Building scientific beliefs is a long and arduous path that originates from a contradictory process. But facing a pandemic, it’s the best we’ve got.
Month: June 2020
MILAN — In our pandemic times, face masks are politics. Last Thursday, the debate arrived with fury at the Culture Commission of the Italian parliament. “I won’t be gagged and I won’t wear it!” barked Vittorio Sgarbi, a Parliament member from the center-right Forza Italia party. The obligatory face mask policy inside the Parliament, he […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where Israel carries out first airstrikes on Gaza since the ceasefire in May, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin meet for the first time since Biden’s election and Ronaldo changes Coke into water. Chinese daily Economic Observer also advocates for more open discussion about the real reason why China’s couples are not having […]
Globalized supply chains may be good for businesses, but they’re not always ideal for consumers, especially when they’re suddenly disrupted.
From schedule changes and face shields to full operational shutdowns, the pandemic has directly impacted the country’s industrial sector.
PARIS — It’s been a tumultuous few months for so-called “surveillance tech.” Most recently, following pushback from Black Lives Matter activists, Amazon has suspended police use of its facial recognition software for one year. IBM followed suit, announcing it will stop offering its similar software for “mass surveillance or racial profiling.” The moves from the […]
Welcome to Tuesday, where Japan’s Prime Minister survives a vote of no confidence one month before the Olympic Games, the UK delays its reopening for fears of the Delta variant spreading and a devilishly high roller coaster opens in New Jersey. New Delhi-based news website The Wire also looks at the need for comprehensive development […]
COVID-19 has barely distracted Mexico’s leftist government from its political and electoral priorities. It may be forgetting the price earlier governments paid for ignoring the plight of millions of Mexicans.
Welcome to Monday, where Israel gets a new Prime Minister after Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure, more good news from another COVID-19 vaccine and a houseplant breaks a record in New Zealand. Ukrainian news website Livy Bereg also explains what’s at stake for Ukraine as Joe Biden meets with Vladimir Putin in Geneva later this week. • […]
It was the kind of definitive piece of information that has been rare since the COVID-19 pandemic began: On Monday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that coronavirus transmission has been officially eliminated in the country, since its appearance there in late February. According to the Director-General of Health, it has been at least […]
Beijing is stepping in to fill the leadership void left by a United States distracted and hobbled by its deep, structural divisions.
An activist and Oxford professor of anthropology of South Asia recounts her experience, and reflections, during a Black Lives Matter protest in the UK.
Beijing imposed a national security law in Hong Kong on May 28 to counteract its secessionist tendencies. What is at stake here for the former British colony?
For many, getting back to “normal life” means going out to eat. But people also want to be safe, which is why eateries — from Amsterdam to Australia — are experimenting with distancing innovations that might soon become the new normal in the field of gastronomy. So how will dining out look like in the […]
Welcome to Friday, where an Amnesty International report accuses China of “crimes against humanity,” Israel’s government makes PETA animal activists happy and the Euro 2020 soccer competition kicks off after a one-year delay. Business daily Les Echos also reports on how hackers manage to use fake news to threaten big businesses and influence the stock […]
The movement rising up in the wake of George Floyd’s death is built on a question of identity and shared history, not a unified community of interests and experiences.
In India, Thailand and elsewhere, authorities have recently passed laws or decrees limiting what media can do and say.
Categories
An Ode To Drinking In The Pandemic
Alcohol can be problematic. But it’s also a simple source of pleasure, and in moderation, may be just what the doctor ordered — until a vaccine is available instead.
Forced to stay home from one day to the next, millions of quarantined people were suddenly faced with a rare luxury in our fast-paced world: time. That, of course, came with a question: What to do with it? Where others may have chosen to Netflix, garden, read, meditate or complete a 51,300 pieces-jigsaw puzzle, the […]
Welcome to Thursday, where President Biden has begun his first foreign trip, Aung San Suu Kyi faces new corruption charges and a South African woman gives birth to what may be a record number of babies. We also scrutinize how facial recognition is being used around the world, not just as a surveillance tool. • […]
Chinese officials are realizing that the ‘soul’ of a city is key to strength and prosperity.
Rock hero Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame, has described live music performances during the COVID-19 lockdowns as: “unflattering little windows that look like doorbell security footage and sound like Neil Armstrong’s distorted transmissions from the moon.” One month later, in some corners of the world, authentic, in-person live music is ready to […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where NGO workers are killed in Afghanistan, two are arrested after the French president is slapped in the face, and a 61-foot-long scroll makes a splash in China. Le Monde also takes us to Mali, where a second military coup in nine months leaves Malians and international allies alike worried about what […]
Compared to other EU member states, Poland was barely affected by the international financial crisis or the refugee crisis of 2015. Now, the country could emerge from the coronavirus pandemic in a stronger position than before.
When the coronavirus hit, Valérie, a rising business executive used to a grueling daily commute into Paris, realized her life needed to change. Now, she and her husband have revived a long dormant dream: a house in Normandy with an ocean view. “We have the impression of advancing — finally,” she told Le Monde, adding […]
Welcome to Tuesday, where an encrypted messaging app leads to a major global organized crime bust, many of the world’s biggest websites were hit by global internet outages and there’s a new basketball-court-long dinosaur in town. Jeune Afrique also dives into the Rastafari ital diet, a precursor to some current food trends. • Report: Intelligence […]
Among the many villains through Europe’s colonization of the African continent, a case could be made that Belgium’s King Leopold II was the worst. Responsible for the genocide of an estimated 10 million people, the 19th-century monarch ordered his troops and administrators to pillage the central African colony known as Belgian Congo, renamed the Democratic […]
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it’s that no one is safe until everyone is safe.
Welcome to Monday, where two Latin American countries await the results of key elections, a deadly train collision rocks Pakistan, and Turkey faces a worrying — not to say pretty yucky — sea of snot. We also look at some of the most creative vaccine incentives around the world. (Spoiler alert: They involve free food. […]
From hospital beds in Mali to ventilators in Algeria to an airlift of supplies deliver by Ethiopian Airlines, China has used the pandemic to cement its economic footprint across the African continent. As socio-economics researcher Hicham Rouibah told Le Monde, “Chinese companies have seized the opportunity of COVID-19 to try to restore their image tarnished […]
João Pedro Matos was in his uncle’s garden on May 18 in São Gonçalo, near Rio de Janeiro, when Brazil’s Federal Police stormed in. Police claim officers traded shots with armed drug traffickers, though the Matos family denies this. A bullet fired by an officer hit João Pedro, who was taken away in a helicopter […]
PARIS — That people should be judged by the content of their character was one of those rare elementary-school concepts that actually stuck. It was no doubt the candor and simplicity of the idea, but it may have helped that my history teacher Mr. Hansson for once deviated from his trademark text-heavy PowerPoints — and […]
For strongman leaders like Putin and Bolsonaro, the health crisis looked like a natural opening for greater top-down control — at least on paper.
No crisis has ever hit the entire film industry as badly as the coronavirus lockdown. With sets empty, movie premieres postponed, screenings canceled and box offices closed, the global film industry has been largely frozen in time — and revenue. Even as activity is gradually resuming, it will take time for the movie business to […]
The pandemic added an extra layer of obstacles for patients with already limited access to quality attention for their sexual and reproductive health needs.
Welcome to Friday, where Biden toughens U.S. investment ban on China, the Belarus journalist forced to confess and a parking space sells for more than a million. We’ve also produced a short photographic video that tells the story of the pandemic in Italy — one closed (and open) storefront at a time. • Biden to […]
As more than 20,000 protesters in Paris reminded us last night, police violence against people of color is a global issue. Demonstrations have been held in cities across the world, including London, Auckland, and Berlin to condemn the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of police in Minneapolis. There is […]
Sports are an important part of the fabric of local communities as well as a multi-billion dollar global industry, and their absence in recent months has been conspicuous. The coronavirus pandemic shut down both professional and amateur athletes around the world, forcing viewers to watch replays of old championship matches and limiting weekend warriors to […]
-Essay- Among the many things that COVID-19 taught us, one is to not measure the world by latitude. Take the case of Milan, a shining example, we’re told, of northern Italian industriousness and efficiency that’s supposedly absent in the south. And yet this capital of the Lombardy region saw one of the world’s worst COVID-19 […]
Welcome to Thursday, where Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure as Israel’s Prime Minister appears to be coming to an end, Canada calls on Pope Francis to apologize and NASA is finally going back to Venus. Le Monde also takes us to Belarus where the shocking arrest of a dissident journalist brings new attention to the still ongoing […]