One of the most controversial words in the German language is the focus of a conference in Dresden, a city that itself is filled with highly charged meaning, past and present.
Category: Society
An 18-century gallery has been transformed into a “venue of free and creative exchange,” upending the usual relationship between art and the public.
-Essay- CAIRO — Assistant Professor in Islam and Modernity, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, Professorship of Islamic History, Specialist on Islam and/or Muslim Societies, Cultures, Arts, Politics, and/or Philosophy. These are just a sampling of the positions currently featured in job listings of the Middle East Studies Association. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks […]
Yassine S. presented himself in Brussels as a Harvard-educated psychologist. Business was booming until his “mental manipulations” caught the attention of colleagues.
BEIJING — If one were to think of the Internet as a person with flesh, blood and a soul, then what would be the source of its soul? The answer will be a very different one depending on which country’s Internet we are talking about. In the United States, a Time magazine article explored the […]
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The Torrid History Of Sex In Arab Films
CAIRO — In 1929, Egypt’s Interior Ministry banned Wedad Orfi’s Masat al-Hayah (“The Tragedy of Life”). “The story as we saw it revels in self-indulgence, overshadowing the good part of it, leaving only a few meters of preaching, which neither leaves a strong enough impact on the viewer, nor gives the viewer a sublime idea […]
French academic André Gunthert asserts that the selfie is not narcissistic folly at all, but rather represents a new kind of revolution that threatens elite control of society.
This week we shine the spotlight on Malaysia: CURRENCY AND CARS While other emerging-market currencies in Asia are halting their slide, the Malaysian ringgit is continuing its precipitous fall, Malaysian financial newspaper the Edge reports. The Malaysian currency has experienced a steady depreciation for months against the U.S. dollar. Despite a minor rally recently, it’s […]
Suspended for three months by FIFA’s Ethics Committee for a 2 million Swiss franc payment from Sepp Blatter, the former French soccer star denies any wrongdoing, and still says he’s the right man to be the next president of the global soccer org
What if everything were free? Well, it is at Debora Fischkandl’s little Paris shop, no strings attached. And hers isn’t the only one. A look at the radical side of the sharing economy.
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Mother By Day, Poker Player By Night
Sima, a Parisian mother of three, hits the poker tables every night around 10 p.m. and plays for a solid eight hours, just like a day’s work. She earns a decent living, if not the respect of her children’s teachers.
TOKYO — It’s a bit further away from the bigger stores in Tokyo’s Ginza district. Between the sake bars, along the tall towers that watch day and night over the Sumida River, a quiet art gallery hosts large, abstract paintings. And across the street from a shop for urban bikes with monochromatic frames is a […]
Church leaders believe Christian missionary work is endangering civil peace as ever more Muslims emigrate to Germany. Limiting proselytizing is a radical break from 2,000 years of practice.
MATADI — Elie Luemba says her youngest son fooled her and her husband for far too long. “We used to give him a little money every morning to buy himself donuts at school,” she says. “But he was actually using the money to bet on sports results with his classmates.” The irony is that Luemba […]
BEIJING — Like others, as a child I used to daydream about taking a shovel and hunting through our yard for priceless treasure buried from ancient times. What I never would have imagined is that such an act can get you into serious trouble — even if it’s done on your own property. It’s a […]
Salty-snack junkies, the lactose-intolerant and lovers of Asian food are providing an economic boost for farmers in the war-torn northern provinces of Ivory Coast.
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While officials in the Argentine city of Bariloche insist it was never a “Nazi refuge,” a tidy little tourist business is growing around visits to local sites associated with Nazi war criminals like Mengele and Eichmann.
WASHINGTON — Tattoos dedicated to Lucifer, traces of alcohol and various drugs, lots of wounds: The recently unveiled autopsy report for the nine victims of a gunfight in Waco, Texas include all the elements needed to preserve the dark legend of American bikers. On Aug. 6, a week before the report went public, Republican Party […]
Pychologists say the so-called “grandchildren of war” are beset by problems directly related to their parents’ experiences during and after the Second World War.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — The Colombian Health Ministry wants to tax sugary drinks. The Supreme Court is ordering parliament to regulate labeling on food products so consumers know which ones contain genetically modified ingredients. A nationwide debate has begun on the poor quality of school meals, as the regional head of the World Food Programme tells […]
London’s over-the-top mayor has published a book about Winston Churchill, and may aspire to a similar national destiny. But he strives for greatness by looking for a laugh.
BHAKTAPUR — With one arm, Rabindra Puri slowly clears a pile of rubble, followed by a second, and a third, until a statuette of the god Shiva appears. He delicately wipes the object’s dust-covered face, then puts it on a stretcher so that it can be carried away and placed in a locked cabin nearby. […]
On the island of Sardinia, asylum seekers rebuild their lives on the football pitch.
SÃO PAULO — Israel Afonso Lima, a janitor in this Brazilian city, suffers from Down syndrome. But that didn’t stop him, at the age of 36, from deciding to go back to school to learn Brazilian sign language. And it’s for a very good reason: to be able to communicate with his wife, 37-year-old Eliene […]
KABUL — Eyes are always described as a symbol of beauty in art and eastern literature, but the two eyes painted on a wall in Kabul’s Share New neighborhood have literally beautified an ugly security wall. And in this case, eyes are used as a symbol of monitoring corruption. These “we are watching” eyes were created by the ArtLords, a group of young creatives who paint war-torn walls across the city of Kabul. “We have been facing cultural and social problems in Afghanistan, and art has never been used to solve disputes,” says the group’s leader Kabir Mokamel. “Instead force […]
For 25 years, the Sri Lankan military waged war against the Tamil Tiger rebels, killing and displacing thousands of people. Though it ended in 2009, militarization remains and people haven’t been able to reclaim lands.
BEIJING — A few days ago, a video showing Zhou Huzhen, the board chairman of Hebei College of Science and Technology, captured the attention of the Internet. The inevitable existential questions followed: Are Chinese universites bona fide educational institutes? Or are they really there just to maintain the power of the status quo? Zhou Huzhen […]
Flemming Rose was the man who commissioned caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad for the Jyllands Posten newspaper. He reflects on Islam, free speech and silent fear.
Since the gradual reduction of subsidies from Rome to diocese in the Democratic Republic of Congo, vicars have turned to the faithful to ensure survival of parish churches.
Today’s generation of university students are the children of so-called “helicopter parents,” particularly coddled and worried about in the US. And they can’t seem to cope in the face of adulthood.
Tomomi Inada may be a more fervent Japanese nationalist than current Prime Minister Abe. She was in Washington this week to meet top officials.
AIX-EN-PROVENCE — Over the past two days, Hervé Pighiera has picked up 118 cigarette butts, 60 cigarette packs, 69 plastic bottles and 7.75 kilos of non-classifiable garbage, including a little dollhouse armchair made of wicker and plastic. Pighiera is on a mission to clean roadsides. On July 12, this smiling fellow in a straw hat, […]
LAUSANNE — After living together for seven years, Guillaumette Sauvé and Pierre Boizot wed on June 30 in a civil ceremony in Lausanne. They are 62 and 59 respectively, and have both been married twice before. The bride didn’t wear white. And only a few friends were invited. “At first, we weren’t too excited by […]
Jhon Jairo Velasquez Vásquez, known as “Popeye,” was the hitman-of-choice for the legendary drug kingpin. He’s out of jail now, and telling his side of the story.
The pharmaceutical industry looks to identify new diseases so it can push new drugs on the market, and patients play along. The approval of reduced female libido as a pathology is a case in point.
Law enforcement agencies that bring cases to court, and the administrators who act as court overseers, have far more power and influence than judges, who are often pressured to render false verdicts. How it works, and why the system needs overhauling.
Though the Egyptian president has authorized the release of some 100 political prisoners, the global human rights organization says thousands more are languishing inside prisons for doing no more than engaging in peaceful protest.
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The World Comes To New York
With the United Nations General Assembly meeting this week, heads of state and all the many faces of the world are filling the streets of New York. Take a tour!
This week we shine the spotlight on Mexico: CHILD TRAFFICKING PROBE IN SONORA Mexican national daily Excelsior reports that the country’s Attorney General formally charged two officials from the northern state of Sonora with child trafficking. The case first emerged last month, when Vladimir Alfredo Arzate and José Hernández López, both officials at a government […]