Trade in goods and even services may be slowing for now, but globalization retains its momentum with migration and an unstoppable flow of ideas. Blame human nature.
Author: Worldcrunch
On the dusty, deserted plains of Colorado, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) works with researchers and the world’s top companies to create the consumer economy of the future, which will be much more environmentally conscious.
U.S., CHINA AGREE ON N. KOREA RESOLUTION The United States and China agreed yesterday on a United Nations draft resolution containing “very tough measures” against North Korea over its nuclear “provocations,” AFP reports. Both countries have bristled at the hubris of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The draft resolution will now be presented to the […]
A South American writer rethinks the soundtrack of his teenage revolution, concluding that his aversion to culturally significant genres was a youthful indiscretion that deprived him of musical riches.
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Troublesome Visitors
The Alhambra palace, in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, is a jewel of Islamic architecture, a testament to Moorish culture in the country. There would have been even more beauty to admire had my fellow Frenchmen from Napoleon’s armies not destroyed several towers 150 years before we arrived.
BERLIN — Forty percent of economics professors surveyed in Germany say they expect severe drawbacks to the country’s open-door refugee policy, and only 23% see immigration as a source of opportunities, a new survey shows. The joint research by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research of 220 economists professors also […]
PARIS — Pinpointed strikes, carried out covertly: This is France’s strategy to face down the threat of ISIS in Libya. A senior French official has confirmed to Le Monde that “the last thing that should be done is to intervene in Libya. Avoiding any open military engagement, we must act discreetly.” In Libya where France […]
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Dragon Art
Traveling in group tours as my wife and I usually did, you’re bound to visit some local craft workshops along the way. It’s always been a great opportunity to snap some nice pictures — here’s one I took in a pottery shop near Shanghai.
SUEZ CANAL — In Port Said, Egypt, at the mouth of the Suez Canal, three private guards, one from Romania and two from Ukraine, board the Monte Rosa, a 20,000-ton Swiss tanker captained by Viacheslav Gavrilov. Their destination is Sri Lanka by way of the Gulf of Aden, a 12-day journey. The captain, a 44-year-old […]
A SYRIAN TRUCE, ISIS EXCLUDED The Syrian government and the umbrella group for the main opposition agreed this morning to the terms of a ceasefire that was negotiated yesterday between the United States and Russia, the BBC reports. But the truce, set to begin midday Saturday, excludes ISIS, al-Qaeda and affiliated groups, Al Jazeera reports. […]
Libération, Feb. 23, 2016 “Calais: An Endless Jungle,” writes French daily Libération on the front page of its Tuesday edition, as hundreds of migrants living in the so-called “Calais jungle” in northern France are facing an 8 p.m. deadline to move out. The left-wing Paris daily describes the evacuation and scheduled dismantling of the southern […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Could the trap of the Syrian crisis break up NATO? This question, which carries potentially grave implications for the security of the West, might sound overblown. After all, NATO’s unfailing cohesion eventually brought down one of the most formidable war machines of all time, the Soviet Union. Still, the spreading corrosive capacities […]
BRAZZAVILLE — In the area around the Congolese capital of Brazzaville, it’s common practice to burn vegetation in fields before planting crops. But this slash-and-burn approach inflicts severe damage to the forests and the soil, not to mention to the health of women, who are the primary farmers in this area. “The placement of these […]
-Essay- NEW YORK — A short news flash in early October 2014 made me shoot out of my comfortable chair. For no particular reason, I felt that the news of a Chinese insurer buying the Waldorf Astoria, the world’s most prestigious hotel, was important. For me, it was as big as when the Chinese bought […]
PASADENA — The drone intruder was roaming around the Rose Bowl Stadium as 94,000 fans cheered, oblivious to the threat. But scientists testing a new security device at the game knew: they detected its radio signals and seized control of the gatecrasher. This was only a simulation, but if the unmanned drone had been a security risk they could have forced it down — even though the airwaves were choked by thousands of smartphones and Wi-Fi hotspots. “It’s like being at a rock concert and trying to listen to someone at the other end of the stadium,” said Randy Villahermosa, […]
Moroccan-born Osama Khallouf is a 20-year-old student with plans to become a full-time imam. As French mosques struggle to tamp out radicals, the likes of Khallouf are being nurtured and given on-the-job training.
While most people around the world consume news and information from TV, radio and the Internet, a centuries-old tradition that has mostly died out is still being practiced in one Afghan province where literacy rates are poor. Meet Bamyan’s town c
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Pouring Wine — Video Quote Of The Day
It is not the first time Lech Walesa, Poland’s revered first president of the post-Communist era, has been accused of being a spy for the old regime, having been cleared by a court in 2000. But new accusations yesterday that the now 72-year-old was a paid informant for the Communist authorities in the 1970s, before […]
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Seven Skirts
The fishermen“s wives of yore used to wear seven colorful petticoats; some say to represent the seven waves in a set, others say to keep warm while awaiting their husbands’ return. In the late 1950s, these women working at Nazaré“s seafood market already considered it folklore, as they found it doubtlessly easier to carry their […]
From the Middle East to Europe and the United States to Asia, from geopolitics to economics, the world has fallen into widespread chaos. But there is cause for hope.
The public is welcome at Germany’s “Big Cat Sanctuary,” a place of last resort for animals once in the grips of illegal circuses and mob traffickers.
It’s never been easy to categorize people according to their origins, despite the hand-wringing of nationalist political parties. An American raised in France and married to an Italian explores how and why modern notions of nationality are troubli
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Palmyra Gone
In the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, tourists can no longer take photographs or roam under the 3rd-century Arch of Triumph. The terrorists of the Islamic State blew it up in October last year using dynamite.
Science and medicine have yet to demonstrate exactly how and when Zika affects the brain of a fetus, yet people are rushing to conclude that abortion is the logical choice. A journalist with his own physical limitations weighs in.
PARIS — A report says the use of an anti-mosquito pesticide in drinking water could be the cause of the mass outbreak of microcephaly cases in newborns Latin America, and not the Zika virus, as the Brazilian government and the World Health Organization (WHO) have been saying. French weekly magazine Paris Match cites a report […]
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Syrian Aid, Chinese Missiles, Romance Scams
NEW AID TO REACH BESIEGED SYRIAN TOWNS The Syrian government has granted aid convoys access to seven besieged towns, the United Nations announced today after talks in Damascus. The aid is due to arrive “within days,” Al Jazeera reports. The areas concerned are Deir ez-Zor, an eastern city under siege by ISIS, Foah and Kefraya, […]
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Bamboo & Sugar
On the western Indonesian island of Sumatra, this man was using a bamboo ladder to harvest sap from a tree, which would then be processed into sugar at the local refinery.
SALTILLO — An alleged “illegal singing” case last week this city in northern Mexico might have wound up as a light source of laughter in the pages of a local newspaper. But when police in Saltillo tried to arrest a man for singing as he walked on the street, telling him he had no permit […]
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Trompe-L’Oeil
Although it’s close to Petra, one of humanity’s architectural wonders, this pyramid in Wadi Rum was actually carved by Mother Nature.
Not only is the Great Stupa, in the ancient Sri Lankan capital of Anuradhapura, considered an architectural marvel, but it is one of the holliest places for Buddhists, as the shrine is believed to contain relics of Buddha.
TEHRAN — Repeating something Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, said years ago — long before Iran’s latest clash with Saudi Arabia — Moussa reveals much about the current mindselt in the streets and cafés of the Iranian capital: “With the Great Satan we could forgive and forget,” he says. “But with the Ibn […]
GENEVA — War is reshaping Syria, causing massive displacements of populations that, even more than the rising casualty numbers, have shifted the roles played by the country’s principal ethnic and religious communities. Some groups have emerged strengthened, others weakened, now and perhaps forever. These demographic gains and losses will carry more weight in the long […]
There’s nothing the man in Kremlin wishes for more than Angela Merkel’s fall, which could give him plenty of leverage to play with and mould Europe.
Donald Trump has met his egomaniacal match in Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj, who boasted that his far-flung support for Trump could be decisive in the U.S. presidential campaign. “I am convinced that all Serbs who live in America will vote for him, also many other Americans who appreciate my political views and the ideology […]
HOW FAR CAN SYRIAN TRUCE REACH? Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, announced this morning that they had agreed on the rapid delivery of desperately needed aid to besieged Syrian cities. Talking to reporters in Munich, the two top diplomats expanded on yesterday’s announcement of what amounts to an extremely […]
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Mexico Says Bienvenido! To Pope Francis
La Prensa, Feb. 12, 2016 “Welcome!” reads Friday’s front page of Mexico City-based daily La Prensa, greeting Pope Francis as he’s set for an afternoon arrival in Mexico for his first visit as pontiff. Ahead of his five-day trip, which includes a visit to a prison in the crime-riddled city of Ciudad Juarez, the Pope […]
-Essay- CAIRO — I did not know Giulio Regeni, but I could have. The earnest, affable face staring out of his photographs is reminiscent of any number of the trickle of European researchers and activists who pass through Cairo and want to meet in downtown dive bars to talk about the condition of the workers […]
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Brand New Brandy
By the start of the 1970s, some new technology had made it to the bottling line of this cognac distillery in southwestern France. Nevertheless, production was still very much a traditional affair: The famous brandy must be distilled twice in copper pot stills and aged at least two years in oak barrels.
SÃO PAULO — As dengue and the fear of the Zika virus continue to spread, local authorities across Brazil are desperately looking for doctors as they set up field hospitals to treat patients infected by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits both diseases. In cities of the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso […]