In Lebanon, the country with the highest number of refugees per capita in the world, a cemetery for Syrian refugees is running out of burial plots.
Author: Worldcrunch
Discrimination and exploitation are deeply rooted in India. But rather than silently endure, some in the underclasses are raising their voices in defiance.
-Opinion- Two European cities, two terror attacks. In Finland, 18-year-old Moroccan Abderrahman Mechkah is suspected of stabbing two women to death and injuring eight others in the southwestern city of Turku on Aug. 18. Mechkah is believed to have been specifically targeting women but also ended up wounding the men who tried to defend them. […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Donald Trump’s presidency has produced a proliferation of Eeyores. It’s not their (our) fault. However dismal one’s view of current American politics, Trump is sure to expose it, with a tweet or the lack of one, as a naive and rosy fantasy. Each day, we adjust our sights down. Each day, the president forces our gaze lower. Some conservatives might take comfort in the prospect — wish, really — of a President Mike Pence assuming office before the current occupant’s term is up. The Indiana Republican is as dull and serviceable a politician as Trump is bizarre […]
PARIS — European nations are bracing themselves for the return of their citizens who had left to fight the wars in Syria and Iraq. “The EU member states most affected expect a slow but gradual rise of returnees,” noted a recent Radicalization Awareness Network (RAN) report submitted to the European Commissioner for Security, Julian King. […]
Choi fled to freedom in South Korea, where he has managed to turn his frightening experiences into a laugh-out-loud online comic strip.
LJUBLJANA — I have been traveling for a few weeks now, on a journey filled with inner dialogue. Searching first for long-desired destinations, I was soon digging deep into my childhood. It was a walk toward the past — a backtrack of the images and sensations that were important in forming my personality. Doing it […]
Tiny Luxembourg is taking a leading role in devising the laws necessary to regulate the business of space exploration.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — City officials across the country are nervously trying to figure out how to avoid becoming the next Charlottesville as alt-right leaders and white nationalist groups vow to stage more rallies in coming days. A group claiming it is advocating free speech has planned a rally for Saturday on the historic Boston Common, with a group advocating racial justice planning its own gathering in opposition. Boston officials said they have laid down strict conditions, including no sticks, weapons or backpacks. “Make no mistake: We do not welcome any hate groups to Boston, and we reject their message,” Mayor […]
DETROIT — Outside Detroit, plans have been in the works for two years to transform the outdated Lakeside Mall into an open-air center with green space and a waterway. With the property in foreclosure and its ownership in limbo, the blueprints will have to be flexible. The mall’s troubles have spiraled since landlord GGP Inc. stopped paying the mortgage last year and then failed to find a buyer for the property amid turmoil in the retail industry. The center’s value, already less than the $135 million loan, was slashed another $25 million in February. Officials for the city of Sterling […]
-Analysis- PARIS — The Islamic State (ISIS) is like the Hydra, the multi-headed monster of mythology that Hercules alone was able to slay. Whenever he managed to cut off one its heads, two new ones grew back instantly. Likewise, the jihadists — having recently lost Mosul, in Iraq — are already making headlines again, this […]
OTTAWA — One has brown hair, the other orange. One is effortlessly bilingual, the other horrifies editors of the Oxford English Dictionary. One openly calls himself a feminist, the other grabs female genitals. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes for a tempting contrast with President Trump. He seems like the picture of serene and right-thinking liberal mindedness compared with all of the United States’ most cartoonishly boorish elements. As a Canadian, I’m not surprised that the American news media and the Internet are saturated by swooning profiles. The Rolling Stone cover story “Why Can’t He Be Our President” was only […]
RIO DE JANEIRO — “Stray bullets invading Rio’s schools.” “Under threat, schools are closing.” “Students injured in shooting.” These were titles of articles published by Folha de S. Paulo, respectively in 1996, 2003 and 2006. But they would fit in well with the current outbreak of violence in Rio de Janeiro. Of the first 100 […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON, D.C. — A military confrontation with North Korea may now be “inevitable,” says Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) The United States is “done talking” about North Korea, tweets U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. President Trump threatens “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” then says maybe his language “wasn’t tough enough.” The North Koreans return verbal fire, talking of using “absolute force” to hit the U.S. territory of Guam and even “turn the U.S. mainland into the theater of a nuclear war.” In this moment of heated, belligerent rhetoric, planners in and out of government are diving […]
NEW YORK — For six months now, almost all the news about Uber has been bad. Even before then, the ride-hailing company’s combative executive team displayed a remarkable facility for generating negative headlines, but since former Uber engineer Susan Fowler went public in February about seemingly systemic sexual-harassment problems at the company, it’s just been one disaster after the other. Ugly lawsuit over allegedly stealing autonomous-car secrets from Google parent Alphabet? Check! Revelations of a concerted effort to evade regulators around the world? Check! Embarrassing video of co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick rudely berating a diver? Check! Board […]
-Analysis- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is having a bad week. First, the news last Thursday that the Israeli police is investigating Netanyahu for suspected bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The next day, his former chief of staff, Ari Harow, who is also under investigation, agreed to turn state’s witness in two cases involving […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Trump appears to have found himself a new national security adviser. His name is Barack Obama. Recent days have brought evidence of two foreign policy successes for the Trump administration: On Friday, a top State Department official who has served in the Obama and Trump administrations announced that gains against the so-called Islamic State have picked up sharply and that the militants have lost 78% of their territory in Iraq and 58% in Syria. The Washington Post“s headline (which the White House circulated in an email): “Under Trump, gains against ISIS have dramatically accelerated.” Then, […]
CAIRO — Just north of the Egyptian capital, a short ferryboat ride will take you to the southern tip of the Nile island of Warraq. It has patches of agricultural land and scattered houses and deeper in, the island resembles a typical Cairo neighborhood with tightly-stacked buildings and narrow streets packed with motorcycles and tuk-tuks. […]
Why we should force the powerful to submit to psychological and neurological examinations on a regular basis.
The record-breaking transfer of the Brazilian superstar to French club PSG is part of much bigger plans by Qatar, which owns the Parisian club.
Admitting newcomers based on their skills is smart; cutting their numbers in half is a mistake.
Correio Braziliense, Aug. 3, 2017 Brazil’s President Michel Temer has survived a crucial vote in the lower house of Congress on whether he should be tried on allegations of corruption. The vote is a “victory” that “strengthens’ his position, Correio Braziliense writes on its front page Thursday. The newspaper features a striking image of one […]
In strange and not-so-strange ways, Donald Trump’s actions are having the opposite effect of what he intended.
As more men are migrating into cities in search of a living, women are left with all the weight of the farming and family. That is not a sustainable model.
It is the nature of the job, not the people who occupy it, that is ultimately to blame for an endless series of scandals at the top ranks of Brazilian politics.
Guédelon, an attraction in Burgundy, recreates the Middle Ages in a way that aims to make visitors smarter while they’re having fun.
-Analysis- PARIS — The nation of France has become a new sort of Ground Zero for Islamic terrorism’s attack on the West. Over the past 30 months, images have spread around the world of both wanton and targeted terror on French soil: from the January 2015 shooting at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices, to the […]
PALO ALTO — While his high-school classmates were blowing their money on Chipotle burritos and concert tickets, Truman Hale was saving up for a Tesla. In March of last year, after years of penny pinching, he plunked down a $1,000 deposit on a Model 3. Now a 21-year-old student at Arizona State University, he’s eager for more information about what will be his first car, which he hopes will be delivered before graduating in December 2018. “I want to only own electric cars,” he said. “I’m riding a bike because I’m saving for this car.” “The lack of information received […]
High ticket prices and fancy stadiums are making the games of the national pastime off-limits for most of Brazil’s population.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has done his best to stay close to the president, but that doesn’t translate into influence over American diplomacy.
And the rest of ours too…
In Indonesia, the heavy metal band Voice of Baceprot is turning and banging heads. But critics say this is not what Muslim girls should be doing.
-Analysis- LISBON — What a successful gamble for Lisbon: The European Commission is about to ratify the proposal to end Portugal’s excessive deficit procedure. The country will be joining the club of virtuous economies , against experts’ forecasts. The recovery is a remarkable achievement considering Portugal hit a virtual rock bottom in 2011. On the […]
Britain, Poland and even Germany are all examples of how having women in power doesn’t necessarily translate into greater social or economic power for women.
Government crime numbers show that since 2001, more than 2,000 ‘witches’ — most of them women — have been killed.
-Analysis- PARIS — “Paris sera toujours Paris …” When French singer Maurice Chevalier first released the classic tune in 1939, the aim was to brighten the mood of the curfew-burdened French capital as war approached, assuring them that “Paris will always be Paris.” Fast-forward nearly eight decades and another kind of showman has been trying […]
“I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.” These wise words were written by American author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, born 200 years ago on Wednesday. A quiet journal entry […]
Teachers and volunteers in a rural Daraa town are braving bullets and airstrikes to rescue books from beneath the wreckage and stock a new public library.
The declaration that he’d work with the Russian president on a joint cyber security unit shows that the man in the White House has a basic problem of understanding policy. And the consequences are real.