Worldcrunch
As the Ebola epidemic continues to sweep across West Africa, fear is so great that people have begun to abandon their pet big cats and monkeys out of panic, leading local zoos to take in these animals to prevent potential spread of the deadly virus. The AFP visited one Ivory Coast zoo where vets have […]
Images that captured the news around the world…
He’s one of the most prominent names on the Chilean electronic music scene but, for the release of his debut EP, 199x, Daniel Klauser chose to be called “1991.” The young DJ and producer, also the founder of Diamante Records, released this work earlier this month and the EP’s 8 tracks are perfectly located in […]
With his new Kickstarter project, “The DNA Project,” Israeli-born and Brooklyn-based musician j.viewz wants to produce a new kind of album in which his fans will be able “reach into and trace each song back to its origin,” he explains on the crowdfunding site. The project offers several different interactive innovations between the artist and […]
When the Black Keys decide to cover other people’s songs, the result is usually pretty good. And when they decide to cover a masterpiece, such as Edwyn Collins’ 1994 “A Girl Like You,” it is truly a special occasion. Indeed, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, the band’s bluegrass rockers, saved the song for a gig […]
This is just a brief note to say that our journey is taking a momentary hiatus, but for a very good reason: My collaborator in this project, le petit-fils (the grandson), Bertrand, and his beautiful new bride Amandine have set off on their honeymoon — in Brazil! Wishing them much happiness together, and of course, […]
In 1996, DJ Shadow released his debut album Endtroducing….., made up almost entirely of samples from various discs the American artist bought in record shops. This flagship and critically acclaimed piece of work soon became a cornerstone of the sampling culture. More than a decade later, in 2009, an Israeli musician known as Kutiman led […]
There might be a reason why everyday radio tunes tend to sound the same: most humans prefer repetition over variation in their music. According to an online TED lesson by Elizabeth Hellmuth Marguli, the director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, hearing the same loops and songs over and over again […]
Boasting of the good life, safe from the chronic problems of the Egyptian capital, the “New Cairo” developments blamed for wasting precious water for all, now face shortages of their own.
Tired of being denied basic rights, Egypt’s political prisoners are increasingly trying to break the cycle of helplessness with the one bit of control they still have over their lives.
In Afrikaans, the name of this South African mountain range means “the dragon’s mountain.” The closest thing we saw to dragons were wooden hippos. In Drakensberg, much like everywhere else, peddlers made their way to even the most remote places.
In 1966, it was still affordable to stay in the center of Venice. We went there twice in the 1960s, and both times we rented a room from la Signora Nardi (I remember her well), just five minutes from the Rialto and Piazza San Marco whose Santa Maria della Salute church is in the background.
Almost a month after she attacked a mushroom forager in the mountains of Trentino while protecting her 8-month-old cubs, Daniza the bear is dead. She was captured by a task force of rangers that had been deployed to capture her, but she did not survive the anesthesia she was given. After immense backlash from the […]
There has been much recent speculation about Iran working with its longtime nemesis, the United States, to confront a new, common enemy: the radical Islamist organization ISIS. Indeed, the Sunni zealots of ISIS have focused some of their rhetoric directly at Tehran, the center of Shia Islam, vowing to fight what it says are Iran’s […]
I’ve already told you about Rajasthan’s colorful nomadic culture, but this close-up allows us to better see how society standards vary from one world to another: For instance, the huge nose ring this woman was wearing is regarded as a mark of beauty and social standing there.
Photo: Sachyn Mital James Murphy, the 44-year-old American musician of LCD Soundsystem fame, announced at the start of the 2014 U.S. Open that he was teaming up with IBM to create an algorithm that would turn raw data from tennis matches into music. Now that the tournament is over and Serena Williams and Marin Cilic […]
For fear of an Iran-led rise of Shia, authorities from Riyadh to Ankara fed the radicalism that now eyes them as the primary target.
This is probably one of the oldest pictures you will see here. I was 5 when we drove to Villersexel in eastern France, in my dad’s brand new Peugeot 201. We visited the city’s famous château, which you can see in the background and which is said to have been partly built by both Charles […]
Don’t worry, I haven’t traveled that far. This was just one of the tourist attractions at Universal Studios Hollywood back in 1988.
Well look at that: It’s Friday again! Time to check out some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world. Turkmenistan: Anna Sedokova – “Chto Ya Nadelala” Qatar: Nico & Vinz – “Am I Wrong” Argentina: Gustavo Cerati – “Crimen” Egypt: Hassan El Shafei feat. Abla Fahita – “Mayestahlushi” France: Lilly Wood & […]
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well that’s lucky, because I don’t really remember what happened here. I’ll let you imagine the misfortunes of these two Swazi men.
By the end of the 1990s, it was decided that flowing rivers were not the best way to transport timber, and log drives were gradually abandoned in Canada — much to the dismay of local kids who had to bid adieu to their log rolling competitions. But in 1994 logging was still going on along […]
Colombia’s Caribbean coast used to be filled with slaves, but today in Cartagena de Indias, it’s a plethora of tourists who come to visit this World Heritage Site in horse-drawn cabs. It’s all so pretty — except for the part where the horses are overworked, and sometimes worked to death. Apparently it’s not uncommon for […]
I had only been retired for three years when we visited this school in eastern Nepal. As far as teaching goes, this felt very far indeed from my career as a high school philosophy teacher in France.
Not far from Beijing lie the Ming tombs — a collection of imperial mausoleums built during the Chinese Ming dynasty. To visit them, you must first walk down the Spirit Way, or Avenue of the Animals, where imposing animals carved out of single pieces of stone watch tourists come and go, as they did with […]
The Madeira Flower Festival takes place every spring. For the main parade through the streets of Funchal, 30 or so floats are decorated with thousands of flowers by associations, schools — and even hospitals and the local police take part.
Argentina’s Mendoza zoo has come under scrutiny again after a lion died after undergoing surgery. This is the second lion to die there in recent months, and suspicions have been raised numerous times over the living conditions of animals in the zoo. The cause of death in this case was not neglect, but a risky […]
The Madagascar pochard, the world’s rarest bird, is at a serious risk of extinction. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), which led a study on the species, estimates that only 25 individual birds now remain in the wild. Human activity has driven the birds to just one remaining wetland in northeast Madagascar, but even that […]
It’s Friday — time to check out some of the songs topping charts around the world: Portugal: Anselmo Ralph – “Unica Mulher” Venezuela: Enrique Iglesias feat. Descemer Bueno and Gente de Zona – “Bailando” Mozambique: Taylor Swift – “Shake It Off” Israel: Sia – “Chandelier” Sri Lanka: Troye Sivan – “The Fault In Our Stars” […]
Though Petra is awe-inspiring, I’m not sure I’d go back today. A trip to Jordan must be very different now than it was 18 years ago. The colors on this shot of the Ad Deir monastery shows well why the archeological site is nicknamed “the Rose city.”
Who’s this good-looking fellow dressed as Apollo and followed by his court of Muses, you ask? I told you before I used to take Carnival costumes pretty seriously.
The world’s first live broadcast panda cub delivery was canceled Tuesday — not because something went wrong, no, just because Mama Panda wasn’t actually pregnant. She faked it. Chinese experts suggested that Ai Hin, the panda who was supposed to be the star of the show, may have faked her condition to get extra bun […]
Photo: Bosley Facebook page BALTIMORE — Soul and funk are two of the few music genres that have never really gone out of fashion. Which may partly explain why the Baltimore-based band Bosley, by combining both styles with talent, was just elected best band of their city in this month’s issue of Baltimore Magazine. Bosley […]
The Toraja people in Southern Sulawesi, Indonesia, are famous for their elaborate funeral rites. Not only do they tend to mummify the deceased — they also store coffins in caves carved up on rocky cliffs and place a wooden effigy of the departed, called Tau tau, to guard the burial site. Spooky.
Nepal has commissioned meteorologists and geologists to remap the wind systems, mountains and valleys on the “Roof of the World.” It could help us predict natural disasters.
We visited Rome often, and almost always made sure to pass by to admire the majestic Fontana di Trevi. We never took part in the tourist tradition of tossing a coin over your left shoulder and making a wish to return some day to the eternal city. Our many Roman returns confirmed my doubts about […]
The port city of Sfax was a mix of coastal ease and urban grit. Here, 10 local fishermen split the land/seascape in two.
It’s Friday! Time to check out some of the songs topping charts around the world: Greece: Taylor Swift, “Shake It Off” Bahamas: Ariana Grande feat. Iggy Azalea, “Problem” Botswana: John Legend, “All Of Me” Bahrain: MAGIC!, “Rude” Taiwan: G.E.M., “Like You” Source: Hot Music Charts
Ravens tend to have a bad rap. In the Middle Ages, because they fed on corpses after executions, they were associated with gallows. In mythology, two ravens symbolizing wisdom and intelligence were attributes of the northern god Odin. But ravens — and other members of the corvine family like crows, jackdaws and magpies — are […]
The death of teenager Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., has been getting plenty of attention beyond U.S. borders, and Arabic-language media is no exception. It has made Ferguson front-page news, while Twitter users have transliterated “Ferguson” into an Arabic hashtag. A recent Al Jazeera article, filed under […]