The global response to epidemics like COVID-19 depends in large part on the political and economic systems in place among the world’s many nation-states.
Category: In The News
Welcome to Thursday, where the Myanmar crackdown toll multiplies, a Swedish axe attack injures eight and someone’s finally looking out for the platypus. We also feature Le Monde”s investigation of rampant sexism in France’s finest culinary schools. • COVID-19 latest: Indian Bharat Biotech’s COVAXIN shows 81% efficacy. In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel reveals a five-step […]
Public discourse seems to be dominated these days by political polarization and extreme positions, but it’s largely an illusion.
The government had said that ‘rural Indian men’ would not take orders from a woman commander. It’s just a cover for the sexism of the ruling class.
Ahead of Super Tuesday’s crucial Democratic primaries, a look at the unlikely ‘broken clock’ frontrunner whose time seems to have finally come.
Welcome to Tuesday, as COVID cases worldwide rise for the first time in seven weeks, a former French president is convicted of corruption and Chile goes back to school thanks in part to its extra efficient vaccine program. Meanwhile, La Stampa visits the northern Italian region of Lombardy, which is living through a grim coronavirus […]
Welcome to Monday, where Aung San Suu Kyi is seen after Myanmar death count spikes, vaccine rollouts begin across Africa and there’s a cool new way to make old photos come to life. We also feature Argentine daily Clarin“s look into the digital phenomenon of “sugar dating.” • COVID-19 latest: Ivory Coast began their national […]
Parisians have abandoned the legendary avenue, leaving it for tourists and military parades. But there are plans to return it to its more humanistic glory of the past.
Welcome to Thursday, where Johnson & Johnson vaccine gets the green light, Facebook bans Myanmar military accounts and a new level of fakery is achieved by a soccer player trying to fool the referee. We also take a look at Bolsonaro’s push for new looser gun ownership laws even as Brazil’s pandemic death toll soars. […]
Shortages of medical supplies are already hitting in the northern city of Turin, in Italy, which is by far the worst hit European country from the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Welcome to Wednesday, where vaccine rollouts have started in Ghana and Malaysia, but may be stopped in Lebanon because politicians keep cutting the line. Gérard Depardieu is under investigation in France and a freezing cold record is broken by a Czech swimmer. • COVID-19 latest: Ghana receives the first shipment of vaccines thanks to UN-backed […]
Welcome to Friday, where the coronavirus death toll surpasses 100,000 in Africa, the Myanmar coup protests record the first casualty and NASA’s Mars rover sends its first picture of the Red Planet. We also look at how the lack of internet access is preventing minorities in the United States from getting the COVID vaccine. • […]
-Analysis- PARIS — In his most recent book, Chine, le Grand Paradoxe (China, the Great Paradox), Jean-Pierre Raffarin reminds us that, “the key to diplomacy is reciprocal respect.” Prime minister at the height of the SARS crisis, in 2003, Raffarin was one of the rare foreign leaders to proceed with a scheduled trip to China. […]
While there are significant supply chain concerns across sectors in the short-term, others see this as yet another distant opportunity to take some business away from China.
Welcome to Tuesday, where Myanmar files new charges against Suu Kyi, Guinea reports an Ebola outbreak and bitcoin value is about to cross a major threshold. We also look at a new business booming in China during the pandemic: student ghostwriting. • COVID-19 latest: The World Health Organization has authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency […]
Welcome to Monday, where the Myanmar generals are tightening their grip, new COVID variants are identified and a very ancient watering hole is discovered in Egypt. We also have a Die Welt piece on the dark side of the dream of moving out to the countryside. • COVID-19 latest: Researchers have identified seven new variants […]
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced that she will not run for Chancellor and will step down as leader of Germany’s ruling CDU party. It was a slow implosion over the past year, with Angela Merkel’s mixed messages partly to blame.
Welcome to Thursday, where the WHO has given the green light to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for all ages, U.S. imposes sanctions on Myanmar and we go to France for a big parenting fail. We also explore the troubled relationship between oil and politics in Venezuela. • COVID-19 latest: The World Health Organization has backed the […]
India’s space program will use a female android named Vyommitra to test the crew module ahead of its first crewed flight. Why did the robot have to be female? And where are the real women astronauts?
Welcome to Wednesday, where Myanmar police side with protesters, the Senate votes to continue Trump’s trial and Europe’s oldest person survives COVID. We also look at the reasons why the “capital of Canadian humor” isn’t laughing so much lately. • COVID-19 latest: Ghana parliament shuts down over outbreak that leaves 17 MPs and 151 support […]
Welcome to Monday, where South Africa halts AstraZeneca vaccine after poor results on local variant, 180 are feared dead in India glacier collapse, and Tom Brady makes Super Bowl history. We also look at the unlikely feud involving Indian farmers, top cricket stars — and Rihanna. • COVID-19 latest: South Africa halts use of AstraZeneca […]
President Trump’s scuppered impeachment may provide a cue to regional leaders working to undermine their own democracies.
A ‘plastic surgery style’ is a new part of the culture exploding on social media.
The virus could have been better contained if China had not tried to hush it up at the start. Autocracy comes at a price.
CHENNAI — Twenty-six-year-old Arivu’s small room, on the fourth-floor terrace of an apartment in suburban Chennai, is as lively as his music. It is in this room that Arivu shot his now iconic rap song “Sanda seivom”, which effortlessly rips the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens apart. Pictures of Ambedkar and Buddha are looking over him and an ektara (the instrument) standing tall. “It was a gift from the Tata Institute for Social Sciences when I recently visited them,” Arivu says. “I intend to learn to play it and even use it in my rap.” A single […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where Aung San Suu Kyi is charged and Alexei Navalny is sentenced. Also Jeff Bezos announces he will step down as Amazon CEO, in utero music is a thing and Mada Masr probes into the politics of hair in Egyptian schools. • COVID-19 latest: In search of the origins of COVID, a […]
Welcome to Tuesday, where global calls are issued for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, Navalny shows up in court and there’s real-life drama at the French opera. Le Monde also goes to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown to report on the disillusions, two years into his term. • COVID-19 latest: Japan set to […]
Welcome to Monday, where the army seizes power in Myanmar coup, weekend protests rock Russia and it’s revealed that Messi scored really big in Barcelona. We also take a look at Big Brother in China, and how citizens have had enough of the country’s ubiquitous surveillance system. The fragility of American democracy is nothing new […]
It was 3 p.m. on January 27, 1945, when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Soviet Army. The full scope of the Nazi barbarities, which included the extermination of six million Jews, was about to be exposed to the world. That January afternoon 75 years ago also marks the beginning of the documenting process, the painful but necessary gathering of evidence, accounts, photographs and film that would later be used in the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and stand as the historical record of the Holocaust. About 1.3 million people (mostly Jews) had been deported to the Polish camp […]
Failure to address spreading anger with economic inequalities, and to check its attendant demagoguery, may undermine the very functioning of liberal democracies.
Welcome to Monday, where AMLO gets COVID, Chinese miners are rescued, and King Kong finds a worthy opponent. Les Echos also takes us to Syria, where coronavirus and a crumbling economy are wreaking havoc in a country already devastated by 10 years of civil war. Viktor Orban, Xi Jinping and a simple question for the […]
Throughout the country’s turbulent history, efforts to establish a government by and for the people have always come up short.
Welcome to Friday, where it’s been a year since the first COVID lockdown began in Wuhan, ISIS is back in Iraq and James Bond fans get a license to kill some more time. Die Welt also takes us on a typographic journey through the infamous story of the Gothic typeface, a.k.a. the “Nazi font.” Biden […]
Welcome to Thursday, where the world reacts to the beginning of the Biden-Harris era, Baghdad is hit by its worst terror attack in more than three years and Dublin cancels its St. Patrick’s Day parade (again.) We also visit the Paris Opera for a taste of the grim global zeitgeist. Behind Biden’s message of unity, […]
When people die, they should be able to dispose of their corpses in a way that nourishes the planet. For now, it’s still illegal in most places around the world.
Welcome to Monday, where Navalny is arrested upon his return to Moscow, Brazil starts its mass vaccination campaign and there are signs of life from China’s trapped miners. Meanwhile, Le Monde travels to the French port city of Calais to see how high-tech is being used to ease post-Brexit commerce with the UK. SPOTLIGHT: ON […]
Locals are pushing back against plans to build a five-star hotel that would throw grape-killing shade on the famed Italian city’s last ‘real’ neighborhood.
Welcome to Thursday, where Trump becomes first president impeached twice, China goes back into lockdown, and a 45,000-year-old wild boar makes news. We also scan what sets “Made in Africa” ID tech apart. SPOTLIGHT: D.C. TO ROME TO KAMPALA, DEMOCRACY IS A COUNTING QUESTION At 6 p.m. local time Wednesday in Rome, while much of […]
A generation after alcohol-free beer surprised the beverage market, it may be time to go one step stronger.
As people continue to push the boundaries in areas like AI and biotechnology, it’s worth asking what all these advances will do to our minds and bodies.