Essay: After Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, Hugo Chávez, who also suffers from cancer, aired the possibility of a covert U.S. conspiracy. There may be other slightly less sinister explanations.
Category: Society
In Switzerland, police officers and educators invite themselves to dine with kids under investigation, and their families, in a new effort to get both parent and child to understand the consequences of criminal behavior.
With enough space to hold 200 people and an icy 17-meter-high tower, the Schneekirchen snow church has been christened near the German town of Mitterfirmiansreut. Builders had to overcome both architectural and ecclesiastical challenges, not to mention Mo
Italians know that love can never be reduced to euros and cents. Still, by surveying intended sentiments behind purchases, one market research project tries to put a price tag on saying ‘ti amo’ (I love you). It’s cheaper than &
A program started in 2006 offers benefits to lure back home the Russians who left as the Soviet Union was crumbling. But the price to get the top qualified emigres to return is apparently more than Moscow can afford.
Noldi, an eight-month-old domesticated ass, was born blind on a Swiss farm, and was never accepted by his herd, as he struggled to avoid running into obstacles. Farmers considered putting him down, until an outcry from animal rights groups led to a happy
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Our Son Was A Neo-Nazi Terrorist
In the former East German state of Thuringia, Uwe Böhnhardt was a good student in elementary school. Then something changed. He would wind up at the center of a murderous Neo-Nazi criminal cell. Böhnhardt’s parents try to retrace the steps that l
Turned away from state centers in and around Switzerland’s Basel, some migrant asylum seekers have had no choice but to sleep on the streets. A handful of concerned citizens, however, have organized through e-mail and Facebook to offer their homes as emer
Dating sites make fantastic claims about the number of users who find true love. But a closer look shows that online dating has the same pitfalls as conventional dating: men shy away from successful women and too many women care more about paychecks than
Once known for it’s left-leaning politics, the region of Emilia Romagna has recently witnessed a high school council taken over by a far-right group. As much as ideology, the election victory is another sign that traditional politics has lost legitimacy a
Do you give Fido a treat every time he’s been a good boy? Watch out: canines put on weight fast. But rationing what they eat isn’t enough: here’s how to keep a dog’s weight in check or knock off excess pounds.
When his shiny new Vespa was swiped off the streets of Milan in 1976, its owner figured it was gone for good. And then last week, a call arrived from the police in Sicily. A nice holiday surprise, but at 84, the reunited owner may have to let someone else
Essay: A dissident blogger recalls the secret Christmas of her youth. The holidays are now acknowledged out in the open, but the other troublesome topic — human rights — is still off limits.
Essay: “South Park,” the popular and sometimes over-the-top American animated series, has just aired an episode in Germany built around harsh German stereotypes, with allusions to the Nazi era. How does the cliché of the German lack of h
A first wave of 200 new CCTV cameras were installed in the French capital this week. By next summer, there will be more than 1,000 such surveillance cameras. Still, Paris peeping is nothing compared to London’s much bigger version of Big Brother.
Church employees cannot turn to state courts in matters concerning job loss or demotion, and the European Court for Human Rights may be turned to only in extreme cases.
Many of India’s 170 million Dalits still live as outcasts. Some of these so-called “untouchables,” however, have turned to entrepreneurship as a way out of poverty and social isolation. Portrait of a nation caught between ancient traditions and bustling i
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Cracking Da Vinci’s Code On Tree Growth
Leonardo da Vinci certainly had an eye for detail – and a brain to match. Among his many musings was a theory that a tree’s branches grow in mathematical proportion to the diameter of its trunk. A French researcher now says he has the math to prove Da Vin
Tanja Höls’ curiosity has earned her a big ‘thank you’ from the State Library in Passau Germany, where the 43-year-old janitor discovered more than 170 valuable old coins worth somewhere in the six figure range. The head of the library h
With a final decision looming, FIFA President Sepp Blatter has reversed his longstanding opposition to using instant replay to help referees. But other soccer officials oppose the idea, like UEFA President Michel Platini and German legend Franz Beckenbaur
A group of German sales reps have been caught with their pants down – so to speak – following revelations that they “had contact” with prostitutes during an incentive trip to Brazil. The scandal follows a similar story involving sales reps who behaved bad
Analysis: As Japan tries to regain its late 20th century prowess in cultural exports, it should look next door to the steamrolling Chinese economy: both as a market and an industrial resource. A soft-power plan to conquer the world.
An Italian religious studies teacher has been suspended for depicting the Apocalypse so vividly that it shocked an elementary school girl to tears. The teacher wrote to the Pope, who has sent her an encouraging response.
Indian real estate mogul D.S. Kulkarni has built a state-of-the-art digital graphics campus from scratch in Pune, India. The educational impetus is provided by a French computer graphics university – a relationship light years indeed from old English colo
Essay: He Jianchao, director of the Daming Palace Bureau, is leading efforts to restore the remains of the imperial city of the Tang Dynasty. His response to criticism about the quality of the restoration might be funny — if it weren’t for the h
Police in France are tracking a rash of rhinoceros horn robberies. The latest Hollywood-like heist took place earlier this week in Paris. Why rhino horns? Among other values, they are prized in Asia for their supposed medicinal properties.
For years, Tzaphira Stern Assala kept the curtains of her Jerusalem dance studio closed to avoid offending the neighborhood’s Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Not anymore. Fed up with Ultra-Orthodox efforts to keep women out of public life, the studio is suddenly giv
More so than elsewhere in Indonesia, the world’s largest Islamic nation, the province of Aceh adheres to the strict precepts of Sharia law. If caught by the religious police, residents face public flogging and prison. Still, the rich have ways ar
One middle manager takes us inside an all-too-common practice: public offices that must spend their annual funding increasingly turn to travel agencies to set up all-expense-paid vacations for the whole staff. And of course, the big bosses get extra speci
From China’s Weiwei to the Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda al-Mahdi, people are again busy using their naked bodies as a way to challenge authority and demand rights. Even in today’s much more sexualized world, public nudity continues to be a powerful form o
Essay: The West traces its origins to Greece and its Mediterranean neighbors. The region’s history and traditions continue to inspire, even as developments there warn us against taking capitalism and its social benefits too far.
Inheritance can provide a nest egg for children of the deceased. But increasingly in France, deceased parents leave a mountain of debt to children who can’t afford to pay it off. A sign of both economic hard times and shifting demographics.
Op-Ed: Examples abound of Latin American first ladies trying to succeed their husbands as president. That’s not a good thing. “Family presidencies” represent a step backward for a region whose executive branches already have too much power.
In France, a controversial new decree is wreaking havoc among foreign-born francophone students who arrived looking to enter the global elite via the country’s top universities. Now that they have their degrees, they are being told to leave. Is t
Peter Priller was a Catholic town chaplain in Germany until he fell in love with a male parishioner, and was subsequently excommunicated. Though many closeted gay Catholic priests live in “secret societies,” Priller says there are other choices.
The Federal Administrative Court in Germany has ruled against an 18-year-old Muslim student involved in a drawn-out legal quest for permission to pray openly at school. The decision, however, does not rule out all prayer at school, which pleased activists
Users of “Bath Salts” – a trendy new designer drug that’s all the rage in Germany’s club scene – say the substance can be hit and miss: often a rush of euphoria, sometimes an attack of paranoia. In a few cases, users ha
With the help of Italy, Israel enjoyed its first bona fide fashion week in decades, which was a showcase for a unique approach to style inspired by everything from religious vestments to kibbutz clothing to gothic duds.
A new study about adolescents in Germany finds reading on the rise, with 42% of teens polled saying they read a daily paper. Still, while e-books have yet to break through, Internet consumption dominates overall.
A visit inside a Tajik village that has sent nearly all of its men to work in Russia. These are the people affected when President Dmitry Medvedev talks about restricting Tajik guest workers in Russia.