An activist and Oxford professor of anthropology of South Asia recounts her experience, and reflections, during a Black Lives Matter protest in the UK.
Author: Worldcrunch
Welcome to Friday, where an Amnesty International report accuses China of “crimes against humanity,” Israel’s government makes PETA animal activists happy and the Euro 2020 soccer competition kicks off after a one-year delay. Business daily Les Echos also reports on how hackers manage to use fake news to threaten big businesses and influence the stock […]
Forced to stay home from one day to the next, millions of quarantined people were suddenly faced with a rare luxury in our fast-paced world: time. That, of course, came with a question: What to do with it? Where others may have chosen to Netflix, garden, read, meditate or complete a 51,300 pieces-jigsaw puzzle, the […]
Rock hero Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame, has described live music performances during the COVID-19 lockdowns as: “unflattering little windows that look like doorbell security footage and sound like Neil Armstrong’s distorted transmissions from the moon.” One month later, in some corners of the world, authentic, in-person live music is ready to […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where NGO workers are killed in Afghanistan, two are arrested after the French president is slapped in the face, and a 61-foot-long scroll makes a splash in China. Le Monde also takes us to Mali, where a second military coup in nine months leaves Malians and international allies alike worried about what […]
Among the many villains through Europe’s colonization of the African continent, a case could be made that Belgium’s King Leopold II was the worst. Responsible for the genocide of an estimated 10 million people, the 19th-century monarch ordered his troops and administrators to pillage the central African colony known as Belgian Congo, renamed the Democratic […]
Welcome to Monday, where two Latin American countries await the results of key elections, a deadly train collision rocks Pakistan, and Turkey faces a worrying — not to say pretty yucky — sea of snot. We also look at some of the most creative vaccine incentives around the world. (Spoiler alert: They involve free food. […]
The U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century took inspiration from the minds of freed American slaves and abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and black artists and poets like Langston Hughes. But there was also a central place in that history for a soft-spoken lawyer from the western coast of India. Dr. Martin Luther King […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where a second Chinese vaccine gets WHO’s greenlight, Sri Lanka faces its worst maritime disaster ever and an asparagus recipe makes its way into a Belgian legal decree. Meanwhile, our latest edition of Work → In Progress takes the pulse of the work-life balance in a fully-vaccinated future. • COVID travel system […]
Some of the country’s eateries may not survive. Others are having to adapt — and quickly — to a still uncertain scenario.
Life was difficult enough for refugees even before the coronavirus outbreak. But with the lockdown depriving them of even meager earnings, the situation has beyond dire.
Today, the European Commission will unveil plans for an unprecedented EU economy recovery package in the face of the coronavirus crisis. The proposed EU rescue fund comes on the heels of last week’s surprise announcement that French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had agreed to a 500-billion-euro recovery package set out to […]
To mitigate the high economic costs of the pandemic, it’s time to demand greater contributions from those who can afford to pay.
Before COVID-19, when we heard the word “virus,” most of us thought about our computers. Cyber-security terminology has borrowed from the biological world because of the similar ways that viruses spread and can be combated. Both rely on hosts for transmission and can be prevented by immunity, which for a computer comes in the form […]
Around the world, creative minds are coming up with bright (or at least, new) ideas to help people stay germ-free while returning to work, school or travel.
The pandemic, and especially the fears whipped up by states and the media, may be pushing society toward greater submission to the world’s powers.
A reflection from Egypt, where a culture of warmth and feeling is suddenly shut down.
To call it a “side effect” of the pandemic would miss the point entirely. Beyond the devastating health impacts of coronavirus on those infected is the impact the crisis is having on research and treatment for other diseases. Nobody can argue with the massive public attention and funds focused on coronavirus, considered the worst worldwide […]
PARIS — The surprise announcement of a massive pact between France and Germany to lead Europe’s response to the COVID-19 crisis marks a historic agreement, writes of Paris-based daily Les Echos. Germany’s decision to accept the principle of a common debt for European countries, signals the birth of a new union of solidarity, which is […]
Preventing an epidemic like the coronavirus doesn’t just require a robust human healthcare system, it also demands a full rethinking of our relationship with the animal kingdom. Just a few examples of what we need: a crackdown on the illicit “wet markets“” trade of exotic animals, where the virus may have originated; veterinary medicine needs […]
It is, of course, inevitable that governments’ stay-at-home orders and other emergency measures to contain the novel coronavirus would generate differences of opinion. And yet, even a few weeks ago, it was hard to imagine that it would take as ugly a turn as what’s happening right now in the U.S. state of Michigan, where […]
Whether or not they were looking for it, the COVID-19 crisis has given epidemiologists bonafide public power. “At this point, if Drosten says it is too early, that carries as much weight as Merkel saying it,” quipped German economist Marcel Fratzscher about his country’s top epidemiologist Christian Drosten and top politician Angela Merkel. There is […]
Across the globe, swamped hospitals and shelter-in-place measures have impacted people’s access to healthcare for any number of non-COVID-19 issues. One of them is abortion, a time sensitive procedure that is also — even the best of times — both emotionally and politically charged. Now, in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, some countries have […]
The word krisis was coined by the Greeks three millennia ago, meaning “turning point in a disease.” The meaning of course has evolved and expanded since, even if our pandemic has brought the word full circle to its ancient ramifications. In Greece’s more recent history, turning points have come in different forms, at rapid-fire pace […]
Today, you may read about lockdowns being loosened in COVID-19 hotspots like France or Spain or the U.K. But you may also discover that Germany, widely lauded for keeping infection rates relatively low, has seen an uptick in their number of coronavirus cases since they relaxed certain social distancing restrictions. Turn farther to the East, […]
Ageism at its most inhumane.
After weeks of denial and manipulation, China wanted to play the role of a caring superpower. But something about its soft-power push went awry.
The pandemic and the response to it threaten to exacerbate entrenched economic and social disparities.
We talk about how the COVID-19 pandemic is upending so many aspects of our lives, yet it is foremost a story about death. Every day in this strange new normal, death counts close to home and around the world are updated, displayed, analyzed; figures are given, curves are drawn, graphs are made, allowing all of […]
Not since George Clooney was walking the halls of E.R. have doctors gotten so much air time. More particularly, virologists and epidemiologists are taking the lead in guiding us through the coronavirus crisis, both those offering explanations on news outlets and those holding increasingly vital positions of authority who help set national policies in response […]
From the downfall of the European Union to the end of capitalism, grand political theories of a post-pandemic world loom large. These are times where talk of watersheds and historic shifts suddenly can’t be brushed away as mere sensationalism. Yet rather than trying to identify what will change, it may be more useful to gauge […]
Vietnam and Slovakia are among those that have stood out in the response, though the apparent reasons vary.
CAIRO — Like many other laborers, delivery workers are not able to practice social distancing during the novel coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, the service they provide helps protect customers — largely middle and upper-class citizens — by keeping those people out of busy shops where they might come in contact wth the illness. […]
The ongoing lockdown in Italy has put Marco Rovello face-to-face with the balancing act that his wife pulls off every day between working a job and running a household. Yes, COVID-19 has forced teleworking couples into suddenly sharing the same “home-office,” daily rhythms and — ideally — a fair share of family chores and parenting […]
As governments now brace themselves to begin a tightrope walk between saving lives and saving their hemorrhaging economies, one thing is certain: No decision will lead to a perfect outcome. National leaders must quickly pivot from a posture of disaster relief to satisfying often contradictory demands from their populations as the pandemic’s rally-around-the-flag effect starts […]
Our Slovenian writer’s bygone trip through a China still not plugged into the global economy reveals some clues for how the pandemic has brought us to this point.
Are we “at war” with COVID-19? That’s what we might believe from a quick tour of the planet’s most powerful leaders, from the presidents of the United States and France to the director general of the World Health Organization to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who declared that we are in the middle of “a […]
French super chef Philippe Etchebest was simply describing reality when he called coronavirus a “national nightmare” in a recent article published by La Croix. He was referring specifically to France’s shutdown restaurant owners and workers, but the metaphor can also describe the collective, surreal sense of uncertainty and fear currently permeating the world’s subconscious like […]
The health crisis is real. But so too are the economic costs of an extended lockdown, which will soon become unmanageable on all sides.
Are some countries better at following rules than others? The U.S. is making global headlines as gun-wielding citizens from Michigan to D.C. take to the streets to show their disdain for mandatory confinement. Those Americans abiding by the lockdown rules will quickly tell you that this defiance is flamed by Donald Trump’s leadership-by-chaos presidency, as […]