Even in economically powerful Germany, poverty threatens the social fabric. And neither the left or right has any real solutions — except to play to fears.
Month: September 2018
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The subject was supposed to be the selection of a new justice on the Supreme Court. Instead Thursday’s showdown on Capitol Hill was a raw, scorched-earth confrontation across the nation’s most emotionally wrenching divides. This was men against women, right against left, a cascade of recriminations, explosions of anger, hours of tears and sobs. A hearing that was supposed to bring clarity instead erupted in thunderclaps from the nation’s built-up tensions over how the sexes are supposed to behave with each other. Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and the woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her came […]
With Bully Pulpit, U.S.-born artist Haley Morris-Cafiero offers a parodic comment on the phenomenon of bullying in the age of social media.
As Tanzania seeks to decongest Africa’s fastest growing city, more women are stepping up to become registered as professional engineers.
PARIS — This past summer, Parisians bid adieu to Autolib”, a pioneering electric-car-sharing service that came to a premature demise after operating for fewer than seven years. But that doesn’t mean the French capital is turning its back on the overall concept. There is a plan B in the works, though what exactly it will […]
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Bolivia’s Mysterious Monolithic Monk
Like their Easter Island counterparts, the giant statues of Tiwanaku, in western Bolivia, are shrouded in mystery. For example, the stone used for this “Monk” monolith comes from a quarry nearly 100 kilometers away.
The flood of people fleeing Venezuela’s dire economic and political situation is more than any one country can handle. But so far, there’s been little effort to organize a coordinated reaction.
Abdelrahman al-Gendy, a standout student and Harry Potter aficionado, was just 17 when he was arrested in Cairo, charged with multiple crimes, and given a 15-year prison sentence.
With inflation on the rise, some pundits say the South American country should say adios to its faltering peso.
Refugees in Malaysia explain how the resettlement process creates a perverse incentive to tailor their past experiences.
This last instalment of our three-part OneShot series, tells the story of Santos Felipa, who lost her son last year to Chronic Kidney Disease of undetermined causes (CKDu). Photojournalist and National Geographic storyteller Ed Kashi has traveled to rural Peru to document the effects of CKDu, which risks turning into a global epidemic and may be exacerbated by global warming. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/eQmnn1mz7Pw expand=1] Santos Felipa — ©Ed Kashi/OneShot On the coast of Talara, Peru, Kashi met Santos Felipa Abad de Arismendis, a 57-year-old woman whose 33-year-old son Frank died from CKDu. Frank had to travel to Piura for his dialysis […]
‘Italy is our starting point, and Salvini the model,’ says this Belgian politician bringing the populists of Europe under one roof with the help of Donald Trump’s former right-hand man.
-Analysis- CARACAS — Artificial Intelligence is opening up new opportunities for the economy and society. But it will also affect millions of human jobs, and thus poses a huge challenge for public policymakers, warns a 2016 White House report on AI’s projected impact on the U.S. economy. Among other things, the report predicts that AI […]
From Rwanda to South Africa, examples abound of countries ending conflicts by boosting women’s rights and creating spaces for them to assume more leadership roles.
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Aleppo, All That Glitters Is Gone
For millennia, Aleppo was a city of riches, a significant stop on the Silk Road. Sadly, many parts of the Ancient City — including its famous souks — have now been destroyed in the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
BEIJING — A video is making the rounds across China’s internet. On a bus in the western city of Xi’an, an elderly man is seen shouting at a pregnant woman that she should give up her seat. “I am an old person! Can’t you see?” His attitude was so appalling that commentators online came down […]
With their piercings, tattoos and provocative social media posts, a new, rowdier generation of urbanites is coming of age in Iran.
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Watch: OneShot — Woman In A Bar
For decades, Stanley Greene risked his life to photograph wars and their atrocities. He also loved capturing women’s surrounding mystery, beauty and strength.
Rather than clamp down on drug users, Colombia might borrow a page from its far southern neighbor and consider a more humane approach.
The project ‘The Ocean Cleanup’ wants to use its system to rid the oceans from plastic waste. The founder thinks big about the planet and beyond. And he’s not a jerk.
The proliferation of human milk banks has raised technical, religious and political concerns. Local policymakers would benefit from an international framework to help them set regulations.
-OpEd- PARIS — The gravity of the situation at the White House grows clearer each day. The anonymous article published by the New York Times in which a high-ranking official from the Trump administration describes the internal resistance, coupled with the publication of “Fear,” in which the investigative journalist Bob Woodward, celebrated for his role […]
CAIRO — A friend of mine lived alone in downtown Cairo. She was single when she moved in but after getting into a relationship, her boyfriend joined her. One day in 2012, her neighbors saw her heading to the apartment with her boyfriend and two friends, a man and a woman. Once they were inside, […]
From Flint, Michigan to Shanghai, China, bottled water is a luxury many people can’t afford to do without.
The story remains a mystery to this day. On February 4, 1974, the 19-year-old daughter of millionaire newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst was kidnapped from her home in Berkeley, California.
Latin Americans call it the Movimiento Gordo, accepting weight differences as a way to resist a mass consensus typical of our time. One Argentine author offers her portrait.
BPOs (business process outsourcing) companies are booming in the Philippines, and providing safe workplaces for transgender women to present themselves in their authentic gender identity.
Ancestral agricultural practices can provide a sustainable and creative way to boost rural economies in Latin America. And China could help.
Since 2017, Tunisian women have had the right to marry non-Muslims. But reality is playing out in different ways down on the local level amid an Islamist resurgence.
Look into her eye… The East Coast of the United States was bracing for Hurricane Florence to make landfall Friday, with hundreds of thousands evacuating to avoid potential for deadly wind, rain and flooding.
Amazon is upending the commercial status quo. And yet, as much as people like to complain about it, the temptation to use it can be irresistible.
The number of children studying in English in India increased 273% between 2003 and 2011. But there is also a push for Hindi over regional dialects. Child development should be the guide, not politics or status.
Easing pain and ‘old-fashioned’ home care, rather than intensive hospitalization, are proving themselves as better and cheaper ways to treat terminal patients.
BEIJING — Fan Bingbing, China“s highest-paid actress and star of the 2014 blockbuster X-Men, recently received some unwanted public attention—an accusation of tax evasion. The Chinese actress was accused by Cui Yongyuan, a TV presenter and producer, of signing “Yin-Yang contracts’ for the films she stars in. This allows her to pay lower tax via […]
Taco Bell in Mexico? McDonald’s in Hamburg? Americans find the recipe abroad, bastardize it, and then have the stomach to go back and sell it where it all began.
-OpEd- MADRID — Since September 2015, when the UN General Assembly launched its 2030 Agenda — a plan to reach 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within 15 years — the concepts have been gaining momentum worldwide. The ultimate purpose of the SDGs is to eradicate poverty, and slowly but surely, people are realizing their importance […]
GUNJUR — Edrissa Sackh stands on Gunjur beach, a small frown developing on his face as he mends his net. The remote Gambian fishing town of 25,000 people overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean is where Sackh, 31, has been fishing for 16 years. “They are taking the fish,” he says with bated breath, pointing toward two Chinese mechanized fishing vessels in the sea. “Right now there are no fish and we need fish.” A few inches away, his small hand-painted wooden canoe sits idle. Strong winds mean “there can be no fishing today,” he explains. But the trawlers he sees […]
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Street Food Bargain In Brazil
On the waterfront of Salvador da Bahia, a fellow Frenchman was busy bargaining for a plate of Bahian acarajé. The body language of sidewalk commerce is understood all around the world.
Photojournalist and National Geographic storyteller Ed Kashi has traveled to rural Peru to document the effects of Chronic Kidney Disease of undetermined causes (CKDu), which risks turning into a global epidemic and may be exacerbated by global warming. With this series of OneShot videos, we give voice for the first time to the subject of the featured photograph. Mary Marixa Pacherres Álvarez was diagnosed with CKDu eight years ago, and has been on dialysis ever since. She is raising four kids in the same house with her parents. Her 13-year-old daughter stopped going to school in order to care for […]
The author of ‘Infinite Jest’ and ‘The Pale King’, who took his own life 10 years ago, saw a higher meaning in the mundane — even wrestling with the French bureaucracy.