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Category: Society
Hampered by plummeting oil prices and fading public support, President Nicolas Maduro and his crafty sidekick, Assembly leader Diosdado Cabello, are trying to provoke an opposition outburst. Last week’s arrest of Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma was a c
Rights groups say that cops in Herat are cracking down on “adulterers,” stopping couples on the street,even brothers and sisters, and demanding proof of marriage.
As a Colombian gay marriage debate illustrates, Western societies have historically despised male homosexuality more than lesbianism. Why is that?
Bogota residents are increasingly braving reckless car drivers, crime and pollution to cycle their way through the Colombian capital. It’s one way people are taking back public spaces.
Dutch soccer fans smashed and urinated their way through Rome last week. Could Italian authorities have done anything to stop them?
People are increasingly disgusted with crime and shoddy government in Mexico. Whatever happened to President Pena Nieto’s promises to take on the country’s vested interests?
Argentina, one of the world’s big meat exporters, could earn itself a fortune exporting to China. For now the Argentine government is more focused on avoiding shortages at home.
Handbags made out of volleyball nets and soda cans, courtesy of one of the sisters of the Fendi family used to face assaults by animal rights activists.
SALAWAG — In the multi-player online battle video game Defense of the Ancients, or DotA, the aim is to conquer the opposing team on the other side of the map. The graphics are impressive, and the play is challenging. But for some, the game is not just about friendly competition, after it’s been blamed as a contributing factor in the Dec. 15 murder of a 19-year-old, who was allegedly stabbed by his friend outside a computer gaming shop after the two were playing the game. The boy responsible is now in government custody, and the incident pushed local officials to […]
BOSSEY — Her elegance dazzled the world’s most powerful men. When she stood next to her late husband Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Ivory Coast’s first president who served from 1960 to 1993, it was impossible not to notice the graceful Marie-Thérèse. “Everywhere I went, I would transcend,” says the former first lady, now 84. “Besides, he did […]
In 2010, French police seized a huge stash of previously unseen Picasso drawings at the home of the late artist’s electrician. Were they gifts or stolen goods? An ongoing trial will decide.
COPENHAGEN — Niels Ivar Larson, a Danish journalist and one of the organizers of last Saturday night’s debate on Islam and free speech at the Krudttønden cafe, says he’s in shock that a terrorist attacked the event and subsequently a synagogue, killing two and injuring five police officers. “Despite having received threats, Denmark has never […]
BEIJING — Over the past two months, China has green-lighted the importation of three varieties of genetically modified corn and soybean from the United States. Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Agriculture has also renewed the expired safety certificates of the country’s own genetically modified crops. While that’s good news for the industry, it may be premature […]
MEDELLIN — Crimes being committed by some of Colombia’s 38,000 convicts on prison leave have become an almost “daily headache,” with some returning to a life of lawlessness despite wearing electronic tags or bracelets. The need to keep closer tabs on prisoners who have been granted leave has led two prison authority (INPEC) employees and […]
In the fifth grade, a 10-year-old Noh Blaghen discovered graphic Japanese comics, otherwise known as mangas. It was in the early 2000s in Benin, Nigeria, and they were rare there. A friend’s parents, who had been traveling in France and in Belgium, returned home with stacks of them, which Noh devoured with his friends. In […]
TEL AVIV — Israel’s diplomatic campaign against the Palestinian Authority and last summer’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza are no doubt among the factors contributing to Israel’s current economic slowdown. A study by economists Joseph Zeira and Tal Wolfson from the Israeli-Palestinian think tank Aix Group offers some data illustrating the differences between the recession […]
What should be done with the house where Adolf Hitler was born? It’s a difficult question facing the Austrian city of Braunau as the 500-year-old building slowly falls apart.
Scientists are increasingly revising the idea of human nature as inherently competitive and violent. A documentary explores the possibility of a prehistoric “utopia,” when people lived without cruelty or war.
Those killing in the name of the Muslim prophet are following derivative ancient texts, second-hand accounts, not the Koran.
Local planners in Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are clearing out homes and businesses that encroached over the years along the city’s main avenues.
PESHAWAR — Schools in Peshawar now look like police stations, equipped with barbed wire, surveillance cameras and snipers after the Taliban’s December assault on a school that killed 132 students. Officials told schools to be prepared for other attacks, and in an extraordinary measure, the Khyber Pakhtunkua government is allowing teachers to keep guns at school. The local police are also now training female teachers in how to use guns. Ashraf Khan teaches in a primary school not far from the army public school that the Taliban attacked in December. The first thing he does in the morning when he […]
An interview with the 43-year-old Latino singer reveals a more serene relationship with fame, fatherhood and a growing thirst for tango.
A record 53 French police officers committed suicide last year. The Courbat, a health facility, treats officers suffering from burnout, depression and alcoholism with a very specific therapy.
The more time technology saves us, the less we feel we have. Three researchers explore this modern ‘double paradox.’
Not even the first Latin American Pope! Studies show fewer Catholics in Latin America, and more people identifying as atheist or secular. Now non-believers are fighting for a true separation of church of state.
In Beijing alone, more than 1,000 acres of historical areas have been lost since 1990. As rural Chinese move to cities, the country must figure out how to preserve its heritage.
A trial public work program for German drug addicts promised modest hourly wages and optional bottles of beer. The results have surprised social workers.
One month after the nation-changing attacks on the French satirical magazine, a look at the daily life of a Muslim religious leader of good faith.
The dynamics of social networks have established a climate of caution for young people, whose sense of fun is more narcissistic and less political than previous generations.
Categories
Cristina Kirchner’s 11 Worst Gaffes Ever
Argentine President and faux pas expert Cristina Kirchner graced us with yet another verbal woopsie Wednesday, when she tweeted, while on a state visit to China seeking investment: Más de 1.000 asistentes al evento… ¿Serán todos de “La Cámpola” y vinieron sólo por el aloz y el petlóleo? … — Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) February 4, […]
Soil-free gardens, pollution-free factories moving back to town. City dwellers will see dramatic changes to life and work. Some bumps for sure, but overall good news for urbanites.
An old cinema in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood was abandoned until a group of students refurbished it to give new life to masterpieces of the past. But they never anticipated what would happen next.
Technology has transformed the world of prosthetics. But are all the bells and whistles, and the hefty price tags they require, really what ordinary patients need?
STOCKHOLM — Tove likes math because it’s so logical, the sixth grader says. If she doesn’t understand a question, the boy who sits next to her, Viggo, repeats it for her. Tove is deaf and wears a hearing aid, though it’s not visible under her long blonde hair. But it’s the reason that during class […]
LAUSANNE — She’s seen me naked. How can I leave her? He brought me so much. How can I tell him I’m leaving? I spent so much time finding the right one. Now we’re supposed to just split up? And yet things were clear from the start: This was always going to be a temporary […]
Editor’s Note: Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste, who was imprisoned in Cairo for 400 days with two of his colleagues, has been released by Egyptian authorities. The two other Al Jazeera journalists — Baher Mohamed, a producer, and the channel’s Cairo bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy — still remain imprisoned in Egypt. The three journalists were […]
In 1794, German immigrants brought a petition to the U.S. House asking for all legislation to be published in German and English. It narrowly failed, leading to the Muhlenberg urban legend.
Egoiste, the publishing plaything of an eccentric Parisian icon, Nicole Wisniak, has come out just 17 times in 37 years. The next publication deadline is always: “When it’s beautiful.”
Wine-loving France used to be a beer haven too, before shrinking to just 22 breweries three decades ago. Today it’s up to more than 700 microbreweries, even if industrialists continue to dominate.