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Category: Society
In Italy and Spain, there’s more time to casually socialize. Americans unapologetically dive into the consumerist crush of gifts. But in Germany, Christmas is a solemn pseudo-Christian ritual with much too much pressure on everyone.
The nativity scenes, signs of hope and time for contemplation of modern Christmas is so retrograde! Let’s celebrate the secular and modern solstice. But really?
Islam Khalil was abducted by security forces and tortured for months. More than 200 days later, he is still behind bars pending trial for a crime without a trace. This is his story.
The Ottoman Empire’s Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent yearned to conquer Vienna but died in 1566 in Hungary. Archaeologists have discovered the place where his heart and other insides were buried, which is a momentous historical tale of its own.
Orphaned and forced to live on the streets at just 5, Amporn Wathanavong had a miserable childhood, and was lured to fight in the jungles along the Cambodian border. But he ultimately got an education and founded an organization to help poor orphans.
A look inside Huawei’s HQ in Shenzen, the Silicon Valley of China, where plans are being laid to overtake Apple and Samsung.
People these days demand trails that are easily mappable online, and don’t want to have to wait for optimal conditions. No time left in modern life for venturing into the unknown?
TOKYO — Earlier this year, a delegation from the Egyptian government was visiting Nibukata Primary School in Tokyo. “The children are well-disciplined and work in teams,” a member of the delegation noted. But the delegate then went on to express particular surprise that children sweep and mop the classroom floors, for it’s common in Egypt […]
The Somali community has solid roots in and around Minneapolis. But young people have increasingly been lured by jihadists.
Mohamed Soltan lost 120 pounds during a hunger strike in Egyptian prison, where he landed for protesting against the military regime. The only American prisoner freed since the coup, he’s home now. But the physical and pychological effects of food
-Editorial- PARIS — The electoral surge was on scale with the threat at hand: The rise in turnout from the first to second rounds of France’s regional elections was so strong that it prevented the conquest of several regional governments by the far-right National Front party, which tallied the highest number of votes in its […]
MUNICH — The conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party in the southern state of Bavaria wants Germany to ban the burqa. But the toughest opposition to the proposal may come from what is otherwise a natural CSU ally: local business leaders. Should a ban be implemented similar to the one France approved in 2010, it […]
PARIS — The French National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, failed to win a single region in the second round of regional elections Sunday despite leading in six of the country’s 13 regions a week earlier in the first round. The center-right coalition led by Former President Nicolas Sarkozy won in seven regions, while […]
HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s enormous appetite for seafood and its role as a hub for the global seafood trade is having an unfortunate impact on endangered fish species. Chinese cuisine prizes seafood, so it’s perhaps not surprising that per capita seafood consumption in Hong Kong averages 70 kilograms a year, about four times the global average. But the city is also a hub for trade into mainland China, where consumption is on the rise. All of that is putting a strain on endangered marine life and driving an unexpected sustainability push. On a busy Saturday morning at Hong Kong’s […]
The war in Syria is triggering the escape of many, but the true cause can be found much deeper. Arab societies need such vast reforms that Europe must stand as a model, rather than play realpolitik.
Why can’t Brazil’s largest city keep its graveyards clean?
More and more universities around the world offer so-called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). With top Munich universities using the online education provider Coursera, doubts grow over security and the selling of customer data.
As boundaries between work and private life fall away, telecommuting has been a rising trend in recent years. But some now have begun to opt for living at work.
BANYULS-SUR-MER — Up on these hillsides, vineyards descend steeply, almost falling into the blue waves of the Mediterranean. The soil is hard, and plowing is done by hand. But local winegrowers in Banyuls-sur-Mer and the neighboring towns of Port-Vendres, Collioure and Cerbère, just north of the border with Spain, wouldn’t have it any other way. […]
BANGALORE — Here in the Indian capital of global call centers, the Dalai Lama was the feature guest at the Arab-Asian Chamber of Commerce” Peace for Economy conference. In an interview with La Stampa on the sidelines of the conference, the highest authority of Tibetan Buddhism extended an olive branch to the West’s current Enemy […]
Europe is increasingly turning to this approach of child rearing that sees kids and adults as equals. It may have unforeseen effects on children — but even more so on parents.
Decades of governmental policies and societal mores have created a staggering gender imbalance in China. Thirty million restless males with no romantic prospects is a recipe for disaster.
Watch Darth Vader’s heavy breathing in German, Yoda in Russian riffin’, and Princess Leia declare her love in French … in our 90-second video, to celebrate the release of the Star Wars franchise’s 7th installment.
A return to national borders, a fight against radical Islam, a rejection of the EU and its asylum policies. France’s Far-Right National Front leader Marine Le Pen answers questions in the wake of the Paris attacks, and ahead of Sunday’s re
In our increasingly digital world, people often feel the need to disconnect from the Internet for a dose of silence and breath of fresh air. Worldcrunch has reported recent stories from Brazil to California, about the hunt for “digital detox” solutions. With the help of the Internet (!), we’ve tracked down five other examples of […]
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PARIS — Two nights ago, there were sounds outside our apartment window that I was convinced were gunfire. It was 9 p.m., and my husband was 30 minutes late getting home. I sent a breathless text message right away, imagining him on the sidewalk with bullet holes through his chest. He was on the Metro. […]
China’s GDP has overtaken that of Japan. If there’s one key area where Japan can still teach the Chinese, it is Japan’s demographic crisis.
LONDON — According to a new British law, any teacher, doctor, nurse or social care professional who comes across a case of a girl who has undergone genital mutilation has the duty to report it to the police. This law, which took effect on Oct. 31 and applies to any victim under the age of […]
Categories
A New Feminist Argument Against Abortion
Shouldn’t women who believe it’s wrong to abort a girl just because she’s a girl also believe it’s wrong to abort a baby just because she might have a disability? One self-described feminist author argues yes.
PARIS — Colonel Eric de Lapresle had never seen anything like it. Since this month’s Paris and Saint-Denis terrorist attacks, the French Armed Forces recruitment services have received some 1,500 requests for information per day. That’s three times more than before Nov. 13, says de Lapresle, the head of marketing and communication for French military […]
NEW YORK — On a recent Sunday afternoon, David Bromwich paces his friend’s kitchen in Brooklyn barefoot, waiting for some tea to steep. As the alarm on his phone goes off, he’s already pouring. “It has a slight asparagus taste,” he says, slurping the hot green tea from a spoon. “There are so many chemicals in tea,” he explains, sticking a thermometer in another cup of water. “It’s the processing that unlocks all the different compounds.” Bromwich, a 36-year-old product manager at Thomson Reuters, has always loved tea, tasting every one he could as a kid and later mail-ordering the […]
TOKYO — The large speakers at Quattro Labo, a music bar near Kichijoji Station in western Tokyo, mostly play U.S. rock music from the 1960s and 1970s: Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder, the Allman Brothers Band. Not only that, but the sound has a depth to it — along with the distinct scratch-and-pop effect — that […]
When fear gets hold of me When anger seizes my body When hate becomes my companion Then I get feminine advice, because it is only feminine pain And I am told feminine pain perishes like all feminine things. — Dahabo Ali Muse, “Feminine Pains” poem, 1998 HARGEISA — “On my wedding night, it felt like […]
The story of how Lonnie Johnson, an African-American inventor just inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame, beat the odds to create a water gun with seriously fun firepower.
Marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the first in an in-depth multimedia series of reports from Africa, and beyond, about the continuing practice of female genital mutilation.
The killers and victims of the Paris violence are part of the same demographic, though they share different realities. Authorities haven’t heard the angst, but rap has been telling us for years how little the two groups share.
More consumer spending in the short term, and a demographic correction over time, but China’s loosening of its birth policies may be most powerful as a symbol.
German carmaker Audi has commissioned Etogas Ltd. to build the planet’s first power-to-gas plant to fuel cars with transformed wind and solar energy. Could this “windgas” technology make today’s electric cars obsolete?