As white supremacists proliferate in Sweden, a reformed neo-Nazi has been dissuading youths from following his own former path. Now he’s trying to stem growing Islamic radicalism.
Category: Society
Activists from Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Egypt, Greece, Tunisia and Syria gathered to swap stories and compare notes about nearly four years marked by protest, liberation and repression.
Invented by Buddhist monks, secularized and developed by Western science, mindfulness seems to be everywhere. But the aim is to make the most of life, not to seek nirvana.
HONG KONG — Harvard University received the largest financial gift in its history earlier this month when the Morningside Foundation, founded by brothers and Hong Kong developers Ronnie and Gerald Chan, donated $350 million to its School of Public Health. “It could be asking for trouble to do good deeds in mainland China,” 65-year-old Ronnie […]
In the DRC, families increasingly send the remains of deceased loved ones back to their home villages rather than bury them in the city. It is both an age-old tradition and a way to protect against irreverence.
European universities are a bastion of original thinking, but as more and more gets taught and learned in the English-language, conformism is bound to spread.
Catching onto “the gentleman’s game” later than its neighbors India and Pakistan, the Afghan team is currently ranked 9th in International Twenty20 cricket.
SÃO PAULO — When it comes to freshwater, Brazil, home to somewhere between 12% and 16% of the world’s total supply, is a very wealthy country. Inhabitants only use 0.7% of the 43,000 cubic meters of water per year that could, theoretically, be available to each and every one of them. In this regard, Brazil […]
Two writers explore the evolution of the Jewish and Chinese experiences, at home and abroad, finding lessons from what the two cultures share in common, and what they don’t.
DUSSELDORF — Something happened on a Friday night in the atrium of Düsseldorf’s most beautiful hotel that caused DJ Antoine“s normally enviably good mood to sour. He was talking about a few of the items he’d bought now that he earned the kind of money to buy beautiful things. Then, somewhere between the very expensive […]
Who knew these were the reasons to visit the scenic Black Forest.
Some gay men have so many sexual partners that straight people find the numbers hard to believe. But it’s less about being gay and more about the nature of male sexual desire.
Greece native Ioannis Ikonomou learned English at age five, German at seven and Italian at barely 10. He hasn’t stopped since, and is currently mastering Albanian.
Boasting of the good life, safe from the chronic problems of the Egyptian capital, the “New Cairo” developments blamed for wasting precious water for all, now face shortages of their own.
TEL AVIV — In recent days we have been witnessing growing discontent among Hamas public employees in Gaza who have not been paid their salaries. The situation endangers the coalition government between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and it is without exaggeration to say that the non-payment by the government in Ramallah could restart the […]
MANILA — Sometimes to get around Manila, you need to take a trike, otherwise known as a motorcycle with a sidecar. The drivers weave around the traffic and up onto sidewalks. Trikes are noisy and emit a lot of exhaust too. But not the one Alfredo Forelo drives. A few months ago, the 38-year-old traded in his old one for a new, battery-powered e-trike. It holds up to eight passengers and is so quiet that it can hardly be heard. On the old tricycles, he used to get sick a lot, he says — colds, flu, asthma. But not anymore. […]
BUENOS AIRES — The problem of overweight cops in Argentina is apparently, well, rather big. While almost 58% of the Argentine population is considered overweight — blame their love of barbecue, steak sandwiches and choripán sausage sandwiches — a staggering 80% of police officers are of “abnormal weight,” thanks to junk food, stress and sedentary […]
Young do-gooders flock to Cambodian orphanages to volunteer, sometimes paying for the privilege. But child advocates worry if these visitors are more harmful than helpful.
BEIJING — China’s Internet heavyweights all seem to be joining a kind of film industry gold rush. Sohu, one of China’s largest Internet portal operators, has acquired a 6.4% stake in KeyEast, a South Korean entertainment company, and Sohu CEO Charles Zhang has announced that it will consider producing films once the company’s downloading platform […]
Would people stop working if the government gave them a basic income? One Berliner wants to prove the opposite, raising money for an experiment to showcase the idea.
Malls, not walls, in Germany’s capital, but can it compete with the Internet?
As Europe continues to be divvied up into smaller, ethnically homogenous nations, the burdern falls on larger countries, compromising the leverage and a united West.
OXFORD — The walls in this Oxford, Mississippi, bookstore are covered with pictures of authors. One by one, Richard Howorth comments on them, as if this place were an open book narrating a multitude of unfinished stories. With his wife, this keen-eyed slender man with a dry humor has owned and managed Square Books, housed […]
What do a Pretty Woman, Charlie’s Angel And Smurfette have in common? They all have the voice of actress Celine Monsarrat, who finally drops the mask on a 30-year career of finding the perfect pitch for incarnating other people’s roles. PARIS — I started in this field a bit by accident thanks to an aunt […]
Switzerland’s Federal Council, it’s seven-member collective head of state, has been called to intervene to guarantee children the right to be heard, notably in divorce cases.
Sweden has long been a haven for Christians from the Middle East. Will it show the same humanitarian spirit for Muslims fleeing Iraq? The debate heats up before national elections.
Paraguay’s Ministry of Culture says the real birthplace of the game the English named football, and gave rules to, was not in fact England. The Jesuits may have the proof.
Tim Cook and the Apple team remind us that a wearable time piece is much more than a style statement. But 500 years on, watches still represent a singular mix of status, obligation…and death.
BEIJING — While September is the moment for most children go back to school or start for the first time, more than 80% of the approximately 500,000 school-aged disabled children from China’s migrant families have never been schooled. Twenty Chinese organizations have just published a public letter calling on the Ministry of Education to change […]
How about a selfie instead?
MUNICH — Munich’s Oktoberfest has an ugly side. Alexandra Stigger is all too familiar with it but says it’s nevertheless a great celebration. Stigger, 29, is a Munich native who grew up attending it every year, and now she works there — not in one of the beer tents but in a service center where […]
PUNE — Every morning Rebecca Kedari pulls a cart through an upmarket neighborhood in this city of 3.3 million to collect household waste. Ten years ago Rebecca would not even been able to enter this area of Pune, in western India. “Before I had to go outside the city to look for dry waste and bring it back. The work conditions were bad and collecting the waste took me at least 6 hours,” she says. She now wears a local government identity card, has a health insurance plan, and is part of the KKPKP — a waste pickers’ union set […]
-OpEd- PARIS — We French love our rentrée littéraire. But with the launch of this year’s new literary season, dedicated in part to the memory of our American World War II allies, a new war is erupting. And the alliances seem to be changing. U.S.-based Trojan horse Amazon started the fight by targeting major French […]
Will Divine Providence, or “Bible roulette,” play a role in the outcome of next month’s Brazilian elections?
Video game competitions can attract millions of spectators online. A Swiss “cyber athlete” shares his story as the booming industry sets its sights on real-world credibility.
A growing number of China’s upper class are investing in a foreign education for their children. There are costs and benefits, debates about teaching styles — and always some surprises.
BEIJING — Han Han, China’s most famous online star, is back in the spotlight. The young race car driver turned blogger/author accepted a public challenge from Guo Jingming, another former teen idol and best-selling young adult literature author and filmmaker, who said it was time for Han Han to direct his first movie. Not surprisingly, […]
Boys in the eastern city of Raqqa are forced into military training, and say their ISIS instructors show them how to decapitate blond-haired, blue-eyed dolls with kitchen knives.
TEL AVIV — With Israeli students returning to school this week, Calcalist decided to ask a few how they spent what turned out to be an unusual summer holiday, given the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Seven weeks of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and Hamas rocket attacks aimed at targets in Israel have […]