Worldcrunch
Governments spent 2.3 trilllion euros on the military, a 6% increase over 2022, the highest growth recorded in over a decade. This is the first time spending jumps were registered on all five continents, and not just countries at war. What does it say about this inflection point in history?
An investigation reveals that the company does not own any of the three renewable power plants it claims to operate in Spain — as well as a scheme allowing Amazon to dodge full regulatory oversight of its projects.
Home to the unicorn Vinted, Lithuania’s capital is fostering its image as a Northern European tech hub and cultural capital, in an effort to attract new businesses and talents — despite its cold weather and two difficult neighbors: Russia and Belarus.
Canada has become the most recent country to impose restrictions on non-residents buying real estate, arguing that wealthy investors from other countries are pricing out would-be local homeowners. But is singling out foreigners the best way to face a troubled housing market?
Armed conflicts, droughts, floods, poverty… Many factors are pushing some young people from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to take uncertain and dangerous migration routes. In the region of Africa just south of the Sahara, unregulated migration is increasing.
Amid increasingly dire economic, social and humanitarian conditions in Egypt, the charitable work of Islamic and Christian religious institutions is important. Yet these institutions also support the government’s failed economic policies.
If you are not a billionaire or a fund, the investment rules of yesteryear apply: gold won’t make you rich overnight and volatile assets like the bitcoin may come crashing down for reasons far beyond your grasp.
In China, sales of electric cars, consumer goods and industrial products are stalling. State-owned companies have built up excess capacity. The new plan is to flood the European market with the products. The first signs are appearing in Germany.
The unlicensed workers use what they have to combat health fears in Uganda’s top salt-producing lake. A new law is supposed to offer protections. So far, little is on the way.
This year’s Ramadan has seen a significant decrease in food donations in Egypt, where more and more families depend on them amid exceptional inflation rates.
Just because war appears more likely to spread to Europe or the Middle East than Asia, we should not forget China’s enormous weight. But does Beijing want to do with it?
The industrial revolution, which was also agricultural, allowed humanity to escape the “nutritional trap.” Now, agriculture is facing new challenges: income and ecological traps.
Anonymous customers, confidential prices, private fittings. Even today, haute couture remains a secret world where each fashion house has its own way of operating and communicating.
Safety or addiction concerns about TikTok are very real. But would U.S. elected officials seek to ban or control this social network if it were not Chinese? Are U.S. social networks less harmful? For France Inter, Pierre Haski warns us to take a step back when pointing the finger at TikTok.
A government mega-project could push the country’s big cats closer to extinction — an outcome that would have devastating ripple effects on the local ecosystem.
The reforms introduced by Bola Tinubu, the new president of Africa’s most populous country, will take time to have an effect on the daily lives of Nigerians. In the meantime, the population is suffering from inflation, corruption and insecurity. The disillusioned youth are impatient and dream of elsewhere.
China’s richest man, Zhong Shanshan, has been pursued for weeks by an online nationalist campaign claiming he is not patriotic enough. Official tolerance questions this ideological hardening, at a time of economic slowdown, strong international tensions and built-in contradictions of China’s statists-capitalistic economy.
Their creations have been worn by international celebrities, such as Beyoncé and Zendaya. Their techniques have been used by major fashion houses, including Dior, Chanel and Balenciaga. With Indian designers Gaurav Gupta and Rahul Mishra making their mark on red carpets and runways around the world, Les Echos reports on the country’s rising luxury fashion industry.
From Brad Pitt to Céline Dion and Michelin-starred chefs, the high-end cooking ranges manufactured by La Cornue have seduced celebrities around the world. Despite despite its extra high prices, the French company’s sales have jumped 125% in the past five years.
A kind of remote working already existed across the European countryside in the early 14th century. Daniele Rizzi considers what the pre-industrial putting-out system can teach both modern workers and modern bosses.
Costly treatments, no appointment available, “dental deserts,” minority discrimination, mass exodus from the workforce… While UK dentists warn that so-called dental tourism is dangerous, the crisis in NHS dentistry is forcing more and more British patients to travel to brand new clinics in Turkey — not for cosmetic procedures, but basic treatment. In Turkey, medical tourism is booming more than ever.
Discreet about its strategy, the Chinese company Temu is proving a fierce competitor to incumbent e-commerce brands, notably Amazon, by operating at a major loss. Some are worried whether its aim is to collect something more valuable: data on the habits of Westerners.
With men leaving for the front, Ukrainian women have stepped in to fill the void, notably in the coal industry. A reportage from the mines of the Dnipropetrovsk region to see how women are faring in this male-dominated field.
Apple’s announcement that it has discontinued its car project is bigger than it may seem. It is a serious admission that a car revolution is not as close as we thought — and really good news for German automakers.
Aspen, a former mining town in Colorado, is arguably the most fashionable winter sport destination in the U.S. That is largely thanks to one man: Klaus Obermeyer, originally from southern Germany, the inventor of the down jacket and one of the best-known pioneers of the skiing world. He is now 104 years old – and still on the slopes, where German daily Die Welt reached him.
Milk shortages are not new in Cuba, where the state pays producers less for their milk than what they can make by selling it on the black market.
Real estate is booming in Ukraine, even as the war with Russia has fundamentally changed where people want to live, and in what kind of buildings. There is, in any case, a lot of activity as lives are uprooted — and a general preference for lower floors.
Working neither from the office nor from home: the flexible concept of “workation” is appealing not only to digital nomads but increasingly to regular employees who want to find new ways to for peak work-life balance.
The competition dreamed up by Spain’s former soccer star Gerard Piqué is developing at breakneck speed in Spain, and beyond. Thanks to a fun format and rules borrowed from a number of other sports, it is attracting a younger audience, which is something advertisers are keen to see.
Andrei Akimov runs state-controlled Gazprombank and is part of the Russian leader’s inner circle, aligned with the condemnation of the “collective West” conflict. He also oversees a web of luxury holdings across the same West, thanks to schemes to hide behind the names of relatives.
Bolivia believes lithium is the new “white gold,” for its role in fueling new technologies. Distrusting Western investments and technology, it’s counting on collaborations with Russia and China. But there will be problems at home that could block it all.
Are Bob Marley’s artistic and cultural values now clouded in a haze of rampant commercialization?
The industrial port in the southern Italian region of Puglia is also home to the massive Ilva steel plant, which has risked closure in part because of its damage to the environment and public health. But Taranto lives up to its nickname of the city of contradictions.
U.S. President Biden has quietly turned his Republican predecessor’s anti-foreign posturing into economic policies that strongly favor domestic manufacturing. Does Mexico, which depends on massive exports to the U.S., have anything to look forward to in the upcoming presidential elections?
Ambition and ambiguity are the unspoken rules utilized by the participating parties in China’s much touted Belt and Road Initiative, launched 10 years ago, to expand its economic power across the world. But what has actually come of it is not so clear.
Streaming video channels that allows interactive home shopping has been booming in China, and is beginning to win over customers abroad as a cheap and cheerful way of selling products to millions of consumers glued to the screen.
With the World Economic Forum in Davos going on, French President Macron is launching with urgency the debate on a common defense for European countries, in light of Ukraine, the Middle East — and a possible return of Trump.
Burkina Faso’s production of local chicken, nicknamed “bicycle chicken,” has been declining in recent years, with the traditional delicacy being slowly replaced by a cheaper imported version.
After two months of war, experts in Ukraine are starting to consider what plan could work to restore the local infrastructure and economy, looking at the experience of Germany, Japan and Italy — countries that went down in history for their economic miracles after being destroyed by war.
In the short term, a fall in consumption of material objects would be an economic and social catastrophe. In the long term, it is necessary.