The massive march in Warsaw and other protests against Poland’s proposed strict new anti-abortion law is a revolutionary moment in what it means to be a Polish woman.
Category: Society
-Essay- BERLIN — My body is that of a man but I am a woman and I want to live my life as a woman. In our minds, our bodies define who we are. We are either male or female. This belief makes me a person that should not exist. I did not question this […]
There are various reasons the wage and wealth gap is growing, but in Europe’s strongest economy it makes no sense to blame the global marketplace.
MARINDUQUE — Elisa Hernandez dips her yellow blouse into the Boac River’s rushing water and then slaps it up against the shoreline’s gray stones. The 73-year-old used to earn a living washing her whole community’s laundry this way. “We felt at home in this river … It was so clean, we played in it and we used to catch a lot of fish here too,” she says. But that all changed in March 1996, when a drainage pipe inside a copper mine burst about 20 kilometers upstream. Millions of tons of toxic mine waste, including lead and arsenic, flooded into […]
BUENOS AIRES — This city wants to make itself a kinder, friendlier place for the elderly, with plans to improve urban infrastructure and promote common-sense practices to help reduce accidents inside homes. Taking its lead from the World Health Organization (WHO), which has pushed in recent years for more user-friendly cities and better conditions for […]
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — After a woman was kicked in the face on a public bus for wearing shorts, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the event as an “individual” act of discrimination. His ruling party, the AKP, expressed a similar opinion, calling it an “isolated incident.” What they failed to acknowledge is the role their cultural […]
“Ab crack,” “thigh gap,” “bikini bridge” — these new body trends get thousands of likes on Instagram. Experts say they are terrible for women’s health of mind and body.
BUENOS AIRES — In the Argentine capital, always aiming to be on top of the latest trends, is part of the wave of turning staid office culture into hubs of creativity through shared workspaces. These workspaces, which are offices that freelancers share as a workplace, are found to foster useful interaction and creative activity. Many […]
Italy is, still, a deeply sexist country. A recent murder and suicide remind one mother why part of her shuddered at the thought of having a baby girl.
Our planet has actually grown greener. Really. You can thank yourself.
British rocker Pete Doherty is signed up for a November gig, though other artists have opted out of playing in the venue where terrorists killed 90 people last year.
The current deadly war on drugs in the Philippines echoes what happened in Thailand in the early 2000s — massive arrests and a wave of extrajudicial killings. Officials in Bangkok now admit the crackdown didn’t work, th
British Prime Minister Theresa May is just the latest female world leader who’s not a mother. A hard look at a gender double standard that reaches all the way to the top.
Both city officials and business leaders take note of where artsy types, LGBT and creative young people move to live, as these are the new “influencers” who can give the decisive spark to cities.
Slovenian-born Andrej Mrevlje has lived all around the world, sharing his stories and ideas. Now, after five years in the Big Apple, it’s time for life inside the beltway.
After seven years of research, a determined academic says he has definitive proof that Capa’s legendary Spanish Civil War photograph ‘Falling Soldierâ’ was a fake.
A new Brazilian report shows that far more babies born with microcephaly and other conditions linked to the Zika virus are black or mixed race. There are troubling explanations for this fact, including access to (illegal) abortion.
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That Pure Marketing Scam We Call Detox
Every November, the erudite British council behind Oxford Dictionaries picks a word of the year to signify the term that most influenced society in the previous 12 months. They picked the word “selfie” in 2013. “Vape” was the winner in 2014. Last year, it wasn’t even a word. It was an emoji (the one with […]
CAIRO — “Everyone wants a tattoo now in Egypt,” says 23-year-old Kareem Shaheen as he sits on his bed sketching the outline of a flash of lightning. Shaheen started to tattoo less than a year ago under the name “Monkey Tattoo,” and hopes to open the first street tattoo studio in Cairo. “People relate getting […]
India’s northern state of Bihar recently imposed a complete ban on alcohol in the state, driven largely by women’s rights groups. The prohibition is now blamed for a dozen recent deaths from bad booze.
This summer, I was arrested in Turkey. It was the wrong time, and I was in the wrong place — visiting the predominantly Kurdish eastern regions of the country. For the first four days I was held in a cell in a police station, before being transferred to a deportation center. I had come as an activist, trying to document the Turkish military’s actions on the eastern part of the country, where a veritable war has been waged on the Kurdish population. My own story of the events leading to the detainment is, however, for another day. Now, I want […]
Peter Wohlleben wrote an unlikely bestseller about trees. Now the lifelong forester explores the spiritual side of animals.
Making the sweet wine Passito is backbreaking work but has given Pantelleria, an island off the Tunisian coast, a new lease on life.
MUNICH — In an effort to loosen up, the Otto group, a mail-order company based in Hamburg, Germany, has taken the bold step of doing the “du.” In German, “du” is the informal version of “you” — something to be used among friends, but a no-no when it comes to formal work environments, especially when […]
Our itinerant Slovenian-born New Yorker takes a long-awaited voyage to the land of Joyce and good drink, and a certain singular brand of modesty.
A widely used approach in Norway to limit youth mob culture and violence has long been exported. Now look for it in Germany, following the July 22 attack in Munich by a teenaged victim of bullying.
Most Indians are vegetarians. But omelets, a colonial legacy, remain popular in India.
Abnormally high temperatures triggered the outbreak of anthrax on Yamal peninsula. It’s not the only disease that roiled Russia this summer.
Terrorism and social networks contribute to the exacerbation of a general feeling of fear, as recent incidents in New York and the South of France have shown.
Is simulation turning people into escapists, wonders this Argentinian philosopher and science-fiction expert.
Social network searches have become common practice among police forces. But now victims, too, are searching online for offenders. What is legal, and what isn’t?
Sociologist Ernest Meccia explains how Argentina — one of the first countries in the world to introduce gay marriage — accepted and even embraced homosexuality.
BEIJING — China’s Ministry of Public Security has weighed into a national debate about citizens filming police actions with an attention-grabbing video of its own. The video, released last month, confirms the public’s right to film or photograph police with the caveat that citizens must “not affect the execution of normal law enforcement.” It also […]
Patrick Jan barely scratches out a living. He is too busy making his childhood dream come true.
CHINON — Serge Desazars’ bodyguards are very hairy. Hip-Hop, a two-year-old Springer, jumps whenever a new visitor arrives. Serge lets out a smile, surreptitiously materializing on the unemotional farmer’s face. Hip-Hop is clearly too playful for this former international director for the clothing brands Petit Bateau, Céline and Holland & Holland. Desazars, who abandoned carpeted […]
-OpEd- As I walk through central London, I see many women wearing burqas passing me by. And as I’ve always felt in that sort of situation, I was uncomfortable. Physically and morally uncomfortable. They say you’re not supposed to feel such things. Nor to write about them. What right, indeed, do I have to impose […]
You won’t find gold or weapons stored deep in the granite caves of Switzerland’s Bernese Alps. Instead, the mountain range holds more precious treasure — servers and hard drives.
After the Indonesian defense minister compared LGBT people to a nuclear threat, Islamists targeted a gay community that used to be widely tolerated.
BOGOTÁ — Suicide used to be rare among the native communities of Vaupés, a region in eastern Colombia with the largest proportion of indigenous residents. That’s not the case anymore. Decades of hostility between the region’s native inhabitants and outsiders has had devastating results. El Espectador sent me to investigate this increase in suicides, now […]
INGOLSTADT — Math is the first class of the day. Only two students, who are clearly aces at math, are raising their hands to answer the teacher’s questions. Almost everyone else is dozing off. But Mahmoud, who is seated in the first row, appears to be wide awake. He does not, however, raise his hand. […]