Despite Kremlin denials, Western sanctions are hitting Russia hard, and prompting its president to look elsewhere for new alliances and opportunities.
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Now It’s Putin Ready To Pivot To Asia
Author: Worldcrunch
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My Close Encounter With A ‘Tinder-Surfer’
A Bogota lawyer’s foray into the world of online dating opened her eyes to ‘Tinder-surfing’ — couch-surfing with benefits — as practiced by a semi-celebrity Belgian named ‘Zebotta.’
Argentine law has followed social evolution and now recognizes individuals who formally declare their intention to undertake the duties of parenting as legal parents.
CAIRO — The Democratic Party chalked up victories across the United States in the midterm elections on November 6, gaining control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years. And even if the Republicans still hold control of the Senate, the outcome of the midterms breaks up the Republican monopoly in […]
Critics worry that by partnering with Palantir, a Silicon Valley company with ties to the CIA, police in the German state of Hesse are opening themselves up to a potential security breach.
NEW DELHI — When Shehla Rashid, a student leader in India, tweeted to welcome Irish singer Sinead O’Connor into the Islamic fold, she could not have expected much of a controversy. Islam, like Christianity, is open to new converts, and it’s not unusual to welcome new members. The attacks were led not by the usual right-wing, however, but by liberals. Rashid was accused not just of being a hypocrite, but of being the “other side of the coin of ghar-wapsi , activities of converting followers to Hinduism. This charge was reiterated by Pawan Khera, a spokesman for the Congress Party: […]
PARIS — What if the GAFA quartet (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) also became giants in the healthcare sector? Google first tried to put on the white coat more than a decade ago. After “Google Health,” its online medical record project abandoned in 2012, the company made a strong comeback with its subsidiary DeepMind Health, doing […]
Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil and the X-Men, has died at the age of 95. Lee was an outspoken advocate of equality and the value of comics as an art form. “I have always included minority characters in my stories, often as heroes. We live in a diverse society – in fact, a diverse world, and we must learn to live in peace and with respect for each other.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/1l1bdUepqHM expand=1] ©Ringo Chiu/ZUMA ⠀ OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an […]
This is a story about love, hate and Mark Twain. The object of Twain’s desire (then resentment): the typewriter. Twain first laid eyes on a “newfangled typing machine,” as he called it, sometime in the early 1870s. He was, by then, on his way to becoming the world’s most famous writer and humorist. At the same time, the tools of writing were undergoing a profound transformation — from fountain pens, with their leaking and smudging ink, to the pleasant sound of tapping a key whose corresponding letter was magically stamped to paper. The new technology did not emerge with the […]
-OpEd- BERLIN — Theresa May can only lose. The British Prime Minister is fighting alone against a grand alliance of conspirators, poisoners, and wire-pullers, supported by opportunists, weather-vanes and underlings from her own Tory party — ready to tear each other apart wherever they feel they can gain power: on the one hand, ambivalent personalities […]
WASHINGTON — On the night of the midterm elections, my wife and I organized an open house, inviting friends and people from all walks of life to watch the results. The TV was on, but instead of staring at the screen and following the constant predictions of electoral victories and losses, people were interacting and […]
Against the omnipotence of ‘reality-show novels’ and costume fiction, a group of young French authors want to reassert the novel as a contemporary art.
MUNICH — The past snuck up on Adidas last spring when it issued a retro jersey for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia that copied the last Soviet Union national team shirt. It included the USSR lettering and breast emblem with the hammer and sickle. Given the millions of victims of the Soviet dictatorship, […]
Unlike countries like the US or even China, India doesn’t have a national repository to store fossil finds.
-OpEd- PARIS — While Brexit uncertainty continues with “last-chance summit” after “last-chance summit,” the hard questions are becoming more difficult to avoid with each passing day. Are we moving towards a brutal divorce? Or a compromise? Will the Irish question turn everything upside down? Can a second referendum turn the tide? All these questions refer […]
These informal banks in Kenya help women acquire financial stability, to help them take control of their income.
-OpEd- BERLIN — Thousands of students marched through Tehran last weekend, and state television broadcast the protest march live. The crowd burned U.S. flags and pictures of President Donald Trump in front of the building of the former U.S. embassy. And, yes, they chanted: “Death to America.” After the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear treaty […]
November 11, 2018 marks 100 years since the end of World War I. The signing of the Armistice brought to an end the war that Ernest Hemingway called “the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth.” A century on, as the world celebrates the anniversary with ceremonies and memorials, this […]
-Analysis- PARIS — And then, Brazil. The list of countries that are switching to so-called “strongman” regimes keeps growing. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Narendra Modi’s India, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The “people” leave it up to a candidate who has promised the end of corruption and economic recovery. In […]
The expanding movement to denounce sexual assault is a symptom of the problem, not the cure.
America’s midterm elections saw Democrats recapture the House, but lose ground in the Senate. A nation as divided as ever, though with new checks on Trump.
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Stop Victim-Blaming Egypt’s Copts
-OpEd- CAIRO — Following last Friday’s attack on two buses and a microbus in Egypt’s Minya governorate, killing at least seven Coptic Christians and injuring 16 others, both domestic and international media have deployed subtle and not-so-subtle examples of “victim-blaming” in their coverage. Egyptian media highlighted the poor condition of the road on which the […]
In his series Will My Mannequin be Home When I Return, Indian photographer Arko Datto explores “what it means to be in direct confrontation with the night.” [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/O5EreW_gDHo expand=1] Untitled — © Arko Datto / OneShot By experimenting with flashing light and saturated color schemes, Arko Datto reveals how cultural and political tensions are reflected in the darkness of his native country’s nighttime. The project — shot over the span of four years — was recently displayed at the seventh edition of UNSEEN Amsterdam. UNSEEN has now expanded into an all-year-round platform for contemporary photography. OneShot is a […]
-Analysis- BERLIN — Democracies are made of constant ups and downs. Sometimes one party is on top, the next it’s another. And what may look like a dramatic election result often is, in reality, nothing more than the natural ebb and flow that characterizes healthy democracies. Every now and then, however, comes a moment when […]
To act, let’s start by not looking away.
Paúl Rivas was a 45 year-old Ecuadorian photographer. He was kidnapped last April and later killed because of his investigations on drug-related border violence for Ecuadorian daily El Comercio. On the occasion of the “International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists’ and in partnership with UNESCO, OneShot helps keep his story alive. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/vPsNE58VjHY expand=1] Slain Photojournalist – UNESCO — © Paúl Rivas / OneShot In the past twelve years, more than 1,050 journalists have been killed for reporting the news and bringing information to the public. The United Nations proclaimed November 2 as the “International Day to […]
CAIRO — “Wednesday isn’t blue?” Ayman looked at me like I’d gone mad. “Ok, what about your name. Isn’t it sort of reddish?” “Have you lost it?” he replied with a snort, sure I was joking. I enthusiastically started to explain the phenomenon which I’d just been reading about in a book exploring the secrets […]
-Analysis- MUNICH — Angela Merkel has seldom sounded so straightforward and genuine. It was a clear speech, it was an honest speech. It was such a remarkably clever speech too that you could almost believe that after retreating as party chief, Merkel actually wants to and will remain chancellor until Germany’s next general election. But […]
Last year, the Nepalese government outlawed the chhaupadi tradition that bans certain activities on menstruating women. But little has changed.
Residents of Sadhan village have a different story to tell
This is what they had long been fearing. As the threats increased, as the online abuse grew increasingly vicious, as the defacing of synagogues and community centers with swastikas became more commonplace, the possibility of a violent attack loomed over America’s Jewish communities. On Saturday, the worst of those fears was made real as a gunman stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing at least 11 of its members and injuring many more, reportedly shouting “All Jews must die” during his rampage. It is the worst single attack on American Jews in the history of the country. And it is one that […]
DANTEWADA — Three times a day, Bharthi fetches grain and water in clean aluminum buckets to feed her black chickens. She unlocks the grilled doors of the rectangular cage, which at around 20ft (6m) long is occupied by 260 noisy young birds. After filling a dozen bowls scattered across the cage floor or placed on the waist-high cement pillars that double as perching spots, she checks the chicks, counting them and gauging their well-being. She pays special attention to the ones whose behavior has been out of character in the previous few weeks. Together with 10 other local women, Bharthi […]
Will slow growth rates persist in a global dynamic of ‘secular stagnation?’ Or will the IT revolution set off new bursts of productivity?
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Watch: OneShot — Fisherman Eye In Rio
With her Alibi series, Brazilian artist Alice Quaresma is pushing the boundaries of photography. Incorporating collage-like geometrical shapes into her images, she disrupts the traditional rigidity of static ocean views, and creates a playful, interactive journey somewhere between painting and photography. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/BURbfvZhNQU expand=1] Fisherman Eye — © Alice Quaresma / OneShot Alice Quaresma’s work was recently displayed at the seventh edition of UNSEEN Amsterdam. UNSEEN is now an all-year-round leading platform for contemporary photography. OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
A series of bombing attempts have targeted prominent Democrats and other Trump critics. Is this the inevitable result of inflammatory presidential rhetoric.
Many people think that to get ahead in the business world, women need to emulate men. But there’s plenty to suggest that the real secret to leadership success is authenticity.
Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists gathered in Gangtok, India earlier this month for an unlikely meeting of the minds.
Four years ago, then president Adly Mansour made sexual harassment a criminal offense. And yet, women who report such cases have been publicly shamed, demeaned and even fired.
Before he became a celebrated photojournalist of war and conflict, Stanley Greene produced The Western Front, a unique documentation of the San Francisco’s punk scene in the 1970s and 1980s. Here is a memorable shot, and Greene’s memories of the moment, as Bonnie Hayes hits the right note at the right moment. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/5sntNncH7Lk expand=1] OneShot — Queen of the night, 1977 (©Stanley Greene/NOOR) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
-Open Letter- PARIS — In the weeks since France’s popular environment minister, Nicolas Hulot resigned, after expressing disappointment with President Emmanuel Macron“s environmental record, newspapers have been filled with articles and opinion pieces sounding the alarm. Those in power are told to take vigorous and urgent ecological action to reduce consumption of polluting energies and […]