SPOTLIGHT: WHY ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MATTERS NOW As the country responsible for the Holocaust, Germany understands better than others the importance of acknowledging and atoning for the wrongs in your past. But today, German lawmakers will confront another country’s historical crime, as a debate opens on a resolution that would officially qualify the 1915 mass deportations […]
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The Painter’s Village
If Ornans looks picturesque enough on my photographs, it’s nothing compared to the way 19th-century painter Gustave Courbet — arguably the most celebrated artist from my neck of the woods — depicted the village in his masterpieces.
SPOTLIGHT: GOOD AND BAD NEWS FOR THE PLANET Breathe in … Last year, an estimated 147 gigawatts was added to the world’s renewable power capacity — the largest such global rise ever recorded, making it an “extraordinary” year for renewable energies. According to the Renewables 2016 Global Status Report, investment in green energies around the […]
MARCA, June 1, 2016 “Didier Deschamps has bowed to the pressure of a racist part of France,” French soccer player Karim Benzema told Spanish sports daily MARCA, less than 10 days before the beginning of the European championship in France. Benzema’s remarks echo comments made a few days ago by French soccer legend Eric Cantona, […]
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Floating To Sleep
This unusual float, part of the Madeira Flower Festival that fills the streets of Funchal every spring, looked very comfortable indeed.
SPOTLIGHT: CHAD, THE TIME OF JUSTICE Since the post-War trials of Nazi leaders in Nuremberg, the world has wrestled with the task of bringing the worst of humanity to account for their crimes. It is a challenge that requires both courage from the individual victims and a commitment to justice by society at large. It […]
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The Other Island Of Tears
This monument on Minsk’s Island of Tears is dedicated to the memory of the Belarusian soldiers who died in the 1979-1988 Soviet-Afghan war.
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Unity In Rugby — A Video Quote
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Hajj Boycott, Big Enchilada, Bleached Reef
SPOTLIGHT: IRAN TO BOYCOTT HAJJ PILGRIMAGE Tensions between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are once again threatening to escalate. The two archenemies are already entangled in proxy wars against each other, in Syria and Yemen, and diplomatic ties between the two have been cut since Saudi Arabia executed a Shia cleric at the beginning […]
On the front page of its Monday edition, Düsseldorf-based daily Rheinische Post ran a solemn picture of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande standing side by side at a cemetery in northeastern France, to mark “100 years after” the World War I Battle of Verdun. The Battle of Verdun was one of […]
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Well-Deserved Shade
The choir of traditional French music I was part of was often invited to folk festivals at home and abroad. One time in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, in southern France, I was picked as a judge for a bourrée competition, and ended up watching people dance for hours under a scorching July sun. Needless to say, the dancers […]
BEIJING — Much has been made recently about Chinese real estate investors, who spend huge sums snapping up foreign property. Tencent Finance, a Chinese online magazine, published a report on the phenomenon this week, in an article titled: “Those Countries Taken Over By Chinese Property Speculators.” Here’s a breakdown. South Korea: South Korea‘s geographical proximity […]
SPOTLIGHT: BREXIT LANDS IN JAPAN Why would Shinzo Abe care what British voters think about Europe? The Japanese Prime Minister, currently hosting the G7 summit, joined leaders of the world’s other top economic powers in a surprise declaration today to urge the UK to vote to remain in the European Union in next month’s so-called […]
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Praying Primate
Not only is the Swayambhunath shrine near Kathmandu fascinating, it’s also swarming with monkeys — some more pious than others.
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Reading Obama, Rising Oil, Doubting David
SPOTLIGHT: SHOULD OBAMA APOLOGIZE IN HIROSHIMA? When Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima tomorrow, the ceremony will include hibakusha, survivors of history’s only nuclear attacks. No doubt, each victim of the 1945 bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will have their own expectations of the American […]
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Back In The Saddle
Denmark, much like the Netherlands, is mostly flat. That helps explains why cycling has been the country’s transportation mode of choice for decades.
Anyone can make and sell a colorful, cube-shaped 3-D brainteaser with six twisting faces covered by nine square stickers — just don’t call it a Rubik’s Cube. The Luxembourg-based European Union Court of Justice weighed in Wednesday on an intellectual property case that has puzzled Europeans for years, with a formal recommendation that “shapes with […]
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Cross That Bridge — Video Quote Of The Day
SPOTLIGHT: PRIVATE LIVES, PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS A little Internet brush fire is spreading in China after a Beijing state-run newspaper published a long article saying that Taiwan’s new president Tsai Ing-wen is unfit for office because she is neither married nor a mother. Here’s a sample: “As a single female politician, she does not have the […]
PARIS — The former head of France’s anti-drug trafficking agency has been accused of playing a central role in the smuggling of tons of cannabis into France, the Paris-based Libération daily is reporting. François Thierry, who until recently headed the main agency charged with combating drug trafficking OCRTIS (Central Office for the Suppression of Illicit […]
SPOTLIGHT: AUSTRIAN LESSONS European leaders are wiping sweat from their collective brow. Once the final votes were counted late yesterday, Austria’s ecologically-minded independent Alexander Van der Bellen had edged far-right Freedom party candidate Norbert Hofer in the country’s presidential election. Had he won, Hofer would have been the first far-right European head of state since […]
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Weight Of Words — Video Quote Of The Day
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Austria Presidential Razor Close
VIENNA — The front page of the Kleine Zeitung daily on Monday puts into stark colors the hard split down the center of Austria, as the presidential elections remain deadlocked, pending the counting of write-in ballots. By midday Monday far-right presidential candidate Hobert Hofer, from the populist Freedom Party (FPÖ), hhad obtained 51.9% of the […]
SPOTLIGHT: OBAMA VIETNAM PIVOT Following last year’s diplomatic breakthrough on Cuba and ahead of an unprecedented trip to Hiroshima, Japan, U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement this morning of an end to the longstanding weapons embargo on Vietnam can be quickly dropped into the “historic” file of his presidency. The presence of U.S. Secretary of State […]
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Baby Loves Books — Video Quote Of The Day
SPOTLIGHT: SPRINGTIME ANGST IN PARIS It’s spring in Paris: the trees are bursting with foliage, café terraces look inviting, the French Open is about to kick off. Shall we indulge in that apéro? Mais, non! The mood in the City of Light feels anything but spring-like right now. There is the fate of EgyptAir Flight […]