The 1948 neo-realist cinematic masterpiece can be a key to understand Italian society today. With a digital twist.
Category: Ideas
Opinion shapers have a habit these days of disregarding facts, be they scientific or economic. Opinions matter, of course, but shouldn’t supersede well-founded knoweldge.
The Mexican president’s overhaul of public life is riding roughshod over interests, including those of the poor, his own voters, and a ‘defenseless’ middle class.
Long before Uber’s multi-billion-dollar IPO, the ride-hailing app has been shaking the economic and legal foundations of the dozens of countries around the world where it’s landed. Not only has it disrupted the transportation sector, but the San Francisco-based digital taxi service has introduced a whole new way for companies to deliver their services and […]
A Colombian-American deals with different misconceptions in different parts of the world. Ask him who he is before you ask him where he’s from.
Just as they were during the information wars of the 18th century, education and critical thinking are key antidotes to disinformation.
Unless Argentina finds the right leaders to undertake crucial reforms of the state and public life, it may face mass anger and democratic degradation seen elsewhere.
Older politicians seemingly face an image problem in some Latin American countries. But in this continent of massive corruption scandals, can age really be the issue for voters?
Bogged down by months of protests, the embattled French president now faces a new kind of challenge. But the disastrous cathedral fire may also be something of an opportunity.
In all likelihood, the cause of the Notre Dame fire is linked to mundane management issues. It’s a symbol for today’s French culture.
Three Colombians ended up in Atena Lucana, Italy, instead of Atenas, Greece.
The events that have marked the 800-year history of the Notre Dame cathedral bear witness to the monument’s eternal meaning and national symbolism.
It started as an unlikely marriage of convenience: after Italy’s elections in March 2018, the far-right League party and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) formed a coalition government. Fighting over the choice of prime minister, the two parties settled for an unknown political figure: Giuseppe Conte, a lawyer whose 12-page résumé raised more than […]
How the current Brexit debacle looks (and feels) from a member of what may be Britain’s last generation of the EU’s Erasmus student exchange program.
A Le Monde journalist attempts to keep up with French baking superstar Pierre Hermé, one of the world’s best pâtissiers. It does not go well.
Inflation and recession are doing little to bridge the South American nation’s deep political divide.
Zuzana Čaputová becomes the country’s first female head of state, and brings hope to Slovaks looking to end to corruption and to others for a response to populism across Europe.
Ramy Shehata is a 13-year-old boy who saved the lives of as many as 50 classmates during a March 20 school bus attack in Italy. The driver, an Italian citizen of Senegalese origin, hijacked the bus, threatening to set it on fire. Shehata secretly — and courageously — sent out an alert on the phone […]
–OpEd– BERLIN — The late Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a great European who led Germany through its unification, was wrong. European integration is no longer “irreversible.” Today, in 2019, disintegration is the declared goal of many member states. It is dependency, not independence, that has until now made Europe strong. For the future, Europe does not […]
The Brexit debacle has had at least one virtue: Eurosceptic leaders from other countries are no longer pushing to leave the EU. But that is only part of the story.
Former center-right politician Flavia Perina says Italy won’t easily move backwards when it comes to women’s rights, because the female electorate is watchful.
The center-right populist Italian government has recently bowed to Chinese flattery, announcing it was ready to sign a Memorandum of Understanding that will connect Rome and Beijing on a modern Silk Road. At the end of a long, slow path of decline and political confusion, Rome is in bad need of fresh investment to boost […]
The white supremacist who killed 50 at New Zealand mosques is like other mass killers attached to myths of ideological identity that lack any real political horizon.
Italy’s political leaders who rejoiced with Brexit referendum are now silent.
In northern Colombia, large-scale banana and palm oil estates have long used their clout to control land and water resources and leave peasant farmers high and dry.
The aggressive Republican stance on Venezuela reflects an attempt to seduce Latino voters in Florida.
Categories
Europe On Brexit: Pick Your Metaphor
-Analysis- “It’s almost like Shakespeare: Brexit or no Brexit? That was the question.” German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle resorted to a passing twist on Hamlet after the British Parliament delivered what may be the final defeat Tuesday night in Prime Minister Theresa May’s attempt to lead the UK to an orderly divorce from the European […]
Fears of an economic meltdown in Mexico provoked by the new socialist president have not materialized, even if the economy has slowed and must remains to be seen.
-Editorial- BOGOTÁ — As the world recently watched humanitarian supply trucks burn on a bridge between the Colombian town of Cúcuta and the Venezuelan border, locals anxiously wondered if aid would ever arrive in a region plagued with years of economic crisis. Colombian Attorney General Fernando Carrillo echoed these sentiments after visiting Cúcuta and meeting […]
The EU desperately needs a new industrial doctrine — and a healthy dose of R&D spending — to revive its economy and fend off outside competition.
Categories
Battle Of The Ages In Algeria
-Analysis- It’s a striking contrast in both age and public exposure. Defying a sometimes repressive police force, a bold youth-led Algerian street protest movement has risen up against the North African country’s aging and largely invisible leader. Tens of thousands demonstrated over the past couple of weeks against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s decision to seek a […]
How is it that analysis of the rising world power is reduced to an abstract notion from the field of genetics? Established experts on China are not looking at the future.
In the Colombian capital, residents are starting to balk at the arrival of so many desperate Venezuelans. There’s empathy, yes. But also caution and alarm.
His record in Britain’s former colonies more closely resembles that of a war criminal than a defender of democracy and freedom.
Chinese students visiting Chile’s universities are eager to learn Spanish but reluctant to adopt its socio-cultural habits. How much does the language gap different identities?
PARIS — European history has shown, time and again, that anti-Semitism is an indicator that the social state has become unstable. It’s therefore not shocking that it’s developing today in France, linked in particular to fringes of the anti-establishment yellow vest movement. The paths laid between a society in crisis and anti-Semitism have been laid […]
The straight-talking senator from Vermont energized the 2016 presidential race. But he faces a very different playing field this time around.
As tensions between Washington an Beijing continue to build, smaller nations like Argentina should stay out of the fray and instead strengthen regional integration.
The world is becoming divided again as China takes the USSR’s place facing the United States. This new situation makes the European project more relevant than ever, exactly at the moment it is most in jeopardy.
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And If Venezuela’s Maduro Survives?
There is a concerted push underway to remove the Venezuelan leader from power. But there’s no guarantee it’ll work.