In southern Gaza, A “Hamas Hollywood” is starting taking shape, just in time for Ramadan.
Category: In The News
Four candidates, including one from the extreme left and one for extreme right, are in a virtual dead heat ahead of Sunday’s election. But the problem runs much goes deeper than tight polls.
STUTTGART — Such are the consequences of a long-distance relationship. Two-thirds of Germans of Turkish descent voted in favor of a reform of the Turkish constitution to give more powers to the presidency. That support helped lead to victory President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a man who does not shy away from drawing Nazi comparisons. What […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Warnings about an imminent terrorist attack had hung ominously in the air in the final weeks of the French presidential election. On Tuesday, police arrested two suspects in the southern city of Marseille after finding a cache of weapons and bomb-making ingredients in their apartment. But with the world focused on French […]
PARIS — A long line stretched in front of Hall 2 of the Bourget Exhibition Center on the outskirts of the French capital last Saturday afternoon, ahead of an annual three-day conference by the Union of Islamic Organizations of France. Fliers announced the topic of the upcoming roundtable: “Eleven candidates in the presidential election, who […]
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Opera House Surprise
In the heart of the rainforest, in a place which for a long time was only accessible by boat, stands the improbable Teatro Amazonas, built during the late 19th-century rubber boom. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
-Analysis- Fox News opted for the verb “slam” to describe the first significant comments about Iran from new U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “Tillerson slams Iran nuclear deal as “failed approach,”” the conservative network headlined its story yesterday, following Tillerson’s remarks about the 2015 nuclear accord inked by President Obama. But there is another […]
Love, jealousy and courtship have become impatient, high-speed activities that play out on our computer screens and smartphones.
Tsai Ing-wen made history when she became Taiwan’s first female head of state. A year later, she is facing the harsh realities of the job. And that starts with dealing with hardliners in Beijing.
Democracy has never been an easy thing. That most British of statesmen Winston Churchill famously called it “the worst form of government, except for all the others.” In its ideal form — with regularly scheduled elections, peaceful transfers of powers, constitutions that are upheld, checks and balances respected — democracy can work quite well. Certainly there are examples still in today’s world. But as shown by events taking place right now in Venezuela, Turkey and even on Churchill’s turf, it can also be a deeply messy affair. In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro is clinging to power against a groundswell […]
-OpEd- LONDON — Who can blame UK Prime Minister Theresa May for calling an election now, as her own Conservative party mandarins have been urging? Her party enjoys a 21-percentage-point lead in the polls. The opposition Labour Party is weak and divided, and the economy has yet to register the expected wobbles in the wake of last year’s vote to leave the European Union. What better time to crush the opposition and beef up the Conservatives’ 17-seat majority? Yet her decision is as strategically flawed as it is tactically clever. First, she risks losing credibility. Having promised not to get […]
After Trump and Brexit surprise victories with the support of disenchanted voters, the populist right-wing candidate in France is feeling supremely confident.
Deforestation, poaching and civil war have had a devastating impact on Sri Lanka’s elephant population. One orphanage for elephants is working to bring the species back from the brink of extinction.
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Wisteria Wonder
Wisteria was in full fragrant bloom in the gardens of Suzhou during our spring tour along the country’s east coast. The city’s many waterways has given it the nickname as the “Venice of China.” See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
The most charismatic living Palestinian leader launches a massive hunger strike from his prison cell and the pages of The New York Times: In another time, it would have been front-page news around the world. Deutsche Welle reports that between 1,100 and 1,500 Palestinian prisoners began Sunday to forgo food to demand access to phones, […]
-OpEd- BERLIN — The theater of war that is Syria has brought us scenes of a world devoid of rules: children killed by poisonous gas, the bodies of prisoners who were tortured or burned alive and a multitude of national armies and rebel groups that hack each other to pieces. In short, it has brought […]
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When Algorithms Enter The Courtroom
PARIS — On the left-hand side of the blue screen, court decisions appear at the speed of light. Some words are highlighted. Simultaneously, on the right-hand side, a map of France takes shape. Graphs form. “So, you see,” Louis Garrett-Chahine starts, “if you’ve been fired for slander and if you want your dismissal to be […]
ISTANBUL — The narrow win of the “yes’ camp in Sunday’s crucial constitutional amendment to change Turkey to a presidential system is a major victory for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP). Though final results are not yet certified, 51.3% of the more than 58 million Turkish voters (turnout […]
WASHINGTON — For the past year and a half, Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have been ringing the alarm about rising mortality among middle-aged white Americans. The pair have attracted a bit of controversy for pointing out these facts. Recently, Pacific Standard’s Malcolm Harris suggested that their research, and the way it was presented, put too much emphasis on white mortality – when black mortality has always been worse. “American white privilege is still very much in effect, and no statistical tomfoolery can change that,” he wrote. Sam Fulwood III, a fellow at the left-leaning Center for American […]
The New Times The past ten days have taken the U.S.-Russia relationship to a new low, as Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin “collided in Syria,” this week’s Russian magazine The New Times reports. After months of accusations that Trump and Putin were in cahoots, tensions between Washington and Moscow are suddenly running high, one […]
In Beijing parks and throughout the rest of China, “singles’ markets” are held, organized by the parents eager to marry off their children.
MUNICH — It had to be this shoe. No other model could have achieved this revival. A sneaker invented 48 years ago and had since slipped into oblivion has now been resurrected. It’s the Adidas “Superstar”. According to research conducted by the American market research institute NPD Group, the bestselling sneaker in the U.S., which […]
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Hell Of A Good Time
A little monster was having fun in the Mouth of Hell, in Bomarzo’s 16th-century Parco dei Mostri (“Park of the Monsters’). See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
-Essay- Until last year I lived in Istanbul with my husband. We’re both from Australia and we taught English at local universities. We had a great life, with wonderful Turkish friends like Hasan and Nurhan (not their real names.) On Friday nights in the summer, we went out to dinner with them. On one such […]
BRASILIA — There’s always something a bit risqué about Brazil’s many short-stay “motels,” where couples can pay by the hour and aren’t all that concerned, usually, with getting a good night’s sleep. But even by those standards, Room 8 in Brasilia’s Altana Motel stands out. Fitted with metal bars on the door and around the […]
The deadly Palm Sunday attacks in Egypt are just the latest example of a steady effort to remove Christianity from the Middle East. It is long past time to take action.
-Analysis- PR disasters can happen anywhere to anyone. While United Airlines is (not) doing its best to recover from the instantly infamous “re-accommodating” of a bumped passenger on an overbooked flight in Chicago, another somewhat smaller drama was playing out on the Italian island of Sicily. Ahead of next month’s G7 summit in the Sicilian […]
-Essay- PARIS — Barack Obama’s family searched the country for a dog at the beginning of his presidency. Bo’s first paw steps turned the Obama White House into a home. Is it time now that his successor, President Donald Trump, should also acquire a pet? Caitlin Gibson wrote in the Washington Post that getting a […]
Correio Braziliense, April 12, 2017 A Supreme Court judge’s bombshell decision has many of the Brazil’s top political figures running for cover, the daily Correio Braziliense reports. On Tuesday, Judge Edson Fachin extended the already three-year-old Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) anti-corruption probe by opening investigations into 108 people suspected of involvement in a massive bribery […]
NEW YORK — If you’re a middle-class American baby boomer or Gen Xer, you might have spent much of the past decade wondering what went wrong. If you’re a boomer, there’s a good chance you’re still working well after you thought you’d retire. And if you’re part of Generation X, you’re probably less wealthy than your parents were at the same age. Meanwhile, all across the U.S., pension funds are underfunded and will almost certainly have to default on some of their obligations to retirees. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, middle-class […]
TAORMINA — This picturesque seaside Sicilian town has the honor to host next month’s crucial G7 summit of top global leaders, which will also be the first major world gathering for newly installed U.S. President Donald Trump. It is also a unique opportunity, as then Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi pointed out last October, for […]
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Slice Of Transylvanian Life
Driving around Romania during one of the hottest summers I can remember, I got to see the many faces of daily life — in both sadness and joy. These traditionally dressed locals were bringing cake to a wedding. No sign of ice cream. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
Emmanuel Macron is the youngest candidate to be France’s next president. That’s not the only feature that sets him apart from the rest of the field.
-Analysis- “The DPRK North Korea is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S.” Coming in response to the U.S. deployment of a navy battle group to the Korean Peninsula, this chilling statement from the North Korean foreign ministry suggests that Donald Trump’s muscle-flexing has only raised the stakes in what […]
Ride hailing apps are revving up motorcycle taxi use in Indonesia’s congested capital, and a handful of enterprising women are challenging an otherwise male-dominated domain.
PARIS — In their quest for a sustainable urban future, city planners can learn a lot from history. And in Paris, that can mean just taking a moment to look around. Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the driving force behind a drastic overhaul of the city beginning in the mid 19th century, made an enormous and lasting mark […]
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That’s A Long Time In Geopolitics
By now, that famous Harold Wilson quip “A week is a long time in politics’ can also just as well be applied to geopolitics. Last Monday, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi was enjoying the diplomatic courtesies and photo ops of a White House meeting with Donald Trump, as the world’s attention was mostly focused on […]
PARIS — No matter where you live or what language you speak, at some point in your childhood you probably came across Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). The 1943 poetic and illustrated novella by French adventurer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is among the best-selling books ever published. Now, reports Paris-based daily Le Figaro, the work […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — There is a curious new twist to a longstanding political phenomenon, and we see it popping up around the world. Provocation and outrageous behavior is switching sides. Crossing the line has been a part of culture since poets like Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, with their disheveled hair and shabby clothes, used […]
-Essay- BERLIN — There we were, a group of female friends in their early 30s sitting around the dinner table one evening and, somehow, the conversation turns to having children. We all agree it would be nice to be a young mother because it is strangely cool being a young mum. But we all have […]