Worldcrunch
TEGUCIGALPA — The Central American countries of the “Northern Triangle” (Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala) have long battled gang wars and drug-related crime that have left the region’s cities among the world’s most dangerous. Individual attempts in the past to defuse the crisis, including local gang truces and national crackdowns on drugs, have been largely […]
TBILISI — The Georgian capital is built upon a hill, sandwiched in the midst of towering peaks. The same can be said about this country, wedged between powerful regional neighbors. As Georgia’s economy and aspirations rise, Tbilisi’s growing middle class is flocking to private schools to educate its children. There’s just one problem: some of […]
-Analysis- RIO DE JANEIRO — Andrew Zimbalist’s Circus Maximus is a book well worth a read. In it, the author — a U.S. economist specialized in the sports industry — argues that there’s a growing consensus among economists that playing host to a mega-event like the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup is a […]
The second of a three-part series of oral histories from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, so close and yet so far away from the Olympic spotlight.
While many of us are immersed in the Olympic drama in Rio or enjoying a summer vacation escape, a photograph from Aleppo has brought a jarring reminder of the horrific war still raging in Syria. The image shows a dazed five-year-old boy, covered in dust and with an open head wound, sitting in an ambulance […]
Ask anyone in France about Brittany, and there’s a good chance they’ll tell you how bad the weather is in the northwestern region. Looks like blue skies to me!
Trump is supported by 1 in 5 younger voters, an astonishing and consequential collapse for the GOP.
Rowdy Rio crowds are upsetting both athletes and fans. But it’s a passion born from soccer stadiums, and is what a South American Olympics should look (and sound) like.
The Olympic ideal is free of political conflict. But from Jesse Owens in Berlin to this year’s refugee team, some of the Games’ most striking images have sprung when sports and world affairs collide. So much so that the temptation is always great to think of the Olympics as a jersey-wearing reflection of current events. […]
This was the first of about a dozen trips to Greece. From Athens to Epidaurus to Crete … There is something about the country’s history and its people that always made us come back for more.
MUNICH — Shortly after the 1985 hijacking of a TWA plane by a splinter group of the Shiite Hezbollah militia, Britain’s then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, blasted the media for its handling of the affair and called for a new code of conduct. If the press would simply stop covering terrorist attacks, she argued before […]
SPOTLIGHT: “PROVOCATIVE” FRENCH BURKINIS In France, like elsewhere in the Western world, summer is about going to the beach. Unlike elsewhere in the Western world, this summer it has also become about what women can and cannot wear at public beaches. In what has become a uniquely French flashpoint, so-called burkinis — swimsuits that cover […]
Trappers and traffickers are threatening many endangered species in Indonesia, perhaps none more so than the Bali starling, an exquisitely-feathered songbird that can fetch as much as $400.
The two tech giants are engaged in an all-out struggle for market supremacy. Samsung may sell more smartphones, but Apple generates more profit. Where will each turn next?
Can Dündar, a recipient of the *Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2016 International Press Freedom Awards who served jail time this past year and was facing another prosecution, announced in his column that he was resigning as editor of the opposition daily newspaper Cumhuriyet. He is believed to be in Germany, and wrote Monday that he […]
SPOTLIGHT: A BOLT OF OLYMPIC HISTORY THAT WILL LAST Last week, it was Michael Phelps reminding us that the Olympics are more than a passing photo op or filler for your Facebook feed. The American swimmer’s 12th individual medal matched a record of another famous Olympic athlete — from more than 2,100 years ago! Leonidas […]
The IB group says they just want to preserve their country’s identity. But officials warn they are using “camouflage tactics” to hide their real proto-fascist intentions.
From Madame Gaga’s infamous meat dress to Chancellor Merkel’s boxy blazers, women are setting new standards in feminine fashion, whether men like it or not.
Germany’s favorite fish isn’t always caught off the Alaskan coast. U.S. fishermen want transparency for consumers. But such a move could upend the fishing industry.
Trump’s rough discourse has uncovered simmering resentment against Mexico among Americans, which began with NAFTA and the job losses that it entailed for parts of the U.S.
SPOTLIGHT: LOST IN BRAZIL, DILMA CAN WAIT Brazil has won its first gold medal in Rio (courtesy of judoka Rafaela Silva), and other national athletes — especially soccer players after the 2014 World Cup fiasco — will obviously be looking to add to that tally. But one area where the hosts certainly won’t be claiming […]
This tree was not afflicted by some strange disease: “Village weavers” — little yellow birds we got to see on both Mauritius and Réunion islands — had made it their home.
Both President Erdogan and top opposition parties are focused on national reconciliation. But Erdogan’s plans will ultimately exclude democracy.
SPOTLIGHT: HOW LOW WILL TRUMP GO? Waking up in European Central Time to the morning headlines means two things right now: Rio Olympic results and Donald Trump’s new low. We’ve been trying to digest the latest installment of the latter after the Republican nominee in his inimitable, er, offhanded way, said yesterday in North Carolina […]
-Analysis- BUENOS AIRES — We seem to have forgotten how architecture can affect us and for that, perhaps, we can blame some of the excessive statements made about it. Consider Leon Battista Alberti, an early theorist of Renaissance architecture, who declared in 1400 that the balance of classical forms could turn barbarian invaders into civilized […]
There’s a lot happening in this shot of an open-air market at Lafayette’s big jazz, arts and crafts festival, in Louisiana. The dolls in the foreground, the little girl sewing, the guy in the crutches — you can even spot a red box of Danish cookies!
From China to Colombia, the use of sexual favors and vulnerability to blackmail is key to widespread corruption of public officials.
Rio de Janeiro may have pulled off its Olympic feat, but Brazil’s everyday problems remain unaddressed.
-OpEd- So let’s stipulate: Donald Trump is not Vladimir Putin’s willing agent, and it’s not certain if or to what extent Putin is trying to elect Trump president. The real issue is that Trump and Putin share the same nihilistic approach to international relations. Together, they could transform our world. Putin already has fostered a current of ruthless, cynical and utterly unprincipled opportunism in what, before his arrival, was thought of as an increasingly cooperative and rational international community. The Russian president has embraced and perfected the use of lies for geopolitical advantage, pursued and murdered his opponents in foreign […]
After Friday’s smoothly executed opening ceremony and the first batch of inspiring gold medals, the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro are once again mired in controversy. But rather than Brazil’s own local battles with corruption and Zika, it’s the athletes themselves undermining the Games. Sparks flew poolside as Rio’s Olympic swimmers traded insults and […]
Robots have always fascinated us. In fiction or in real life, they crossed our path, for better or for worse. But where do they really come from?
Is the Islamization of Europe underway? In his dark novel “2084: The End of the World,” Algerian writer Boualem Sansal explores an Islamist world dictatorship. In this extract from an interview with Die Welt
Not many people in the southeast African nation smoke tobacco. They can’t afford it. But the country is hooked on growing it and turns a blind eye to the associated risks, especially for child laborers.
With the Olympic Games finally upon us, many spectators are focused on living legends like Brazilian soccer superstar Neymar, Jamaica’s record-holding sprinter Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps, the American swimmer who’s won more Olympic hardware than any athlete in history. And that’s just to name a few. The mega-event certainly doesn’t lack star power. But […]
Moviegoers are turning out in droves to see Kabali, a new Indian film featuring superstar Rajinikanth. What’s all the excitement about? KBR journalist Jasvinder Sehgal attends a pre-dawn premiere to find out.
Politicians are hiding behind complacent language instead of facing the challenges that their constituents are fired up about.
Among all the big numbers we’ll hear broadcast at the lavish ceremony for the opening of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, whether it’s the 5,000 people volunteering at the event or the 10,500 athletes competing in it, the number 10 will perhaps resonate most deeply with the world. That’s the number of members who comprise […]
BEIJING — “Our little monkey has decided to join the fun,” said Lucy, a 33-year-old woman expecting her first child this October. She’s one of many happy Chinese women due to give birth in the year of the monkey, an animal that is associated with cleverness in the Chinese zodiac calendar. A Founder Securities report […]
Benjamin Franklin