Worldcrunch
-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 […]
Restaurants are places for eating, not genuflection.
-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. […]
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 […]
BANGKOK — Three years ago, on May 22, 2014, members of parliament gathered to find a solution to Thailand’s political crisis. But the politicians were swiftly captured by the army, and sent to military camps. The country’s democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup, and the coup’s leader, General Prayut Chan-o-cha, declared that military rule was necessary to put a lid on escalating political turmoil before it boiled over. He said it would be brief, just enough to ensure stability and order. “We will return to you your happiness,” the general said, and citizens would be able to […]
-Analysis- Donald Trump is not afraid of flying. Since taking office, he’s made it a habit to board Air Force One for back-and-forth weekend visits to his Mar-a-Lago Florida golf resort. But today, four months into his presidency, he takes off for his first overseas trip, with six international flights scheduled over eight days and […]
PARIS — In the final days of the recent French presidential campaign, one confrontation looked like it might turn the tables in favor of underdog Marine Le Pen. Angry workers facing the closing of a Whirlpool plant in the northern city of Amiens cursed and whistled at visiting frontrunner Emmanuel Macron, accusing him of being […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — Ten days ago, Donald Trump’s rocky presidency was in relatively calm waters. He’d helped push a health-care bill through the House and was spending the weekend at his Trump-brand property in Bedminster, N.J. After that, the deluge: Sally Yates’s testimony on Capitol Hill, the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, the private meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, the revelation that the Comey firing was spurred at least partly by the Russia investigation, the threat to release tapes of his conversation with Comey and, on Monday, The Washington Post”s revelation that Trump had shared classified information with […]
-Analysis- Last week, just a day after the abrupt dismissal of FBI Director James B. Comey set off the worst round of criticism Donald Trump’s young presidency, the next — and perhaps even more damaging — controversy was being ignited. The Washington Post is reporting that Trump allegedly revealed highly classified information to Russian Foreign […]
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets with U.S. President Donald Trump, mutual objectives may be overshadowed by the Kurdish question.
NEW YORK CITY — The 19th-century French sociologist Gabriel Tarde defined the marketplace as a war between buyers and sellers. He called price “a truce” obtained by haggling. It was because of that “war” mentality, he explained in his Selected Papers, that authorities in Europe began fixing prices on goods and services. The goal was […]
-Analysis- Some new presidents wait three months until they make their first overseas trip. Not Emmanuel Macron. Following in the footsteps of his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, the freshly-elected, 39-year-old French president headed to Berlin today, just 24 hours after his inauguration. A stronger, more united Europe sits at the top of Macron’s […]
Nationalism was defeated in Emmanuel Macron’s victory. But the debate of the individual vs. collective has just gotten underway in France, and beyond.
President Trump’s hard line on immigration is spurring a surge of high-tech investment, as farmers scramble for new ways of coping with labor shortages and slumping profits.
-OpEd- I’m a Donald Trump supporter. I voted for him and — 112 days in — I’d vote for him again. As a former member of Congress, I found his call to “drain the swamp” in Washington particularly appealing. D.C. needs a kick in the rear and I see Trump as the boot. But I’m not here to be a cheerleader for President Trump, and I’m not on his payroll. When he does something wrong, it’s my duty as a talk-show host, and as a citizen, to call him out. I always have and always will, so let me be […]
PARIS — He wanted to be a writer. He’ll be president of the French Republic instead — what a tale to tell! The story of a young advisor to the king who, taken aback by his master’s powerlessness, somehow decides to replace him and try and conquer the Elysée palace, alone against the world, overcoming […]
A party is united behind an aging New York playboy with no fixed principles but an insatiable urge to be on the front page every single day.
-OpEd- PARIS — Upon returning from exile in 1870, legendary French author Victor Hugo declared that “the instinct of the people always matches the ideal of civilization.” That very instinct swept away the worst among us in electing Emmanuel Macron as the new French President. And what a victory! Very few had thought he could […]
SÃO PAULO — In the nearly two years since it was formed, Unicorns FC, an amateur soccer team in São Paulo made up exclusively of LGBT players, only recorded one crisis: when a player, disappointed with a teammate’s performance, said “soccer is a man’s sport.” For the club, it isn’t — it’s a sport for […]
PARIS — The hour is nigh. On Sunday, French voters, as well as abstainers, (expected to rise in numbers since the first-round ballot on April 23) will decide who, between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, will lead the country for the next five years. One way or another, their choice and its consequences will […]
In France’s presidential campaign, like last year’s race in the United States, protectionism is being used to woo the struggling working class. But workers would be its first victims.
COULOMMIERS — In the working-class outskirts of Paris, people are counting. They count the number of houses now occupied by people from an immigrant background. “There are four Arabs opposite my house, four others at the end of the street, on the right-hand side, and one Black guy to the left,” says 88-year-old Micheline, who […]
-Analysis- Buenos Aires, 2013. At the ripe age of 76, Jorge Mario Bergoglio seems destined to wind down an illustrious career in the Catholic hierarchy as the widely respected and mostly beloved Archbishop of the Argentine capital. But the Holy Spirit (and the College of Cardinals) was destined to intervene, sending the Jesuit prelate to […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON (Indiana) — This city of 11,000, nestled among a handful of low hills rising from table-flat Hoosier farm fields, is 680 miles from the other Washington, but the cultural and political divide may be even greater than the geographical distance. Solidly red Indiana backed Donald Trump by 57% to Hillary Clinton’s 37%. Voters here in Daviess County went for Trump over Clinton by 79% to 16%, more than the 74 % who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and the 67% who supported John McCain in 2008. Indeed, Daviess, tucked into the state’s southwestern toe between Illinois and […]
-OpEd- SAO PAULO — One of the biggest lies in modern politics is the belief that freedom is a universally-shared passion. It isn’t. Freedom implies a burden of responsibility not everyone is willing to bear. In this school of thought, I believe Thomas Hobbes was right: People fear violence, scarcity and death. The majority, therefore, […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Warnings about an imminent terrorist attack had hung ominously in the air in the final weeks of the French presidential election. On Tuesday, police arrested two suspects in the southern city of Marseille after finding a cache of weapons and bomb-making ingredients in their apartment. But with the world focused on French […]
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — The April 16 referendum result that gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sweeping powers can be summed up in a single sentence: he won on paper but lost the political battle. The followers of the “chief” — a term used by Erdogan’s loyalists to describe the Turkish president — would consider this […]
PARIS — On the left-hand side of the blue screen, court decisions appear at the speed of light. Some words are highlighted. Simultaneously, on the right-hand side, a map of France takes shape. Graphs form. “So, you see,” Louis Garrett-Chahine starts, “if you’ve been fired for slander and if you want your dismissal to be […]
ISTANBUL — The narrow win of the “yes’ camp in Sunday’s crucial constitutional amendment to change Turkey to a presidential system is a major victory for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP). Though final results are not yet certified, 51.3% of the more than 58 million Turkish voters (turnout […]
Ahead of the high stakes of next week’s French presidential election, a visit to ‘la France profonde,’ deep in the heartland where the country’s fate may be decided.
The New Times The past ten days have taken the U.S.-Russia relationship to a new low, as Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin “collided in Syria,” this week’s Russian magazine The New Times reports. After months of accusations that Trump and Putin were in cahoots, tensions between Washington and Moscow are suddenly running high, one […]
BRASILIA — There’s always something a bit risqué about Brazil’s many short-stay “motels,” where couples can pay by the hour and aren’t all that concerned, usually, with getting a good night’s sleep. But even by those standards, Room 8 in Brasilia’s Altana Motel stands out. Fitted with metal bars on the door and around the […]
The deadly Palm Sunday attacks in Egypt are just the latest example of a steady effort to remove Christianity from the Middle East. It is long past time to take action.
Correio Braziliense, April 12, 2017 A Supreme Court judge’s bombshell decision has many of the Brazil’s top political figures running for cover, the daily Correio Braziliense reports. On Tuesday, Judge Edson Fachin extended the already three-year-old Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) anti-corruption probe by opening investigations into 108 people suspected of involvement in a massive bribery […]
TAORMINA — This picturesque seaside Sicilian town has the honor to host next month’s crucial G7 summit of top global leaders, which will also be the first major world gathering for newly installed U.S. President Donald Trump. It is also a unique opportunity, as then Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi pointed out last October, for […]
Emmanuel Macron is the youngest candidate to be France’s next president. That’s not the only feature that sets him apart from the rest of the field.
PARIS — In their quest for a sustainable urban future, city planners can learn a lot from history. And in Paris, that can mean just taking a moment to look around. Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the driving force behind a drastic overhaul of the city beginning in the mid 19th century, made an enormous and lasting mark […]
By now, that famous Harold Wilson quip “A week is a long time in politics’ can also just as well be applied to geopolitics. Last Monday, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi was enjoying the diplomatic courtesies and photo ops of a White House meeting with Donald Trump, as the world’s attention was mostly focused on […]