The country’s ‘principled’ approach to data collection does a disservice to people dealing with real and consequential discrimination.
Month: July 2020
Welcome to Friday, where the European flood death toll tops 100, Lebanon’s prime minister steps down and a teenager gets a seat on Jeff Bezos’ trip to space. We also get a look from Kommersant on the rising hopes of the reformist revolution in the post-Soviet state of Moldova. • Germany death toll rises to […]
The Covid-19 crisis is likely to reshape globalization while benefiting China and other ‘illiberal’ regimes.
Categories
Black Lives Matter In Video Games Too
In our already fractured times, virtual reality is edging toward ‘hybrid’ reality — and that’s a problem that the gaming industry must face.
An outright ban on wildlife trade may exacerbate the situation. Could carefully controlling these animal markets be the best answer?
Welcome to Thursday, where severe flooding in Germany and Belgium has left dozens dead, Brazil’s Bolsonaro is in the hospital and a gun that looks like a children’s toy sparks backlash. Independent Egyptian media Mada Masr also tells us about a high-end supermarket that’s transforming Egypt’s grocery lists. • Dozens feared dead in European floods: […]
At the heart of Beijing’s health diplomacy, traditional Chinese medicine accounts for nearly 30% of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry’s turnover, and anyone who criticizes it could be punished.
The long lockdown period has only added to the frustrations people feel about their country’s unresolved class disparities, crass politics and history of violence.
PARIS — Growing up in Chicago, one of my favorite books was From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the story of a brother and sister who run away to live in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even as a kid, I could sense what a rare treat it could be to […]
Welcome to Tuesday, where dozens are arrested following anti-government protests in Cuba, troops are called in to quell South African unrest and the Olympic chief makes an embarrassing slip to his Japanese hosts. Le Monde also looks at lessons that coronavirus-stricken Brazil can draw from its 1904 “Vaccine Revolt.” • Cuba arrests dozens after protests: […]
Leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro don’t just bend the truth. By using lies as a consistent political tool, they try to destroy it — as did the fascist regimes of the last century.
Containing the COVID-19 outbreak came at a huge cost in terms of earnings and employment. And no one is taking a harder hit than China’s tens of millions of migrant workers.
Welcome to Monday, where thousands of Cubans join rare protests against the government, Jordan arrests suspected coup organizers and it’s a full-blown festa in Italy after the national soccer team’s Euro win, as racists make loss even worse for England. With the Cannes Festival red carpet out, Les Echos looks at how Netflix and other […]
As coronavirus shut down businesses around the world, red-light districts from Amsterdam to Bangkok to Frankfurt turned off their lights. But many continued to work illegally, risking infection and potential legal consequences in order to support themselves. As one Dutch sex worker told Die Welt, “The confinement does not mean that people stopped wanting sex.” […]
-Analysis- NEW DELHI — In a discussion on NDTV about the contents of the third tranche of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”s stimulus package for the economy, Yogendra Yadav, one of India’s most respected psephologists, called it “entertainment.” Yadav is a gentle human being who goes out of his way to avoid giving offense, above all on TV. So “entertainment” was the most civilized word he could think of. I will be a little more blunt. Not just the third tranche, but the entire “stimulus package” advertised by Modi on May 12 is a gigantic confidence trick being played upon a […]
Earlier this week, as I packed my things for my first post-pandemic vacation, my eyes and mind dwelled on the object I spend more time with than any other: my laptop. Of course many things have changed since last summer’s break. Instead of flying, I’ll drive from my home in the northern city of Milan […]
Some researchers advocate shortening the procedure for clinical trials to develop a vaccine by infecting healthy volunteers with the live virus. This ‘challenge infection’ method raises an ethical dilemma.
The socialist strongman has plenty of critics. But he also has a remarkable amount of staying power, in part because of the tacit support he receives from certain fellow presidents.
-OpEd- As the COVID-19 crisis swept its way across France, some of the products people needed the most — masks, respirators and key electronic components — simply weren’t available. Even more jarring was the fact that factories here couldn’t even respond to the shortages in a timely manner. Indeed, the pandemic was a wake-up call […]
In normal times, we might be writing this month about the annual momentum gathering for the Plastic Free July challenge. Launched in 2011 by the Australia-based Plastic Free Foundation, the idea is simple: refusing single-use plastics, from bags to packaging, for 31 days. But in 2020, that simple desire to go fully plastic-free for at […]
Welcome to Friday, where Tokyo bans Olympic spectators, at least 28 people are thought to be behind Haiti President assassination and a 14-year-old girl makes Spelling Bee history. Worldcrunch also takes you on a world tour of dying languages that are being rescued by the very tech that puts them at risk. • Tokyo Olympics […]
Categories
Colombia, No Country For Old Folks
What if, instead of pretending to care about the welfare of the elderly, we just wrote them off completely? A dose of satire about public attitudes toward seniors in the era of COVID-19.
-Analysis- LONDON — “We’re at the end of our rope,” is a phrase you may hear these days among lower-income Iranians struggling to survive in a country heaving under economic sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic. It’s also a statement recently issued by a national pensioners association, which has been seen as a “warning” to a […]
-Analysis- You could almost hear a collective “Ha!” from around the world. The news yesterday that Jair Bolsonaro had been infected with the coronavirus comes after the Brazilian president’s response to the epidemic over the past four months that mixed arrogant dismissiveness with outright lies: The 65-year-old hardline right-wing leader first baselessly suggested Brazilians were […]
Welcome to Thursday, where four suspects are killed following the assassination of Haiti’s president, Tokyo is placed under a state of emergency two weeks before the Olympics and a sandcastle breaks a record in Denmark. Persian-language magazine Kayhan-London takes a close look at how Iran has changed its mind on the Taliban, following the withdrawal […]
Social distancing measures and face masks will impact not only the atmosphere in theaters and concert halls, but also the bottom line.
The COVID-19 crisis has been particularly disruptive for people who earn a living by moving from one place to the next. But companies who depend on those workers also struggle.
Welcome to Wednesday, where we’re following the breaking news of the assassination of Haiti’s president. Also Iran acknowledges it is enriching uranium and the ship that blocked the Suez canal is finally free to sail away. In other news, we look at the rock’n’roll statue controversy that pits Paris greens vs. Harley-Davidson. • Haitian President […]
-Analysis- BEIJING — How many disabled people are there in China? The number is 85 million, or 6% of China’s total population, according to the statistics of the Chinese Disabled Persons’ Federation. Yet rarely do we see any of them in China’s major cities. So where are they? Recently, a video from the southwestern city […]
Anti-Muslim attitudes are ‘eating away at the idea of India’ and finding expression even among the country’s cosmopolitan elite.
Welcome to Tuesday, where Belarus hands down harsh sentence, protests erupt in Spain over the murder of a gay man and a Japanese woman tries to extinguish the Olympic flame with a squirt gun. Writing from Sarajevo for French daily Le Monde, Rémy Ourdan introduces us to Benjamina Karic, the youngest mayor in the history […]
Coronavirus travel restrictions have been a wake-up call for Europeans, especially since nearly a third of the population lives in cross-border areas like France and Belgium’s Eurometropolis Lillle-Kortrijk-Tournai.
People are taking to the streets in a challenge to the country’s long-serving president, Alexander Lukashenko, who expects to win a sixth term in next month’s elections.
Welcome to Monday, where the Pope is recovering from surgery, an indigenous woman helps Chile move past its Pinochet legacy, and the world record for competitive hot dog eating is broken. From Gaziantep, French daily Les Echos’ Catherine Chatignoux looks at the difficult integration of the four million Syrians living in Turkey. • COVID update: […]
“The worst is yet to come…” So warned World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in his assessment earlier this week of the status of the COVID-19 pandemic. The grim picture globally comes as many countries appear to be succeeding in greatly reducing the number of new cases, and quarantine and social distancing restrictions […]
Grief and catastrophe in and around the Italian city that became a symbol of the swiftness of the pandemic’s death and destruction.
-OpEd- Chinese tanks have not rolled through the streets of Hong Kong, but Beijing’s legislative coup Tuesday, on the eve of the 23rd anniversary of the territory’s handover to China, is provoking a similar fear. Pro-democracy business owners have hastily removed the slogans that lined their storefronts and thousands are applying to emigrate, with Australia […]
Like so many before him, João took a bus to Rio de Janeiro in search of the kind of hope and economic opportunity that only big cities promise. “I came looking for something better, then the worst happened,” he told a Globo TV crew. The worst was COVID-19. As deaths skyrocketed in the city and […]
Welcome to Friday, where new proof is revealed of China’s long-range missile silos, India surpasses 400,000 COVID deaths, and we meet the youngest chess grandmaster ever. El Espectador also looks at how the popular Hass avocado is threatening Colombia’s ecosystems and causing water shortages in areas once dominated by coffee bean cultivation. • China is […]
The protests, pandemic and poor U.S. jobs numbers all seem to spell trouble for President Donald Trump. But his challenger has a few disadvantages of his own.