washington Post examination found that for some popular product categories, such as Bluetooth headphones and speakers, the vast majority of reviews appear to violate Amazon’s prohibition on paid reviews. Such reviews have certain characteristics, such as repetitive wording that people probably cut and paste in. Many of these fraudulent reviews originate on Facebook, where sellers seek shoppers […]
New restrictions in Chile effectively target poorer migrants, many of whom are Afro-Caribbeans from Haiti and the Dominican Republic. They also coincide with a rightward shift in opinion.