An estimated 40,000 Venezuelans have taken up residence in Boa Vista, the capital of Brazil’s Roraima state. Many are roughing it in the city’s 53 public squares. And their numbers are rising.
Category: In The News
BEIRUT – Russia’s proposal for a partial truce in the Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus is not a “humanitarian pause,” but a “humanitarian posture,” says Dr. Annie Sparrow, a critical-care pediatrician and public health professional. In Syria Deeply’s latest Deeply Talks, Sparrow and Mohamed Katoub, advocacy manager for the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), spoke with our editors about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the besieged Damascus suburbs. (Listen to the full audio here) Last week, Moscow called for daily, five-hour cessations of hostilities to allow for aid deliveries and medical evacuations. However, it usually takes a convoy between eight […]
The very notion of “political instability” is baked into democratic life. If you want something predictable and unchanging you can have a 17th-century French monarchy or 21st-century Chinese autocracy. Still, a look around European parliamentary democracies these days shows a particularly bumpy road ahead, as ideologies and party machinations are being side-swiped by an accelerating […]
The Russian president was a KGB agent in the city in the former East Germany when the Iron Curtain started to give way. The ghosts of the past are everywhere.
The city in the U.S. midwest has found a different way to make it in the modern economy.
In the southern city of Marseille, actor Selman Reda draws on his personal experiences to explore the ins and outs of being Muslim in secular France.
The famous playwright who fled Nazi Germany only to be hauled, years later, before the House Committee on Un-American Activities has plenty to contribute still in our post-truth world.
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In Case Of War, Remove Glass
Some of the stunning stained glass panels from France’s Cathedral de Chartres date back to the 12th century. And if I was able to see — and photograph — them, I’ve got to thank the people who had the good idea of removing and stashing them away during both World War I and World War […]
Slovakian authorities are investigating ties between politicians and the Calabria-based Ndràngheta crime syndicate following the killing, last week, of an investigative reporter. Mobsters have been siphoning EU development funds.
LAUSANNE — “We struck off, heading for the horizon with a fever we thought could be cured by accumulating kilometers. But it just riled us up even more. Still, moving quenches something. It eases our melancholy at not having done anything with our lives, at having been born too early and having failed at everything. […]
Their close cuts, unusual trims and friendly demeanor have made Dominican barbers a hit in the Argentine capital, after making their name in the U.S. and Europe.
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Watch: OneShot — Young Surfer Girl
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/8oLuqXA57xc expand=1] OneShot — Young surfer girl, 2013 (©Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
-OpEd- MONTREAL — The news spread around the world: Canada had just changed the English version of its national anthem, replacing the line “in all thy sons command” with “in all of us command.” Why? To make it gender neutral of course. Officially, and in order to reduce the significance of this change, they pretend […]
-Analysis- There is no set recipe for democracy. Still, we can agree that the ingredients must include basic guarantees of free speech and free elections: If you don’t have the right to speak out against those in charge — and eventually vote them out of power — you are living under some form of rule […]
Venezuelans are sloshing their way across the Táchira River to seek jobs in Colombia, or smuggle food and fuel. Out of sight, but very much in control, are a pair of powerful criminal gangs.
In India, a centuries-old custom comes up against basic demands for human rights.
Basic health care services are hard to come by.
With over 20 years of history, SK Gaming is one of the oldest and most successful e-sport teams known for their achievements in the shooter gamer Counter-Strike. Formerly based in Cologne, SK’s gamers now live in a luxurious house in the U.S.
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Where Beauty Was Born
According to legend, the rocks of Petra tou Romiou in southwestern Cyprus, is where the Greek goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite, was born. I’ll spare you the full (and quite graphic) myth of her birth — it may spoil the serenity of this coastline.
-Analysis- MEXICO CITY — He has been a staple of Mexican politics for decades, having twice sought the presidency. The message is always the same: the moneyed classes must be taken down. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a hardline leftist rabble-rouser, has come close twice to clinching the top office in a country dripping with oil, […]
-Essay- WASHINGTON — As I was driving back to Washington last Christmas, I needed the navigation smartphone application Waze to get me out of Brooklyn, onto the Verrazano bridge, then across Staten Island into New Jersey, and finally to the I-95 highway that leads to DC. By the time I got on the New Jersey […]
As head of the northernmost parish in the world, Leif Helgesen has a clear (and often chilly) view of global warming.
The economic and political tragedy unfolding in Venezuela should be a call to action for the rest of the region’s countries, especially with the early presidential election (April 22) looming.
WASHINGTON — You have perhaps heard the joke about the liberal who is so open-minded that he can’t even take his own side in an argument. What’s less funny is that on gun control, liberals (and their many allies who are moderate, conservative and non-ideological) have been told for years that if they do take their own side in the argument, they will only hurt their cause. Supporters of even modest restrictions on firearms are regularly instructed that their ardent advocacy turns off Americans in rural areas and small towns. Those in favor of reforming our firearms laws are scolded […]
CAIRO — I was four years old when, while visiting a relative at his home, he urged me to eat some food. He told me playfully, as children are often told: “Eat, you donkey.” But, according to my mother, I refused. It bothered me that he was asking me to eat in this way. I […]
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The Coral Temptation
My wife Claudine wasn’t immune to the charms of the stunning red coral jewelry made by artisans in the northwest part of the Italian island of Sardinia. If memory serves, she bought a bracelet at that very shop. With time, the brand of film I was using back then gave my Sardinian series, fittingly enough, […]
There are times when silence speaks louder than words, and right now — with the new escalation of violence in Syria, where airstrikes in a rebel enclave have killed at least 335 people since the beginning of the week — is one of them. That’s why the United Nations Children’s Fund reacted to the reports […]
LAUSANNE — There are books and newspaper articles, technologies promising relief, even theater productions devoted to the topic. Indeed, it seems like everyone is talking about insomnia these days. In Switzerland, insomnia already affects about a third of the population, according to a study carried out between 2009 and 2012 by the Center for Investigation […]
Five Russian-linked Twitter accounts are clearly favoring anti-establishment Italian parties Five-Star Movement and Northern League ahead of March 4 national elections.
Differently than places like the Netherlands or the state of Colorado, legalizing cannabis in Mexico is colored by the presence of drug cartels — and the absence of the state.
After a difficult 15 years, relations between New Delhi and Tehran are in need of improvement. The recent visit in India by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was key first step.
-Essay- NEW YORK — I am of the view that incompetence, random error and sheer complexity explain most of the mistakes and strange events in our world, and that we shouldn’t readily jump to conspiracy theories. I’m pretty sure Neil Armstrong did walk on the moon, and still inclined to think (although not certain) that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, there is no Bigfoot and aliens have not recently visited humans on Earth. This exercise is not merely to pile up arguments for what you believe, but also to consider how and where you might be wrong. I recently raised […]
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Neither German Norwegian
I speak German, so I’m no stranger to the way some languages will simply slap words together. Stopping at this yurt-looking visitor office on my drive up north through Norway, I eventually realized that the apparent gibberish Polarsirkelsenteret meant “The Polar Circle Centre.” Still, neither German nor Norwegian has got anything on neighboring Finnish. I’m […]
You just walked past a homeless man on the street, but you may try to help him if you see his story on social media.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/MMZ-KML_DwA expand=1] OneShot — War amputees soccer players, 2002 (©Pep Bonet/NOOR) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video.
German-Turkish relations are a high-stakes affair. Not only does Germany count some three million residents with roots in Turkey, the two countries are strategic to both the global economy and international diplomacy. In recent years, however, the relationship has been fraught with tension, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently declared her desire to “reinforce” bilateral […]
BEIJING — An online game from Japan has become a hopping success in China. Unheard of until recently, Tabikaeru: Travel Frog — developed by the Japanese company Hit-Point — is suddenly all the rage, leapfrogging the competition to become the most popular free online game in China’s Apple App Store. Travel Frog requires little of […]
As another airstrike rained down in Syria, Fadi Al Dairi knew that those inside Kfr Nobol Hospital, operated by the British NGO ‘Hand in Hand,’ would soon be targeted.
LAUSANNE — Is wildlife a world of bullies? We like to imagine the relationships among living beings as a no-holds-barred struggle for survival, a twisted vision of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, conveyed by the political and economic doctrine of social Darwinism. And yet, examples of cooperation abound in the animal world. Mammals, insects and […]
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Surfing Salesman
Marvel all you want at Californian surfers, but this one-man Li River retailer on his bamboo raft is the real deal.