Worldcrunch
CAIRO — “It’s a hobby, but it’s also more than that,” Ahmed Shaloufa says, as we climb the final ladder to his pigeon coop in the working-class district of Sayeda Zeinab. “It’s a passion.” Once inside the coop, the labyrinthine streets and megalith apartment blocks of the old city disappear from view. If you jump […]
The U.S. has a long history of inhibiting Chinese expansion in Asia. Now, Donald Trump is handing them the keys.
“Enough is enough.” Theresa May’s remarks after Islamists killed seven and wounded dozens Saturday evening in London — the UK’s third major terror attack in three months — amounted to both a new message and a new tone. The British Prime Minister took aim at the “evil ideology of Islamist extremism” and boldly took a […]
Firms in Argentina are recruiting over-40s for their steady hand and people skills — and their affordability.
BEIRUT – Few women have ever gained access to Block B of Beirut’s notorious Roumieh prison. This is where Lebanon holds radicalized criminals. It is also a place where suicide bombings have allegedly been planned, and has been called an “operations room” for the so-called Islamic State by Lebanon’s interior minister. So when Maya and Nancy Yamout first began interviewing convicted jihadists in the prison, the Lebanese sisters aroused both confusion and suspicion among guards and prisoners alike. The Yamouts’ interest began with a university project, but it took the support of the former minister of justice to get them […]
-Editorial- PARIS — The world is witnessing an unprecedented diplomatic event. America is retreating as the world faces one of the most serious issues of our time — climate change. It’s deciding not to exert its leadership. It will be neither model nor guide. This continent-sized country is shrinking and retreating into itself, as it […]
European companies complain of trade hurdles in Beijing, but China presents itself as the defender of global free trade. A new study tries to provide clarity.
Rajasaurus, anyone? India’s native dinosaur discovered as recently as the early 2000s has been fittingly given an Indian name: Rajasaurus narmadensis, or “regal reptile of the Narmada,” is a predator that lived roughly 65 million years ago, a Smithsonian Mag story recently notes. Rajasaurus belongs to the sub-family of the wicked carnivorous Tyrannosaurus Rex, star […]
Yesterday, as he announced the United States’ withdrawal from the historic Paris climate agreement, President Donald Trump appeared particularly eager to deride the perceived exploitation of America in past international negotiations. “We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won’t be.” No, Mr. President, no one is laughing today. […]
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has made a colossal mistake in deciding to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. There is simply no case for withdrawal, other than a desire to double down on an ill-informed campaign promise, while the case for staying in is overwhelming. But damaging as it is, this decision is not the beginning of the end for efforts to contain climate change. The world decided in Paris to confront the climate threat, and it is not turning back. Around the world, climate change is a metastasizing danger, for some countries even an existential threat. It was […]
PARIS — Monsanto, the multinational producer of pesticides and genetically-engineered crops, has sought to discredit virtually anything that stands in the way of its business, reports leading French daily Le Monde in a multi-part investigative series that began Thursday. Among the targets of the U.S.-based agro-chemical giant are scientists, regulators and even the World Health […]
U.S. President Trump has changed from a candidate concerned with the economic plight of ordinary Americans, to an imperialist president fascinated by military power.
WASHINGTON — In 1965, not long after his assertion that adopting Medicare would mark the death of freedom, Ronald Reagan, that great sunny-side optimist of the American right, explained the apocalyptic, anti-democratic impulse that animated the far right of his day, and which now permeates the Republican Party. “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority … always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the treasury with the result that democracy […]
The Great Mosque of Kairouan, in Tunisia, is considered a model of Islamic art. Its minaret, one of the oldest in the world, served as a template for how many minarets were later built in neighboring North African countries, as well as Spain’s Andalusia region. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
The news from Afghanistan this morning is devastating: at least 80 killed and hundreds wounded following a massive explosion in Kabul. The violence, of course, is hardly limited to Afghanistan. Earlier this week, two attacks in the space of 12 hours, one at a well-known ice cream parlor, killed at least 27 people in Baghdad. […]
In southern Israel, a group of well-off Bedouin entrepreneurs is trying to help the community grow economically, reduce discrimination and improve education.
Electric cars are becoming a significant percentage of cars on the road in Norway. But are they really the future?
-OpEd- PARIS — At first, there is that horrific sensation like something pushing on your chest with the tears that swell as we imagine the parents trying to reach their children and nobody answering on the other end of the line where a massacre has been committed. Then, there is the anger that becomes a […]
-Analysis- Battles over sexism are being waged all over the world. In India, Muslim women have brought the “triple talaq” law, which allows men to cut off their wives by repeating “divorce” three times, to the country’s Supreme Court. In the Republic of Congo, widows are suing over a tradition that forces them to give […]
Critica, May 30, 2017 “El Man Dies,” reads Tuesday’s front page of Panamanian daily Critica, reporting the death of former dictator Manuel Noriega in Panama City at age of 83, with one of his many monikers. Noriega, who died Monday night, was called MAN for the acronym for Manuel Antonio Noriega, although the New York […]
They say it’s never too late to learn. A special school in the Indian state of Maharashtra is proving that in a new way.
Colombia may have massive shale oil and gas reserves that could cover the decline in its crude output, but environmentalists are raising alarms.
CAIRO — The Egyptian government has blocked access to a total of 21 news and information websites since last Wednesday, including the original publisher of this article, Cairo-based Mada Masr. A security source cited by MENA, the country’s official state news agency, said that the blocked websites were disseminating “content that supports terrorism and extremism […]
The ruins left behind by President Donald Trump’s first foreign trip don’t look anything like the archeological wonders in Taormina, Sicily, site of this past weekend’s G7 summit. The rubble left in Trump’s path can be reassembled in brutal words of German, French, Italian, English and other languages spoken and written in different European and […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Since 1972, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, has maintained a “World Heritage List” of sites that it deems to have an exceptional value. This list, which aims to preserve the world’s cultural and natural heritage, has sparked global tensions and drawn criticism that it doesn’t give adequate […]
Cuba’s small but growing Muslim community is getting a boost from Havana’s diplomatic opening. Riyadh, meanwhile, is trying to exert control.
-Analysis- BERLIN — When they want Donald Trump to grasp a topic, his advisers have learned to keep things simple. Visual aids help. Unfortunately, global economic imbalances — the massive trade deficits of the U.S. and U.K. and surpluses of Germany and China — are complicated and intractable. No matter, Trump has found a simplistic way to frame the problem: Americans buy lots of German cars, whereas mean Germans don’t buy many from the U.S. Ergo, the overall U.S. trade deficit with Germany was about $65 billion last year. And deficits are bad. Germany’s auto industry makes an odd target […]
Shrouded in secrecy, the process for picking the winners is a mix of glamour and intrigue.
After Saudi Arabia, Israel, Rome and Brussels, Donald Trump’s week-long odyssey comes to an end with the G7 meeting in the Sicilian town of Taormina. As has become a habit with such events, the picturesque location was turned into a bunker for the occasion, in anticipation of the protests that are also an annual feature. […]
Hong Kong was still under British rule when we visited it. This strangely shaped building was then named the Prince of Wales Building and housed the head office of the British Army. In 1997, when the island became an autonomous territory of China, it was renamed: Chinese People’s Liberation Army Forces Hong Kong Building — […]
Led by Brazil, much of the region is mired in deep corruption scandals. But revelation also shows that public institutions are fighting back.
GENEVA — It’s a sight that would have pleased Pantagruel, the 16th-century giant dreamed up by French writer François Rabelais. A horde of mini-vegetables, more numerous and diverse, are taking the world’s kitchens by storm. For many years, we have grown accustomed to baby carrots and cucumbers, not to mention baby corn. But here come […]
WASHINGTON — President Trump arrived in Jerusalem this week with a most curious bit of information for Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. “We just got back from the Middle East,” Trump announced. “We just got back from Saudi Arabia.” At this, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, put his forehead in his palm. Did Trump not know Israel is in the Middle East? Did he not know he was in Israel? There was little time to contemplate this mystery, because Trump was moving on to generate more puzzlement at his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Americans by […]
—Analysis— The simmering tensions between reporters and politicians in the U.S. have moved beyond the White House press room — and beyond just words. Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs was in the state of Montana on Wednesday to cover the hotly contested special election to fill a vacant Congressional seat. When Jacobs asked a question to […]
French-Russian relations are at a new low following the election of France’s young, pro-European President Emmanuel Macron.
GAZA CITY — Escaping the besieged Gaza Strip, often described as “the world’s largest open-air prison,” is a nearly impossible dream for many of its two million residents. But 24-year-old Mosab Abu Toha has found a way to free himself — through books. “Freedom is a state of mind. With books, you’re liberating yourself by […]
El Universo, May 24 Wheelchair-bound politician Lenín Moreno assumed Ecuador’s highest office today, nearly 20 years after a shooting attack left him paralyzed. “Lenín’s big day,” as the front page of Wednesday’s El Universo reads, gives Ecuador its first new leader in a decade. Moreno, 64, replaces leftist Rafael Correa, whom he served from 2007 […]
One of the ugliest tactics in modern warfare has been the use of “human shields.” From Serbia to Sri Lanka and Gaza, armed combatants have been accused of putting civilian lives at risk on the frontlines in order to protect themselves. If the enemy attacks innocent bystanders on site, it risks committing a grave human […]
-OpEd- TEL AVIV — We know the importance of Messianism in Judaism. The figure of the Messiah is none other than the universally shared incarnation of hope. But while it might have been moving and comforting to imagine, by the rivers of Babylon or at the ruins of the Temple, a messenger of God bringing […]
News broke shortly after 10:30 p.m. local time Monday night: an explosion at an Ariana Grande concert in the northern British city of Manchester. At least 22 people were confirmed dead and 60 injured in an attack authorities are investigating as an act of terrorism. Islamic terror group ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack early […]