Worldcrunch
-Analysis- MOSCOW — The list is long: the scandal around the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, an unprecedented expulsion of Russian diplomats, sanctions leading to the fall of the ruble and a hit on aluminum giant Rusal, retaliatory sanctions, strikes on Syria and over-the-top rhetoric of official Moscow during and after all-the-above crises. […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON — Americans love to contemplate – and legislatively promote, to whatever degree possible – the virtue of hard work. Here in the United States, we already work more hours per year than our English- speaking counterparts in Britain, Canada and Australia – not to mention those enviable denizens of European social democracies, who enjoy the kind of leisure time only our highest-paid workers can afford. So perhaps it’s not surprising that several new pro-work policy ideas are enjoying attention on the left and the right. On the right, work requirements for Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance represent […]
The German chancellor’s upcoming visit to Washington will be a sober affair, particularly in contrast to the glitzy, red-carpet welcome the White House gave her French counterpart.
The U.S. may boast the world’s largest economy on one hand and a deeply problematic president on the other. But under the surface, things are bleak.
From Saudi Arabia to Iran, Moscow to Washington and beyond, the rising global tensions over the Syrian war could explode in unpredictable ways.
FOREST CITY — It was slow at the thrift shop, and manager Stephanie Henderson, 38, was looking at her laptop, trying to discover all that Facebook had collected on her: the posts, the memes, the photos, the messages to her family. She had been meaning to do this for weeks, ever since outrage over Facebook’s handling of user privacy first burst into her timeline. Now, she clicked a button. Her request for her Facebook data was sent. As she waited, Henderson tried to imagine what a decade’s worth of personal details might look like. “I’m afraid to see what Facebook […]
For decades, economists scorned protectionism as a losing proposition. Now some have begun to admit that not everyone benefits from open markets.
‘Cow Fitbits’ and artificial intelligence are coming to the dairy farm, but some farmers aren’t impressed.
Like the the UK and U.S. election surprises before, Italy’s recent populist triumphs marked a revolt by voters outside the major urban centers.
-Analysis- The term “techlash” has been around for awhile, but get ready to see and hear it more and more. The company that stands at the center of this “technology backlash” is no doubt Facebook, with the world’s largest social network experiencing its worst week in memory amid snowballing revelations around its relationship with Cambridge […]
WASHINGTON — As he heads to Florida this weekend, President Donald Trump is following in the footsteps of former President Barack Obama, a man he loathes and a leader whose time in office in many ways came to be defined by mass shootings. Obama bequeathed on his successor an almost ritualistic response to gun tragedies, beginning with the 2011 attack on then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and ending with the 2016 Dallas attack that left five officers dead. There were 15 speeches from the White House, countless prayers for the fallen and more than a dozen visits to the crime scenes. […]
-Analysis- It’s now more than a year since Donald Trump“s inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, and the media’s animosity towards him continues unabated. After his surprise victory against the wishes of the establishment, Trump remains the target of a never-ending campaign against his legitimacy, his very presence at the White House […]
FORT POLK — In training exercises in a mock Afghan village constructed here on a base amid swampland, the U.S. Army is applying the military lesson of the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq: Help your partners beat the enemy, but don’t try to do the fighting yourself. Letting others fight the battle hasn’t been the American way in modern times, to our immense national frustration. The U.S. military became bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, much as it had a generation earlier in Vietnam, by trying to reshape societies with U.S. firepower. For the military, the […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON — So Michael Wolff wrote a book about Donald Trump. Perhaps you’ve heard about it? The internet spent a few days pointing and laughing at the more extraordinary claims about Trump’s behavior (including some the book didn’t actually make), and then settled down to the serious business of figuring out which of them were true. The consensus here in Washington is that Wolff has perhaps been a little too credulous with his sources, particularly with Steve Bannon, who has since recanted. But beneath that is the feeling that while many of the specifics are in question, the underlying […]
Is the American in good faith? Why now? What’s next? Questions pile up in the wake of a decision that reverses 70 years of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East.
Xi Jinping knows exactly where he wants to go. Donald Trump, not so much…
The shooting at a Southern Baptist church in Texas is believed to be the worst such shooting at a church in modern U.S. history. Several prominent Southern Baptist pastors have President Donald Trump’s ear as members of his unofficial evangelical advisory council. Even so, it would be very surprising if Southern Baptists pushed for changes in gun policy, because it hasn’t been a priority for the denomination in decades. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant group in the country with about 15 million members, has taken up issues like abortion and same-sex marriage at its annual conventions, but it […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — After more than half-a-century of fighting, Colombia’s FARC guerillas have surrendered their weapons and officially transformed themselves into a formal political party. But still, the U.S. government apparently isn’t satisfied. “The FARC hasn’t followed through on the issue of drugs,” the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker, said matter-of-factly in a recent […]
The worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history was the top story in newspapers around the world, after a gunman opened fire at a country music concert Sunday night in Las Vegas. Here’s a sample of front pages from 14 countries: UNITED STATES Las Vegas Review Journal USA Today Tampa Bay Times MEXICO “Terror in […]
Facebook has agreed to give the government information on political ad campaigns. But the social media giant must behave more like other media companies in a functioning democracy.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Donald Trump’s presidency has produced a proliferation of Eeyores. It’s not their (our) fault. However dismal one’s view of current American politics, Trump is sure to expose it, with a tweet or the lack of one, as a naive and rosy fantasy. Each day, we adjust our sights down. Each day, the president forces our gaze lower. Some conservatives might take comfort in the prospect — wish, really — of a President Mike Pence assuming office before the current occupant’s term is up. The Indiana Republican is as dull and serviceable a politician as Trump is bizarre […]
The sale of property belonging to Mr Trump in the French Antilles could become a problem.
-Analysis- Having spent his whole life running a family business, Donald Trump is still adjusting to the strategic art of control required to effectively run the White House — and help lead the world. Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, making him the shortest serving director since the 1920s. Comey had orbited in […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump boasted that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” On the 100th day of his presidency, Trump invited Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has said that he used to roam the streets on a motorcycle looking for criminals to kill, to the White House. A Duterte state visit to Washington or Mar-a-Lago would be a ghastly spectacle, given the way the Philippines have pursued a war on drugs even more literal than the one in the United […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ –– For some time now, Latin America has not figured on the U.S. State Department’s agenda. If the continent did appear, it was at the bottom of the government’s list. This indifference has only grown starker since Donald J. Trump moved into the White House. This state of affairs is neither good nor […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As he nears his 100th day in office, President Donald Trump’s efforts to appear decisive and unequivocal in his responses to fast-moving global crises have been undercut by a series of confusing and conflicting messages from within his administration. Over the past two weeks, policy pronouncements from senior Trump aides have often been at odds with one another — such as whether Syrian President Bashar Assad must leave power as part of a negotiated resolution to end that nation’s civil war. In other cases, formal White House written statements have conflicted with those from government agencies, even […]
WASHINGTON — It is either a turning point or a welcome aberration that President Trump found the cruelly extinguished lives of Syrian children to be compelling (or at least contributory) in his decision to use force in Syria. The nerve gas attack by the Bashar al-Assad regime, he said, “crossed a lot of lines for me . . . innocent children, innocent babies — babies, little babies.” Much of Trump’s appeal during his presidential campaign was based on dehumanization — the characterization of migrants as criminals and refugees as terrorist threats. This is the first instance I can recall of Trump showing […]
-Analysis- For the longest time, Donald Trump has disparaged U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, mocked his rival’s strategy in Syria, and unequivocally stated that America’s enemy in the country was terror group ISIS, not President Bashar al-Assad. Then on Friday, with little warning, Trump, as U.S. president, launched airstrikes against Syria, the first […]
Il Sole 24 ORE magazine, March 17, 2017 — Photo: Charles Ommanney “The Closing Of The American Mind,” reads the April cover of Il Sole 24 ORE’s monthly magazine IL. This month’s cover is a photograph at the fence between the United States and Mexico, as U.S. President Donald Trump vows to follow through on […]
WASHINGTON — Back in October, Shannon Coulter was doing some late-night browsing on the Nordstrom website. Before long, the small-business owner had a nagging feeling about the department store’s line-up of Ivanka Trump apparel and shoes — a brand she couldn’t help but see in a different light amid the unfolding events of the presidential campaign. Just days earlier, news had broken of the explosive Access Hollywood footage in which Donald Trump bragged about groping women without their consent. “Something changed for me when the Trump tapes came out,” Coulter recalled in an interview. “Those words were just ringing in […]
If Trump wants to seal off U.S. borders, Latin Americans can respond by boycotting American brands.
Illegal border crossings won’t stop, but prices will rise.
Foreign scientists working in the U.S. are seeking job prospects in Switzerland as they contemplate leaving a country under an unfriendly administration. For one Swiss agency, that’s not necessarily good news.
-Analysis- BERLIN — On Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Donald Trump released a joint statement regarding their first phone call earlier that day. The statement about their 45-minute conversation noted — in the neutral tone common to all statements of this kind — that a wide range of topics were discussed: NATO, […]
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s elevation of his chief political strategist to a major role in national security policy, and a White House order banning refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries from U.S. entry, appeared to come together as cause and effect over the weekend. Stephen Bannon — whose nationalist convictions and hard-line oppositional view of globalism have long guided Trump — was directly involved in shaping the controversial immigration mandate, according to several people familiar with the drafting who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The order, which has ignited sweeping domestic and international backlash, came […]
PARIS — When Donald Trump talks … well, that’s some kind of talking. During his successful run for the presidency, the world got to hear the billionaire real estate mogul turned reality TV star spout his own singular brand of vaguely aggressive and self-aggrandizing forms of communication. And a week since moving into the White […]
Newspapers across the globe featured a defiant, ‘America First’ Donald Trump taking over the White House.
-OpEd- GENEVA — When it comes to choosing a future leader, a candidate’s personality tends to be as important as his or her proposed policies. In the case of Donald J. Trump, the political ideas he expressed in his presidential campaign were simplistic, outrageous and Manichaean. His conduct was deliberately extravagant and he made no […]
Beyond the beltway, far from America’s heartland: the most unlikely of incoming U.S. presidents is daily bread for the international press. See what they’re saying.
The end of the road has come for Barack Obama’s eight years as President of the United States. From China to Kenya and Argentina to Laos, Obama has traveled thousands of miles around the world and has visited 58 countries. Here is a tour of some of the highlights, as seen through the local media […]