A Syrian refugee living in a tent near the border with Turkey has lost his home, but he is preserving the family business of creating beautiful works of traditional mosaic art.
Author: Patrick Randall
More than three years since the Jan. 25 revolution, and with much having returned to the past, signs are everywhere of a shell-shocked nation. Analysis of an Egyptian psychiatrist.
Carmen Tulia Ortega recently came face-to-face with a former paramilitary chief responsible for some of the deaths of her loved ones. No, she did not forgive him.
Sixty years ago this week, on October 16, 1954, a 19-year-old Elvis Presley stepped on stage at the Louisiana Hayride radio show in the town of Shreveport, Louisiana. Backed by his band, the young man from Memphis, Tennessee, played a song he recorded just a few months earlier called “That’s All Right.” The first ever […]
Diyarbakir, the “Kurdish capital” of Turkey, is living in fear of the ISIS jihadists who have gained ground across the Syrian border in Kobani. But there is also the old enemy: Ankara.
Leftist movements in the Arab World are divided and marginalized, even after leading the region’s democracy uprisings. In Tunis, Arab leftists got together to try to reverse course.
Nearly 40 years after the Sex Pistols’ first began transforming music forever, Johnny Rotten is still not ready to calm down: There’s the release of his memoir Anger is an Energy, the upcoming recording of a new album with PIL and a concert at London’s O2 arena in December. In between two book signings across […]
A steady stream of Syrians are joining the National Defense Force, a loyalist reserve force set up in 2012 by President Bashar al-Assad. For many it’s the only way to make a living.
One of Spain’s richest women is up against banks insisting she pay back her debts. How did the heiress to the Koplowitz construction dynasty come to this?
Villagers in the mountain outpost of Melung are among the few in rural Indonesia who can solve daily problems – and sell their products – thanks to an onsite Internet connection.
Clinics and industrialists are trying to make use of the unique fibers of spider webs. But producing the precious molecule that forms it in sufficient quantities isn’t easy.
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Global Charts #7
It’s almost the weekend! Time to see what the world’s been listening to this week. Worldcrunch: Outsiders, “Summertime Blues” Austria: Meghan Trainor, “All About That Bass” Dominican Republic: Mozart La Para, “Pa Gozar” Swaziland: M.anifest & HHP, “Jigah” Saudi Arabia: Ismaeel Mubarak, “Shoog” Macau: Jinny Ng, “Love Is Not Easy” Source: Hot Music Chart
Kang Chun-hyok, a 29-year-old North Korean defector and hip hop artist now living in South Korea, wants to release his first album in December and become the first internationally recognized hip hop artist of his native country. Kang was born in North Korea’s Onsung County, North Hamkyung Province. In an interview with the Indonesian radio […]
Since the Egyptian government cut fuel subsidies earlier this year, the cost of fuel has hit working Egyptians where it hurts. Carpooling and even bus-pooling are gaining steam.
Haiti has the highest maternal mortality rate in the Americas. Where female sexuality is taboo and abortions illegal, it all happens clandestinely, and in the worst possible health conditions.
Many local journalists fled Deir Ezzor when ISIS arrived – and the ones who stayed behind are forced to abide by the extremist group’s draconian list of 11 rules.
They want to expel “non-European” immigrants and expound ugly racial theories. A reporter sits in at the controversial international gathering even the Hungarian government tried to ban.
The proliferation of Latin American multinationals – multilatinas – is the surest sign that the region is freeing itself of its 20th century central vice: selling raw materials to a single patron power.
With no electricity or gas, enterprising locals in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta have begun extracting fuel products by melting plastic scavenged from destroyed buildings.
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The Global Village Has Become A Nightmare
Coined a half-century ago by Marshall McLuhan, the ‘global village’ had come to express hope in a connected world. Now, such plagues as ISIS and Ebola, show how that can turn against us.
What is at stake in Brazil’s Oct. 5 presidential election? If Dilma Rousseff winds up losing, we could see a return to clientelism and realignment with the U.S.
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Global Charts #6
This week, people in Turkmenistan are dancing to Kiesza. In Uganda, they’re listening to Korede Bello. We’re looking forward to the weekend with this band from Birmigham: Worldcrunch: Black Sabbath, “War Pigs” Spain: Sia, “Chandelier” Panama: MAGIC!, “Rude” Uganda: Korede Bello, “Cold Outside” United Arab Emirates: John Legend, “All Of Me” Turkmenistan: Kiesza, “Hideaway” Source: […]
In an article published on Immersive, a new website that enables easily produced and elegant storytelling, Paris-based writer and musician Ilan Moss delivers a fascinating account of Italy’s “Trallaleri” singers. This ancient form of European polyphonic singing can still be found in the quiet streets of the port city of Genoa. Trallalero is usually performed […]
At Munich’s Oktoberfest, an hour-by-hour account of the emergencies, medical and otherwise, when all the beer-drinking and dirndl-chasing go too far. (Note: Watch out for the Aussies.)
The automobile market in China is at full throttle, but customers are extremely fickle. What are automakers – foreign and domestic – supposed to do to build brand loyalty?
You’ve been with the professors, and they all like your looks… A group of five Swedish scientists of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have revealed that they have been inserting Bob Dylan lyrics and song titles into research articles for the past 17 years as part of a bet. The scientist who winds up quoting […]
With its racist ideology and its customs from another era, the KKK is still poisoning the minds of children and wreaking havoc. The movement aspires to create a “new white America.”
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Global Charts #5
It’s Friday! Why not check out what the world is listening to? Worldcrunch: The Human Beinz, “Nobody But Me” Bulgaria: Indila, “S.O.S.” Paraguay: Nicky Jam, “Travesuras” Botswana: Meghan Trainor – All About That Bass Bahrain: MAGIC!, “Rude” Papua New Guinea: Enrique Iglesias, “Bailando” (feat. Sean Paul, Descemer Bueno & Gente de Zona) Source: Hot Music […]
Activists from Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Egypt, Greece, Tunisia and Syria gathered to swap stories and compare notes about nearly four years marked by protest, liberation and repression.
Invented by Buddhist monks, secularized and developed by Western science, mindfulness seems to be everywhere. But the aim is to make the most of life, not to seek nirvana.
In the DRC, families increasingly send the remains of deceased loved ones back to their home villages rather than bury them in the city. It is both an age-old tradition and a way to protect against irreverence.
He’s one of the most prominent names on the Chilean electronic music scene but, for the release of his debut EP, 199x, Daniel Klauser chose to be called “1991.” The young DJ and producer, also the founder of Diamante Records, released this work earlier this month and the EP’s 8 tracks are perfectly located in […]
Teams of volunteers were combing the country to try to stem the spread of the virus during a recent three-day quarantine.
With his new Kickstarter project, “The DNA Project,” Israeli-born and Brooklyn-based musician j.viewz wants to produce a new kind of album in which his fans will be able “reach into and trace each song back to its origin,” he explains on the crowdfunding site. The project offers several different interactive innovations between the artist and […]
When the Black Keys decide to cover other people’s songs, the result is usually pretty good. And when they decide to cover a masterpiece, such as Edwyn Collins’ 1994 “A Girl Like You,” it is truly a special occasion. Indeed, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, the band’s bluegrass rockers, saved the song for a gig […]
In Tartus, on Syria’s western coast, residents in relative calm. But even here, a new sectarian melting pot and a flagging war economy are beginning to take their toll.
Scottish voters have handily rejected the independence referendum. Still, Scotland is destined to gain more autonomy and drift ever farther away from London, with consequences across the UK.
In 1996, DJ Shadow released his debut album Endtroducing….., made up almost entirely of samples from various discs the American artist bought in record shops. This flagship and critically acclaimed piece of work soon became a cornerstone of the sampling culture. More than a decade later, in 2009, an Israeli musician known as Kutiman led […]
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The Popularity Of Repetitive Music Explained
There might be a reason why everyday radio tunes tend to sound the same: most humans prefer repetition over variation in their music. According to an online TED lesson by Elizabeth Hellmuth Marguli, the director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, hearing the same loops and songs over and over again […]
A German series imagines the unlikely passion between the heads of state of Europe’s two continental powers. No, no: That’s not Merkel or Hollande … and certainly not Sarkozy.