With ISIS terror reigning in Palmyra, where treasured Roman ruins are at risk, reflections on a fascinating if less ancient part of its history: the Zenobia Cham Palace Hotel.
Author: Worldcrunch
A visit to Kenya’s training site after media revelations about performance-enhancing drugs cast a pall over the country’s storied long-distance running team.
StopFake, established by Kiev journalism students, analyzes media coverage in both Russia and Ukraine, fact-checking reports — and separating fact from prolific fiction.
MORE VOLATILITY IN CHINA Chinese stocks continued to fall for a fifth consecutive day, despite the People’s Bank of China cutting its key lending rate in a bid to restore calm to the stock markets. A volatile Shanghai Composite index eventually fell by 1.3%, after rising by as much as 4.3% and dropping 3.9%. After […]
Though deep historical rivalries between Saudi Arabia and Yemen have little to do with Egypt, it has been drawn into the anti-Houthi confict. Having given initial support to the Saudi coalition, how far Cairo will go is the source of intense speculation.
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Why Women Are Fleeing Eastern Germany
Auf wiedersehen — Photo: Sascha Kohlmann BERLIN — Where have all the women gone? That is the latest question in some parts of the former East Germany, which a new study shows to have Europe’s lowest ratio of women to men. German demographers and economists have already noted that after the Wall came down in […]
Guangming Daily, Aug. 25, 2015 Even as it dominates headlines around the world, the Chinese stock market crash is getting notably scant coverage at home. After a record drop in share prices at week’s opening, the front page of national state-run newspaper Guangming Daily made no mention at all of the stock exchange and accompanying […]
CHINA MARKETS CONTINUE DIVE The Chinese stock market continued to crumble today, with the Shanghai Composite index closing down 7.6% at 2,964.97 points. Japan also saw more sharp falls with Tokyo’s Nikkei index falling 4%, Reuters reports. TYPHOON GONI HITS JAPAN Photo: Yuan Jing/Xinhua/ZUMA Typhoon Goni has made landfall on Japan’s main island of Kyushu, […]
Paris-based big data whiz Rand Hindi wants to put his technology savvy to work to free us from our growing enslavement to the digital masters.
China’s recent currency devaluations have set off a series of economic consequences, both intended and otherwise. And the reach is more global than ever.
GENEVA — The specks of green and blue light splashing down from above alter the atmosphere along this riverside walkway completely. The illumination is smooth and complex, with colors that change in rhythm — a sharp contrast to the rigid lamppost light that used to shine along Geneva“s 800-meter long Seujet wharf. The made-to-measure public […]
The bloody dispersal of Cairo’s sit-ins two years ago marked a decisive end to the Muslim Brotherhood’s political ascendancy. The group now is in crisis, its membership divided over its ultimate direction.
A volunteer who led a writing workshop for Syrian child refugees of the war did what he could to offer the aspiring writers some hope. His heart was touched in return.
A BBC documentary shows what happens when intense Chinese instructors meet a classroom of UK teenagers accustomed to some degree of autonomy. A culture clash ensues. What China can learn from the experiment.
Prosopagnosia, or facial blindness, seriously complicates the lives of people it affects. Sufferers often feel guilty. They also learn to develop coping strategies.
Amid the seeming complacency or incompetence of the government, drug-related violence and criminals acting with impunity are creating an all-too-familiar atmosphere of fear.
Amid controversial scenes of banned Western food being destroyed, Russia now faces criticism over proposed new import restrictions on life-saving medical equipment for the country’s most vulnerable.
Nicolas Ngwabije fled his native Congo in 1966, a political refugee. He ended up working for decades at a French migrant center, a reference point for generations of refugees. And they keep coming.
ALEPPO — With Syria’s civil war now its fifth year and showing no sign of ending, virtually all sides have been recruiting and training children to kill. Situated in the opposition-controlled outskirts of Aleppo, the Abdul Razzaq Military Academy is one of the most organized programs for preparing youngsters for the battlefield. Established by Sergeant Abdul Razzaq, a Syrian army defector, the academy’s instructors train some 150 children from surrounding areas on the grounds of an abandoned school in the village of Ehtemlat for two hours a day. Other than saying that the academy is “the achievement of his lifetime,” […]
BANGKOK BOMBER STILL AT LARGE Bangkok police are still looking for a man in a yellow T-shirt who was shown on CCTV footage dumping a backpack Monday at the scene of the Bangkok Erawan shrine bombing that killed at least 20. VERBATIM “Is it even possible that four men can rape a woman? It’s not […]
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Extra! Food Prices Soar In Venezuela
El Tiempo, August 18, 2015 An already critical economic situation is spiraling out of control in Venezuela, with newspaper El Tiempo reporting that “the word “cheap” is disappearing from the Venezuelan vocabulary.” In the northern city of Puerto La Cruz, a kilo of tomatoes or onions can cost a whopping 400 bolivars ($63), double what […]
-OpEd- 

How important is intellectual property in the digital age? Not very, if the business strategies of industry luminaries like PayPal’s Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are any indication. Musk, the multi-talented entrepreneur behind PayPal, and more recently Tesla cars and SpaceX, has made it clear he considers Tesla’s impressive lead in battery and […]
The Peng Collective of artist activists has been raising awareness and “filing down the teeth of civil society” by tackling pollution, data protection, denuclearization and now refugee politics.
Geneva native Marie-Laure Canosa says an eight-day fast at a world-renowned Russian treatment center was transformational. Many researchers seem to agree, as withholding food can heal the body of chronic diseases.
CAIRO — Aisha’s family has tried everything to cure her of the crushing headaches that ruin her days and the violent, swirling images that haunt her at night. “At first, we went to the doctor, but he was unable to help,” says her brother, Ahmed El-Said. “He prescribed her pills but, if anything, they made […]
DAR ES SALAAM — Sitting on a stone bench, in a shaded back alley of the historical center of Stone Town, the capital of the Zanzibar archipelago, Ali Nassor Ali is making the most of his last day in the open air. Tomorrow, this 40-year-old man with a gaunt face and eyes reddened by years […]
CHINESE ANGER GROWS AFTER EXPLOSIONS Families of firefighters who died battling the fires that followed last week’s massive explosions at a storage warehouse in the Chinese port city of Tianjin protested and clashed with police amid revelations that several hundred tons of poisonous cyanide were stored where the explosions took place, the South China Morning […]
Folha de S. Paulo, Aug. 17, 2015 Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets in cities across the country Sunday, calling for Dilma Rousseff’s resignation as the Brazilian president and her party face corruption allegations. “New protests keep Dilma under pressure; 135,000 demonstrate in Sao Paulo,” Monday’s Folha de S. Paulo“s front page […]
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Quebec’s Bison
A 15 minute-drive from downtown Québec City, the Île d’Orléans on the Saint Lawrence River is simply stunning, with its hills, valleys and waterfalls — not to mention a couple of mighty bison.
A Mexican journalist’s corruption investigations led to death threats and persecution against her. She has been forced to flee her country, but many of her colleagues were murdered before they could do the same.
Remember Gattaca? The superb film describes the contrasting fates of two brothers, one of whom was genetically optimized at birth. A few years later, in another movie, The Island, a community of prisoners discovers one day they are nothing but clones of super-privileged people and that their sole purpose is to provide fresh organs as […]
This week, we shine the spotlight on India: P FOR PICHAI Google’s surprise announcement that it was restructuring its businesses under a new parent company called Alphabet was a significant boost to India’s national pride, with much of the media coverage focused on Google’s new CEO, Indian-born Sundar Pichai. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick […]
This week’s currency setbacks for the world’s second-largest economy have created a financial ripple effect across the globe, with stock market nosedives and raw material prices dropping to dangerously low levels.
Hundreds of thousands of Asian university graduates in both the the U.S. and China are opting for startups and business ventures, not finance or industries, as the path to riches.
Videos and pictures showing female police officers violently reprimanding alleged harassers over the Eid holiday weekend in Egypt drew both praise and scorn.
TEL AVIV — Despite its ongoing problems, the Palestinian economy has recently shown significant signs of recovery. It’s particularly evident after a period of deep recession, economist Yitzhak Gal notes in an article published by a Tel Aviv University journal. The Palestinian Authority has faced the threat of collapse and, with it, the destruction of […]
Corriere della Sera, Aug. 13, 2015 The Italian navy rescued 52 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea Tuesday after a rubber dinghy sank. Spotted by a navy helicopter, the vessel appeared to be deflating and a ship rushed to the scene, rescuing the migrants. The survivors, who were taken to Lampedusa island, said that there had […]
STUTTGART — Experts are hailing it as a global novelty, and inventors are celebrating it as the “innovation of an era.” The new euro coins that will be released in spring 2016 have a ring of blue plastic minted into them, and the oddity is expected to make them a desirable export. Coins are typically […]
ISLAM QALA — It’s almost midday when, under a blazing sun, the first bus transporting Afghans expelled from Iran arrives. At the border crossing of Islam Qala, in western Afghanistan and 460 miles from the capital Kabul, two metal sentry boxes are built opposite one another. Over one flaps the Iranian flag, on the other […]
A Turkish journalist travels with an Alawite fixer to Damascus to understand what life is like in the Syrian capital as war in the country rages. Life goes on, but it’s not all grim.