A heated national debate in Germany over raising the retirement age is posing the wrong questions. A German writer in the U.S. sees a different solution.
Author: Bertrand Hauger
Bertrand Hauger is a graduate of La Sorbonne Nouvelle school of bilingual journalism, and joined Worldcrunch after working briefly as a reporter in a local newspaper in his native eastern France. He now serves as Worldcrunch’s deputy editor-in-chief and director of content.
The former chief of Israel’s elite intelligence unit addresses a technology conference, waxing on privacy, cyber war and a new generation used to documenting and sharing everything.
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You Shot My Battleship!
The Bay of Brest, in northwestern France’s Brittany region, has been an important military port for centuries. I walked a hundred meters or so on a forbidden but unguarded path overlooking a naval base to take a picture of this fine example of our glorious French fleet.
Yes, the Google ‘monster’ is too big and too powerful. But EU politicians imposing a breakup of the U.S. tech giant is not the solution. A mix of arm-twisting and open competition can do the trick.
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Who Buys That?
If snake skin and dried llama fetuses are your thing, then La Paz” El Mercado de las Brujas (The Witches’ Market) is a must-see.
France knows the place, China has the money, and now a major joint investment fund for Africa is in the works between Paris and Beijing to help drive the continent’s economic expansion.
The young Turkish-German woman was killed after defending others, and in death has become a symbol of how immigration is central to Germany’s modern history.
They moved to Israel from Argentina, or are the descendants of those who did. Despite the insecurity and fading hopes of peace, Argentine Israelis refuse to pack their bags in despair.
A Swiss NGO convenes representatives of 35 rebel groups in Geneva to talk about the mechanics, and great difficulties, of respecting humanitarian laws when fighting civil wars.
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Romanian Ride
Romania was one of the largest automobile producers in Central and Eastern Europe during the Communist period. But that doesn’t mean horse-driven carts were entirely discontinued, especially on a traditional wedding day like this one.
SHANGHAI — Every summer, the little town of Yulin in southeastern China celebrates the summer solstice by tasting local dishes: lychees (a Chinese fruit) in alcohol, for example, and, perhaps the favorite main course delicacy, dog meat. Dog carcasses are visibly displayed on street stalls — for now. But last year, animal rights activists began […]
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FIRST QUARTER MOON – Dec. 1-7, 2014
(March 21 to April 19) The week starts with an unusual sense of melancholy. The First Quarter Moon in Pisces shows you the challenges you’ll face in order to learn the teachings of the month. It’s a lesson of independence and an exploration of new territories. The downside may be a sense of loss and […]
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Awkward Statue
Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome’s Piazza Navona, with its four allegorical statues representing the Nile, the Ganges, the Rio de la Plata and the Danube, contains one of the most comical pieces of sculpture I’ve ever seen. Actually, Nile’s head (center) is covered with a piece of cloth because at the time […]
Bidding farewell to those who died this past month.
Amid the mayhem of civil war, huge money is to be made from stealing and selling archeological treasures from Iraq and Syria. ISIS ambitions are fueling an already huge black market.
The U.S. President has shown a mix of political pragmatism and historic vision in pushing forward in the face of a backward-looking Congress.
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Surprise Sign
We arrived in our Los Angeles hotel at night, happy to rest after a long trip. The next morning, Easter Sunday, we got a nice Easter egg: This was the view from our hotel room!
MUNICH — For people driving through Germany in a normal car, things couldn’t be easier. With just a single debit card, they can refuel everywhere at anytime. That is not, unfortunately, the case for people who drive electric cars. To travel, let’s say, from Wolfsburg via Stuttgart and Munich to Berlin and back, that person […]
The Louis Vuitton Foundation is a new high-profile cultural offering for the city of lights, but art’s higher calling becomes just a tool of luxury promotion for the ultra-privileged.
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Venice Of The East
Here is a view from a boat trip we took on the khlongs, the canals that crisscross Bangkok. Traffic is so bad in the Thai capital that locals still rely heavily on these water routes to go from one place to another. The many khlongs earned Bangkok its nickname of the “Venice of the East” […]
The news quantified…
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Freedom Skyline
Five years after Latvia’s independence was recognized by the Soviet Union (one of the last things the dying Union got to do), we toured the Baltic states, still then in the early stages of painstaking de-Russification. But from above, Riga, the largest city in the three Baltic republics, looked as beautifully Latvian as ever.
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Mourning Has Broken
Back in the 1960s, many Greek widows, like these two in the northern Pindus mountains, still chose to dress in black for the rest of their lives after the death of their husbands. Nowadays the mourning period tends to be somewhat shorter, although traditionally not less than 40 days.
Chinese public and private enterprises are looking abroad, and expanding ever more into higher technology industries. It will reshape the future for China, and the world.
KAAFU ATOLL — The Maldives are slowly sinking, as coral reefs off the coasts of the islands have been destroyed and washed ashore because of warming water temperatures, all of which means sand isn’t propagating as it should. That’s why Thomas Le Berre is dragging an iron frame along the beach of Kuda Huraa. With […]
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NEW MOON – Nov. 24-30, 2014
(March 21 to April 19) The New Moon in Sagittarius turns on your innate desire for conquest. There are no limits, you sail in the same wind that sustained the Columbus caravelle toward the discovery of the new continent. You are launched into the new with a confidence and enthusiasm that you have not felt […]
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Promenade Des Francais
Time to share a little vintage family portrait. This was my daughter Cécile’s first trip outside of her native Franche-Comté; here she’s with my wife and my father, walking along the Promenade des Anglais on Nice’s Bay of Angels. In the background you can catch a glimpse of the world-famous Hotel Negresco.
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O Luna Mia
We all share the same sky, but each of us gazes up from a unique place on earth. Now you can follow “O Luna Mia, the weekly horoscope of Simon, Italy’s most trusted astrologer, translated for the first time into English. His unique perspective comes from Rome, The Eternal City. Che fortuna! Learn all about […]
Beijing wants to control nearly half the world’s robot production by 2020, but the plans to get there have some fundamental flaws. There may still be time to reprogram it all.
Gays and lesbians rarely come out of the closet in a society that has more generally been ‘anti-sex’ since the Communists took over.
A policy of war abroad, mixed with tighter border controls at home, won’t meet the challenge.
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Illegal Crossing
Niagara Falls are far from being the most impressive waterfalls we’ve seen, but it comes with a couple of neat features. The Whirlpool Aero Car for example, which traverses the river above the Niagara whirlpool downstream of the falls. It’s also one of the few times we crossed a border without having our passports stamped: […]
BUENOS AIRES — The right to protection from arbitrary detention, known as Habeas Corpus, is one of humanity’s greatest achievements, the fruit of England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. Now, a group of animal-rights activists in Argentina is demanding its application for an orangutan, which they say is being “illegally deprived of its liberty” inside the […]
In Munich, a bizarre case of a woman who refused to bury her mother is raising a series of practical and legal questions.
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Desert Martians
I knew Wadi Rum in southern Jordan, had been used as a filming location: Much of Lawrence of Arabia was shot there in 1962, which made sense since the British officer himself passed through the region in the early 20th century. What I didn’t know was that since then, several science fiction movies were filmed […]
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Ask A Ghost
Legend has it that if you stand at the front gate of Dunguaire Castle and ask a question, you’ll have an answer by the end of the day. I don’t know who’s doing the answering, but I’d be more curious to hear from the ghosts of W.B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw, the two Irish […]
BEIJING — The Mexican government announced Nov. 4 that it had awarded its first high-speed rail contract to a Chinese-led consortium. But as the exciting news was still buzzing in the Chinese press, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto suddenly canceled the deal five days later. As the media later reported, the consortium led by China […]
ABU DHABI — The indefatigable Jean Nouvel, 69, can be proud of his project. For that matter, he is. The star French architect shakes hands, hugs, takes in all the praise with a stoic pride. The construction site is massive in scale. In the sand, under the searing sun, 5,000 people are hard at work […]
Polygamy is rampant, women are woefully underrepresented in politics and without the same land rights of men. But some Kenyan males have launched a surprising protest to any threats to their privileges.
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Central Safari
If you click on “show story map” at the top of this page, you’ll have a global view of the slides published so far, and begin to get an idea of how widely my wife and I traveled. Still, you may notice some gaps on the map — and Zimbabwe was the closest we got […]