After the head of a kindergarten near Munich announced plans to tie the knot with her girlfriend, her work contract was terminated. LGBT activists (and parents) are outraged.
Category: Society
CAIRO — There are two smiling European-looking 30-somethings waiting to welcome you to the new website, Liberland.org, while a hopeful-sounding logo proclaims, “Live and let live.” Formerly referred to as Gornja Siga, the seven square-kilometer state (slightly larger than the Vatican and Monaco) came into existence following a border dispute between Croatia and Serbia. The […]
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Muslim And Happy In … Brazil
The world’s largest Catholic country has a long-established and steadily growing Muslim population. With some rare exceptions, Brazil is a model for integration of Islam into a mixed population.
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Roboski military outpost became infamous as the location of the 2011 bombing that killed 34 Kurdish youth, whom Turkish fighter pilots had mistaken for PKK rebel troops. Now we see the latest news about Turkish soldiers killing mules, not men, in the same area near the Turkey-Iraq border. According to Ferhat […]
They’ve known him from up close, and their insights help explain the mystery of the Russian president’s rise. And, perhaps, what he’ll do next.
The best-selling novelist is adored by ordinary Chileans (and millions of readers worldwide) but has been shunned by the cultural elite of her native country. She is not the first successful person to get such treatment.
A German biologist spent two years on a project whose aim was to understand how people with Down syndrome think about the world. She wound up creating a magazine that capitalizes on their intelligence.
Locals used to cook their food in bubbling pools of steaming groundwater. Now a project is underway to turn it into electricity.
-OpEd- BOGOTA — Once upon a time our cities had physical spaces and institutions that allowed people of different social groups to mix and interact, at least to a degree. Downtown cafés attracted politicians, intellectuals, traders and students. Churches — back when people still attended mass in significant numbers — were another place where people […]
REYKJAVIK — “Welcome to the Bloody Gate …” The solemn announcement is made by Asthor Agustsson, a local tour guide who could easily pass for a Viking warrior. The ten tourists with Agustsson appear awestruck, walking along a path that traverses two abrupt cliffs, covered in snow, with a large frozen lake in the distance. […]
They call themselves the “Barbarians,” ready to challenge both the status quo in France and the prevailing ethos of U.S. startups obsessed with power and money.
It’s an untold story that offers hope during troubled times in Europe, the Middle East and beyond. Anna Boros survived the Holocaust thanks to a courageous Egyptian doctor.
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The Nobel laureate, who died this week, helped Germany find its voice after the horrors of World War II. But his life ultimately embodied his nation’s struggles to come to terms with its past.
Kurds, persecuted by the Turkish state, are only now beginning to face the role they played in the mass execution of Armenians a century ago.
In the deafening Egyptian capital, a small group of independent artists quietly present an art relying on everything the performer has to give … except their voices.
MUMBAI — Thirty-five-year old Praveen Kumar worked as a deliveryman at a slaughter house, carrying meat to retail markets around Mumbai. But last month, he lost his job when the slaughterhouse was shut down following the state government’s new ban on beef. “Here I was earning about $7 a day, and life had become much easier. I was able to keep my wife and three children happy,” he said. “But with this ban now I can’t even afford two proper meals for my family and my children may also have to leave school because I can’t pay the fees.” Selling […]
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China, Stop Forcing Young Kids To Compete
The Chinese education system forces pre-school children to learn to read and write, rather than develop at a natural pace, and discover the joys of just growing up.
PARIS — On the other end of the line, the voice of the person from the IT maintenance service grows insistent. “Miss, I really need your password to unlock your computer.” You blush by yourself, try to be as inconspicuous as possible in the open office before whispering in the receiver: “lapinou69” (“bunny69”). A chuckle […]
Lake Burullus, the country’s second-largest natural lake, which yields a third of all the fish sold in Egypt, is slowly being ruined, as are family businesses.
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KATARAGAMA — A full moon is shining over the traditional Pooja celebrations here in southwest Sri Lanka. By the light of candles, people offer flowers, fruit and incense. Above waves the Sri Lankan flag, with a leaf in each of its corners to represent the four religions on the island nation: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. But this idyllic setting in Kataragama is deceiving. The peaceful coexistence between religions in the country came crashing down last June 15 when hundreds of anti-Muslim Buddhists, led by a dozen monks from the extremist organization Bodu Bala Sena, stormed into Dharga Town, a […]
An entire industry has been built to exploit Chinese couples desperate desire for their children to obtain U.S. or Canadian passports. But because the process requires both operators and clients to distort the truth, homeland security has launched a crack
In southern Tel Aviv, some 50,000 refugees amass on the margins of society. Too many in Israel, once the refuge for European Jews, have turned their back on these migrants.
PARIS — First there was the campus. Next up Facebook city. The size of the “Zee town” project Mark Zuckerberg announced in February surprised many: For an estimated $200 billion, the king of social networks plans to build what will essentialy be an entire town — a 200-acre development in California’s Silicon Valley featuring supermarkets, […]
CAIRO — International lingerie store Victoria’s Secret came to Cairo in 2013, but somewhat surprisingly for a country of Muslim modesty, there has been a varied and flourishing lingerie business in Egypt’s capital for years. Most of the lingerie downtown is imported from either Turkey or Syria. The owners of the two lingerie shops who […]
Modern life, with its rules and material rewards, has robbed people of the most basic sense of happiness. What do we have to lose by ridding ourselves of so many imposed ideas?
ROUEN — Coming out of the train station, the rue Jeanne d’Arc, a wide street along the river Seine in this northern French city, leads us straight to the Jeanne d’Arc bridge. And between the two, we pass many signs evoking the young warrior’s name: a cafe named “Jeanne d’Arc,” a church, of course, even […]
Time for a major ecological awakening in the world’s most populous nation. The planet is at stake.
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A German Fix For The Over-50 Unemployed
Job hunting gets harder the older you get, right? A program in Germany is showing that it may just require the right training, and the right candidate-job matching.
TEL AVIV — After the final breakdown of the election results were confirmed, it was clear who sent Benjamin Netanyahu back for another term as prime minister: the people of the so-called “periphery” of Israel, far away from the urban centers in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Support from small towns and distant suburbs had […]
Studies show that complaining to colleagues creates a large share of office stress. Two writers recently tried to abstain from sharing their woes for a whole month.
When Patricia started hearing voices, she was fascinated. Within a year, she would wind up in the hospital. She now tries to cope with her illness, refusing medicine, opting for church and yoga.
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A Russian Quest For The ‘Patriotism Gene’
Russian researchers have been doing a rather unusual study that compares DNA across countries with political affinities. A patriotic take on the old nature v. nurture question.
Zurich has adopted a system that feeds past criminal information into an algorithm that can help predict when and where crimes will occur. Early indications are that it may actually be reducing crime rates.
Though the law says otherwise, citizenship is typically not granted to the children of Nepalese women if they don’t give proof that the father is also from Nepal.
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Millennial And Homeless, In France
Young adults between 18 and 25 are an increasingly vulnerable population in France. Jobless and rejected by their families, they are finding themselves on the streets in disturbing numbers.
BEIJING — It has taken a full seven years for Adidas to get back on track in China. In 2008, the Chinese market share of Adidas was just one percentage point behind American giant Nike. But just when the top spot in China seemed within the grasp of the German company, sales suddenly plummeted, and […]