Worldcrunch
BEIJING — Fan Bingbing, China“s highest-paid actress and star of the 2014 blockbuster X-Men, recently received some unwanted public attention—an accusation of tax evasion. The Chinese actress was accused by Cui Yongyuan, a TV presenter and producer, of signing “Yin-Yang contracts’ for the films she stars in. This allows her to pay lower tax via […]
Blame for the failure to take legislative responsibility for LGBT rights must be squarely divided among political parties across the spectrum.
‘Alternative’ sexuality is despised in the traditionalist, native or Afro-Caribbean communities of northern Colombia. The choices for gays and lesbians tend to be harsh: face down your family and neighbors, or leave.
More than just a vehicle to communicate, language expresses and helps construct identity. As such, it has the power to inspire and unite people — but language can also be a source of division, or an impediment to peace between groups already in conflict. From squabbles over things like spelling and pronunciation, to minority groups […]
Is religion numbing Egyptians into acquiescence amid a number of merciless austerity measures?
A determined architect continues to pursue her dream of opening a civil war museum in Beirut, where people are still rattled by the bloody events of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990.
As a member of the National Child Labor Committee, starting in 1908, Lewis Hine photographed working children.
-OpEd- In Germany, there are many people who criticize the policies of Recep Tayyip Erdogan — rightly so. Many of his toughest critics here are Germans with Turkish roots, who also denounce the German government’s political deals with Ankara. And many of them are now expressing their solidarity with Mesut Özil, the German-Turkish player who […]
Tour de France photographer Pauline Ballet has been capturing the cyclists around the country during the world’s most iconic cycling race.
A case study of Angul in Odisha highlights just how much urban centers rely on lower castes when it comes to sanitation.
The legendary American photographer Walker Evans spent three years secretly capturing images of passengers in the New York Subway. He produced the Many Are Called series (1938-1941) by hiding his camera in his coat, and making the shutter release button accessible up his sleeve. Best known for his work through the Great Depression, Evans was […]
“Sport … is more powerful than government in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all kinds of discrimination.” Ever relevant words for 2018 from one of the great figures of the past century. Nelson Mandela, the man who spent 27 years in prison for his fight against South Africa’s Apartheid system […]
In northwestern Laos, Chinese businesses dominate the Ton Pheung district, a special economic zone that has become a hub for all kinds of trafficking.
Ask anybody with a minimum of knowledge about either the sport or the country, and they’ll tell you that soccer in Brazil is like a religion. This truism becomes all the more true every four years, at the FIFA World Cup. But some of us also know that Brazil is a very religious country as […]
With technology rapidly advancing, what may set human workers apart is their ability to reason as much as their technical skills.
Proportionally, the World Cup has more followers in the Latin American marketplace than any other region. It’s a unique opportunity to tap into pure emotion of potential consumers.
Over the past decade, there have been countless reports about the boom in cosmetic surgery in Asian countries such as China, Japan and South Korea. Names have even been given to particular facial features in vogue, including the term “red net face,” taken from the “red net” young female internet celebrities making a mark in […]
MOSCOW — On April 13, a Russian court decreed an immediate blocking of the app Telegram across the country. The decision came after the refusal of Telegram to provide Russian security services with access to users’ private messages. The authorities said it was a necessity in the fight against terrorist threats. However, Pavel Durov, founder […]
Using social media platforms, professors from Pakistan and India developed a course that looks at the two countries’ histories without nationalistic biases.
Built on a soggy bed of sand, the German capital isn’t an ideal place for underground infrastructure. And yet, there’s a relatively unknown maze of tunnels, bunkers and other surprising spaces down there.
An estimated 15,000 undocumented Moroccans work in construction sites, bakeries, and in skilled trades across neighboring Algeria.
-Essay- MUNICH — Artists are now using anti-Semitism and Islamism to shock, and that’s not surprising. But if both listeners and rappers started to finally take music seriously, this could change. Since Germany’s top music prize, the Echo awards, honored the rappers Kollegah and Farid Bang, there has been a misunderstanding that both sides of […]
VENICE — Venice and its 80,000 regular inhabitants are drowning in tourists. Some 30 million flock to its famous canals every year, stressing the infrastructure. Fed up, the lagoon city’s businessman-turned-mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, has a simple but controversial plan to stem the tide: turnstiles. City authorities recently set up turnstiles on four bridges that connect […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON — Americans love to contemplate – and legislatively promote, to whatever degree possible – the virtue of hard work. Here in the United States, we already work more hours per year than our English- speaking counterparts in Britain, Canada and Australia – not to mention those enviable denizens of European social democracies, who enjoy the kind of leisure time only our highest-paid workers can afford. So perhaps it’s not surprising that several new pro-work policy ideas are enjoying attention on the left and the right. On the right, work requirements for Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance represent […]
France will be marking 50 years since the month-long student uprising that challenged the establishment on so many fronts. But some historians now question whether it was really the birth of sexual liberation.
Youth who neither work nor study number in the millions in Mexico, though not exclusive to it. The state should be laser-focused on this mostly female segment of the population.
For decades, economists scorned protectionism as a losing proposition. Now some have begun to admit that not everyone benefits from open markets.
Slated to open in 2020, Israel’s National Blood Services Center is a high-tech insurance policy to ward against existential threats such as chemical attacks.
Albert Camus’s iconic novel is a relevant today as it was when it first hit bookstores, in 1942.
Electing a first-ever prime minister could resolve the current Italian post-election impasse, and send a message abroad.
Like the the UK and U.S. election surprises before, Italy’s recent populist triumphs marked a revolt by voters outside the major urban centers.
ROSARNO — A shantytown of tents and shacks stretches out across an abandoned industrial district halfway between the towns of Rosarno and San Ferdinando, deep in the southern Italian region of Calabria. Some 2,500 farm workers from at least 16 different countries live in deplorable conditions surrounded by waste, with no access to running water […]
PARIS — Its destruction, nearly three decades ago, sent waves of joy across the globe. And yet, tourists of all nationalities still come to photograph its remains. The object of this paradox is none other than the Berlin Wall, the historic Cold War symbol that became an artistic symbol, even after its fall on Nov. […]
Voters in the northern town of Spirano helped put a hardline conservative in the senate. Only the man in question —Toni Chike Iwobi — is an immigrant from Nigeria.
In the place of narcissistic and subjective dignity wrongly invoked by procreation militants, we need a return to the transcendent and objective dignity of human nature.
-Essay- CAIRO — I dropped her off at the first of many stops that make up the long journey back to her home, and I went back to mine. We both like “homemaking;” we hoard the smallest of things, collect candles, eat what we grow – both of us are lovers of life, even fighters […]
Anti-immigrant rhetoric has become increasingly commonplace as political forces jockey for position ahead of this Sunday’s national elections.
Civil conflict has lasted so long in Colombia that many ordinary people now view gratuitous violence as customary, and in some cases even admirable.
-Analysis- The PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games finally kicked off Thursday with the riveting-if-baffling sport of curling and a first victory for hosts South Korea. But all eyes will be on the official opening ceremony tomorrow, especially since a disproportionate dose of the attention for this edition will be focused off the ice and snow. Coming […]
President Xi Jinping demands ‘inflexible atheism’ from his fellow Communist Party members. But he also has a soft spot for Buddhism, sources suggest.