WorldcrunchIt has finally begun. More than two years since ISIS conquered Iraq’s third-biggest city, a coalition of local ground forces, supported by U.S. air power, has launched a coordinated attack to recapture Mosul. “The time of victory has come and operations to liberate Mosul have started,” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a televised […]
Taken from the window of my hotel room, in Ghardaïa, in northern Sahara’s M’zab region.
PARIS — How can we surf the web without using Google, Amazon or Facebook? French group Framasoft, which promotes the use of open-source software, offers a way. Under the “De-google-ify internet” initiative, the group uses decentralized software solutions to design tools that allow consumers to retake control of their data. Members of Framasoft are strong […]
For famed Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, sewing a vast sheet with the names of victims of the country’s civil conflict is a sprawling but humble attempt at some form of salvation.
The town in Indiana of Terre Haute is a mix of organized labor and university students, traditional values and growing immigrant communities. It has picked the president the last 15 elections.
Manipulation and violence, animus and hypocrisy: Such is the stuff of politics on almost any given day, in any corner of the world. But, on our best days, politics holds out the possibility of actually making things better and solving our problems. These are not our best days. In the war-torn country of Colombia, a […]
LES CAYES — As you move through the Haitian cities that stood on Hurricane Matthew’s destructive path, a disturbing question strikes you: What was destroyed in the recent storm and what was damaged from before? You can see scrap metal and zinc sheets that were used as roofs. You can glimpse children bathing in and […]
Swedish hospitals are a model for a more natural, less clinical approach to caring for newborn and premature babies.
PARIS — With all its historical warts, the United States has managed to hold on to its status as a model of a robust democracy. But the spectacle of Donald Trump’s run for the White House is reminding the world just how fragile democracies can be. Trump has used his campaign for the presidency to […]
The Candelabra of the Andes is even more mysterious than the neighboring Nazca Lines. No one knows with certainty what it represents, or when, why and by whom the 600-foot tall geoglyph was carved into the hill.
H&M, Zara, Mango and Irish upstart Primark are flooding the market with new styles at low prices. Is this good for us? Or for the world?
The great paradox of our time is that we’ve never had access to so much information, and yet have never been so badly informed.
The ills of the Smartphone industry go beyond the meltdown of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7. A market sector that was still booming not so long ago is now expected to suffer losses this year for the first time, and is forecast to stagnate for the foreseeable future, a recent report from tech research and advisory […]
Le Figaro — Oct. 12, 2016 “Paris-Moscow: the big chill” writes French daily Le Figaro on its front page Wednesday a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin postponed his planned visit to Paris next week, amid rising tensions between Russia and France over the Syrian conflict. Tensions between French President François Hollande and Putin have […]
The quaint fishing harbor of Polperro, on southwestern England“s Cornwall coast, is having a hard time delivering on its promise: Unscrupulous parking lot owners have been known to capitalize on car park fees.
Viktor Orban is the only leader in the European Union who has benefited from the refugees crisis. But his ambitions know no boundaries.
ISTANBUL — There is an Italian saying: “Una faccia, una razza.” It means “One face, one race,” and is used by Italians and Greeks to note the characteristics the two peoples share. When it comes to Turkish and Greeks, I use this phrase as “One face, one mentality.” I don’t know how similar Greeks and […]
Beyond the threats and name-calling, foreign policy was high on the agenda of Sunday night’s second U.S. presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Russia was mentioned 35 times. Syria 14 times. China, usually a Trump favorite, was uttered a mere four times by the candidates during the 90-minute debate. That was still more […]
Europe, the United States and other parts of the so-called West may not be booming, but they’re not about to be superseded either. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Droughts, demographics, industrialization, pollution, climate change … The need for more clean and accessible water is growing urgent in many places around the world. But beyond praying to the rain gods, what real-life responses are out there? Innovation is key both to help preserve clean water sources, as well as finding new ways to purify […]
His beloved hometown grows more dangerous every day, but he can’t kiss her goodbye.
“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe …” Father Bertrand, a Catholic priest and expert in martial arts, must have long meditated on this quote from Luke (11:21). And on Friday morning, the 48-year-old cleric finally had a chance to live the gospel. Father Bertrand was woken by […]
LIPUA LIPUA — He’d been away for some time in Mbandaka, the capital of the northwestern Équateur province along the Congo River. But when Pierrot Mawambe returns to Lipua Lipua, a fisherman camp on an islet 80 kilometers downstream, he was stunned by the void where huge waka trees used to stand. “Timber harvesters cut […]
Since its birth in the aftermath of World War II, the United Nations has faced innumerable crises. The eternal messiness of global affairs is, of course, exactly why the UN was created. But perhaps never in its 71 years of existence has the biggest of global institutions been faced with so many simultaneous fires — […]
PARIS — Can we one day live in a world where there’s zero trash? A German chemist named Michael Braungart believes it is possible. He encourages companies to put a complete end to waste in The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability — Designing for Abundance, a book he co-wrote with U.S. architect and designer William McDonough. “The […]
PORTO ALEGRE — Sitting on the bed in her white hospital gown, Jéssica Almeida was devouring a hamburger. But the scene is deceiving. In total, the 17-year-old spent a month in the hospital and lost 10 kilograms (22 pounds). Such weight loss, which might indicate malnutrition, is common among hospital patients in Brazil, and it […]
After a chilly first encounter, President Mauricio Macri and Pope Francis, both from Argentina but from different ends of the ideological spectrum, are set to meet again.
“Seven killed in Dominican Republic and Haiti as rainfall continues” writes the Dominican Republic’s daily El Caribe on its Wednesday front page as Hurricane Matthew — the most powerful Caribbean hurricane in years — devastated parts of the two countries that coexist on the same island. With winds up to 230 km/h (145 mph), torrential […]
“If only the world’s shattered people carried a sign, a small mark of Cain so that we could be gentler with them, maybe smile a bit more — not to pity them, but to console …”
The first instinct is to make the connection. During the referendum in the UK back in June, the cooler heads, the let’s-try-to-work-together folk, the conventionally wise were supposed to win. But, in the end, the people advocating for Britain to “Remain” in the European Union lost. And those calling for Britain’s exit, or “Brexit,” prevailed. […]
The massive march in Warsaw and other protests against Poland’s proposed strict new anti-abortion law is a revolutionary moment in what it means to be a Polish woman.
SPOTLIGHT: A DARKER REALITY IN THE CITY OF LIGHTS Paris has always had a dark side. Uprisings, demonstrations, even revolution…the streets of Paris have been awash in blood time and again over the centuries. In far more recent months, terror attacks, floods and strikes have stamped the City of Light as the standing capital of […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — Colombians have now had their say, voting Sunday to reject the peace deal signed between the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), intended to end more than 50 years of fighting in the country. The No vote triumphed against all odds it seems, against […]
The Palmeral of Elche in southeastern Spain is the biggest palm grove of its kind in Europe. Its shades of green made it the perfect place for me to experiment with color film for the first time.
MARINDUQUE — Elisa Hernandez dips her yellow blouse into the Boac River’s rushing water and then slaps it up against the shoreline’s gray stones. The 73-year-old used to earn a living washing her whole community’s laundry this way. “We felt at home in this river … It was so clean, we played in it and we used to catch a lot of fish here too,” she says. But that all changed in March 1996, when a drainage pipe inside a copper mine burst about 20 kilometers upstream. Millions of tons of toxic mine waste, including lead and arsenic, flooded into […]
SKARA — As Bert Karlsson enters the refugee center’s cafeteria, dark-haired boy greets him with a “Hey!” The four-story building called Stora Ekeberg is just one of many refugee centers started by Karlsson’s Jokarjo AB group, which respond to Sweden’s burgeoning need to house refugees. This center is reaching its capacity of 570 people. “Here, […]
CAIRO — Two months ago I set out to reserve a hotel room in the Egyptian city of Minya for a work trip. A quick and easy task, I thought. I called more than 10 hotels but they all told me they were fully booked. I was surprised because Minya is not exactly Egypt’s prime […]
Who are we? A referendum in Hungary raises fundamental questions in the West about how the fear of otherness turns culture into a weapon in the hands of populists.