Worldcrunch
MOSCOW – As they met in the Green Room at the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Yanukovych were sitting comfortably in armchairs, sharing each other’s worries about the drop in trade between their countries. Now, the Russian and Ukranian presidents told each other, is the time for decisive action, time to open up a new […]
Part of Moscow’s new striving urban class has taken its ideas and energy to the farm. A different kind of Russian revolution.
MOSCOW — Last week’s U.S. criminal complaint alleging that Russian diplomats in New York systematically defrauded Medicaid reads like a low-down scam at its worse. Moscow, however, is convinced that it is actually the latest geopolitical chess move, the result of deteriorating relations between the two countries. As the accused diplomats prepare to return to […]
GENEVA — Between a mission in Ethiopia and a meeting in Rome, Hans Herren stops over in Geneva to speak at a conference at the World Trade Organization. The Swiss agricultural engineer is a world-renowned expert in insects who has spent most of his professional life in Africa. During the 1980s and 90s, he established […]
PORT VILA — The small boat slices through the turquoise water that separates Efate from Pele — two of the 80-some islands that make up Vanuatu, a Melanesian archipelago in the southwest Pacific. Kaltuk Kalomor, Vanuatu’s Minister of Agriculture, is standing onboard, pointing out the receding coastline, a consequence of the rising sea level and […]
NGOZI — In the north of Burundi, only the wealthiest farmers have the means to buy state-subsidized fertilizer. Poorer farmers make do with the garbage they can collect in the city — to the great delight of urban dwellers. Nsengimana Evariste is a poor pygmy farmer who collects garbage in the city of Ngozi. If […]
Chickens can be pretty bird-brained, but keeping laying hens in their backyard has taught these Portland city folk a lot.
Older people in San Basilio de Palenque know 64 edible plants native to the region. Their grandchildren, about half. How can the agriculture past of this region not become history?
WUWEI — Twilight is falling at the edge of the Tengger Desert, and the vines stretching out row after row are a snapshot of peace and serenity. A towering red castle-like building standing not far from the vineyard displays the name of the property — Weilong (Grand Dragon) Desert Oasis Organic Winery. “We are about […]
Russia is using “obligatory patriotism” and university “deans of ideology” to ward off separatist movements that challenge the central authority.
MOSCOW – Recently, Russian leaders have been meeting more and more frequently with their Asian counterparts – Vladimir Putin visited Vietnam and South Korea last week, and in the past two weeks there have been official meetings with India, China and Japan. Many are starting to talk about a strategic shift in Moscow. What is […]
Rising religious objections to the practice come 93 years after the Soviet Union became the first country to legalize abortions. Today, they are still legal – and free.
With the United States no longer able to impose its position on Internet security and governance in the wake of the NSA spying scandal, Moscow is stepping into the void.
RABAT — At the mouth of the Bou Regreg River in Morocco, the small blue boats go from one shore to the other. The tireless rowers have assured the exchange of goods between Rabat and Salé, a commuter town on the other side of the river. “We wanted to preserve the boats, because they are […]
What does “sustainability” really mean? A forward-looking French architect offers his reflections as part of Worldcrunch Impact: Smarter Cities.
HAMBURG — When Natalie Leroy talks about this German city’s water, her voice changes. It’s as if it was bubbling directly from the holy spring in Lourdes, not from one of the thousands of faucets in Hamburg. “It’s just water…” you might want to tell her, but then you would be getting it totally wrong. […]
BEIJING — The Chinese capital likes to dazzle visitors with the biggest and best projects in the world. Consider, for example, the Olympic Park built for the 2008 games. It is spread over nearly 12 square kilometers, intersected by a canal that, seen from above, resembles a dragon. The park is an exhibition of the […]
IVRY-SUR-SEINE — The Plateau special planning district in this small town south of Paris could almost be mistaken for a regular construction site. Since 2007 the multidisciplinary artist Stefan Shankland has guided the construction of some 1,000 apartments according to an “action research” program launched by the city government and developed over the course of […]
MOSCOW — The U.S. government is convinced that Edward Snowden is violating Vladimir Putin’s “ultimatum.” The Russian president had said in July that the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower could stay in Russia only if he “stopped his work that was meant to cause damage to our American partners.” In August, Snowden was granted asylum […]
And it’s about to get worse in the country that has granted temporary asylum to Edward Snowden.
Georgia’s outgoing President Mikhail Saakashvili has been a darling in the West. Now that his opponents are in power, his fate will tell us much about the nation’s young democracy.
MOSCOW — It’s not often that the government’s plan and the people’s plan match as well as they do right now. The government is projecting an increase in real incomes in the next couple of years, but it also anticipates a decrease in the amount that people will save. And that is precisely what people […]
SESTRORETSK — There was a time when this northwest Russian city was considered the engine of the workers’ revolution. It had been the largest weapons factory in Imperial Russia, and just after the launch of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, workers frequently set off from here to expropriate property from the Czar’s followers in nearby St. […]
France’s star architect Dominique Perrault is focusing his attention downward: “We come from the earth and we shouldn’t be afraid of it…”
The Arctic, where Russia has dispatched military resources, is the last disputed area of such massive proportions. It’s a region where the interests of Moscow and Washington collide, an excellent stage for a Cold War parody.
Moscow’s goal be an exporter of manufactured goods must be done in the face of major political and financial uncertainties.
Our Worldcrunch Impact special editor has lived in half a dozen different cities around the world, always with an eye out for the local features that improve modern life.
MOSCOW — The timing of the Geneva 2 conference about the future of Syria’s chemical weapons has changed once again. According to our sources, it is probably not going to be mid-November — as Russia and the U.S. had first indicated — but rather at the end of that month, or maybe even in December. […]
MOSCOW — In the wake of last weekend’s anti-immigrant riots in Moscow and the burning of a produce warehouse, the Russian government still seems to be holding on stubbornly to the idea that the problem is simply uncontrolled migration from the post-Soviet states. The government has made frequent tweaks to the immigration laws in the […]
Russians have one of the highest levels of indifference, or anomie, in the world. They don’t know whether they want tea or coffee, much less democracy or authoritarianism.
To satisfy Russian apetites, frozen shipments of the low-end *red caviar* have come in from Alaska. Not all are pleased.
-Editorial- SANTIAGO — What’s happening in the United States, with the partial federal government shutdown and the threat not to raise the country’s debt limit, is perhaps the most serious political crisis the country has seen in more than 100 years. There are those who downplay these developments, because the government has been shuttered before […]
BISHKEK — Russia has reached a deal with the leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to provide military aid to the two Central Asian nations. Though the details are still being hammered out, Moscow appears to have netted a deal with potentially major geopolitical implications. “We have agreed with our colleagues regarding the delivery of weapons, […]
GIESSEN — It will make you crazy — the pyramid simply does not want to fit into the glass cube. Melih turns it again, this time just a little, and then sticks it in the open side of the cube again. No luck. He tries more forcefully, pressing down on the pyramid. But the fifth […]
BERLIN — Ritual circumcision for Muslim and Jewish boys remains legal in Germany. Germany’s legislative body, the Bundestag, decided as much last year in what was a win for the country’s religious minorities. But Muslim girls must participate in co-ed swim classes, according to a recent decision by Germany’s highest court on such matters — […]
-Editorial- The fact that Dilma Rousseff decided to postpone her official visit to Washington, which had been planned for Oct. 23, has clearly illustrated that the United States’ decision to spy on the Brazilian president was not in the best interest of the United States. Washington has very little to gain from reading Rousseff’s emails […]
MOSCOW — Since the first traffic camera was installed in Moscow in 2008, a new kind of traffic violation has been born — license-plate camouflage. The cameras capture license plate numbers, which is how drivers who break traffic laws are identified. Tickets are then sent by mail. More than 60% of traffic tickets are now […]
I was the manager of Logos Bookstore in Calgary, Canada for more than 30 years, and during the last 15 years we primarily served the education community. That experience allowed me to witness sweeping changes in technology, and the way it is being applied in the classroom. As parents and board members became more familiar […]
NEW YORK — At long last, the members of the United Nations Security Council have reached an agreement on a Syria resolution. The West has agreed to give up on including language that Russia had furiously opposed — that is, to automatically sanction the use of force against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he fails […]
– Commentary- MOSCOW — Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of defense is many things, but lazy isn’t one of them. Dimitry Rogozin has been jumping from city to city — holding conferences about the construction of new warships and delivering grandiose critiques of the leaders of the Russian space program. Everywhere he goes, he […]