WorldcrunchBased in Lausanne, Le Temps (“The Times”) is one of Switzerland’s top French-language dailies. It was founded in 1998 as a merger among various newspapers: Journal de Geneve, Gazette de Lausanne and Le Nouveau Quotidien.
GENEVA – To distinguish themselves from Facebook and Twitter, new social networks are trying to find a different economic model. A trend is emerging – the return to paid subscriptions. From App.net to Diaspora, here is a short review of these new actors. App.net, the paying Twitter “We are selling our product, not our users.” […]
DONETSK – Four hundred miles south of Kiev, the oppressively cloudy sky overwhelms the vast plain. The only things cutting through the horizon are the slag heaps from the region’s coal mines. The coal basin of Donbass has seen better times – before Ukraine became independent in 1991, it was the heart of the Soviet […]
LONDON- We’re at 70 Lower Clapton Road, northeast London, where David and Eleanor are manning the register. While the clock approaches noon, the machine passes the 500-pounds mark (more than $810). It’s been ages since the two owners of independent bookshop “Pages of Hackney” managed to tally such amount, all done without any special marketing […]
PICHARI – Miguel doesn’t make a sound on his way to the plantation. “Best to keep a low profile, put away your microphone,” he advises. The path leads all the way over the Apurímac River, whose brown waters wind through the middle of the forest, to a clearing where shrubs of coca grow across 12 […]
SIDI BOUZID – In town to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire two years ago, Moncef Marzouki and Mustapha Ben Jaffar were greeted with stones and tomatoes. The President of Tunisia and the Head of the National Constituent Assembly had to leave the stage that was set […]
DUBLIN – Ireland, its scenery, its music, its hospitality… who has never dreamed of having a couple of drops of Irish blood in their veins? That’s the idea behind “The Gathering.” In 2013, Ireland is calling on “all the Flynns, O’Malleys and Schweitzenburgs to come back home (…) no matter when their families left.” The […]
Let’s be real, says this commentator, Israeli settlers on the West Bank aren’t going away, UN statehood for Palestine notwithstanding. Here’s another way to imagine a two-state solution.
GENEVA – Pontus Elofsson, head sommelier at Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant, ranked best restaurant in the world for the past three years, swears by them: natural wines. These are the wines with “nothing added, nothing taken away” – no sulfites, no foreign yeasts, no added sugars, no enzymes. Traditional wines, on the other hand, are “corrected […]
BARCELONA – Barcelona World. The name says it all. The project is as pretentious as its declared objective: “One of the main investment projects that will transform this region into a tourism industry leader in Europe and in the world.” This is what the Catalan Industry and Labor Minister Francesc Xavier-Mena said of the new […]
TIJUANA – There is a party going on across the wall. You can hear the sounds of families and friends, and good fun. Adriana walks towards the fence and explains that further away, some kids are flying kites. But the wind is blowing in the opposite direction. From where we stand, we won’t be able […]
TEL AVIV – Following the example of President Shimon Peres, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak did not bide their time in congratulating Barack Obama on his electoral victory November 6. They declared that the two countries “will continue to work together” and that their strategic alliance is “stronger than […]
DETROIT – An old woman stands in front of a one-armed bandit with a half-lit cigarette between her lips. She takes tokens out of a bucket of popcorn and slides them endlessly into the same slot. You can tell she has been doing this for years. Further in, at the blackjack table, two young men […]
LISBON – Manuela, an animal rights activist, is standing outside the entrance to the Entrecampos train station in Lisbon, calling out to the occasional passersby, who pretend they don’t see her. The majority of the shops in the station’s arcade are empty, and even though the building is new, there is a feeling of neglect. […]
GENEVA – The female mice are chasing the males around the cage; they raise their behinds in order to sniff their genitals, some even biting the males’ private parts. It is a strange spectacle, monitored by researchers from the University of Geneva (Unige). The phenomenon is described in an article in the latest issue of […]
PANAMA CITY – Panama’s fiscal incentives are luring more and more people to its shores: multinationals, retirees in search of sun and investors seeking new opportunities. Real estate prices are ballooning into a mini Manhattan-on-the-Pacific. The latest notable arrival is PKB Privatbank, the first private Swiss bank to open a “banking center” in Panama City. […]
PARIS – At every exhibit opening, he takes off his shirt, sits on a pedestal, his back to the public, waiting for a visitor he will never see and doesn’t want to hear. Turning on his MP3 player in order to block out cruel comments and hurtful jokes is part of the ritual. Tim Steiner […]
On the left, a wall of washing machines and stoves. On the right, a man is taking apart a vacuum cleaner, another a food processor. A little further away, an employee looking through a powerful magnifying glass pokes at a telephone with tweezers. In the background, a television set without its shell is broadcasting a […]
-Essay- On September 18, I was returning from Benin where I had been presenting my latest book, and came to the Aneho border crossing, on the Togo side. After a customs officer spent a long time questioning me on the reasons for my travel in his charming country, writing down where I had been in […]
GENEVA – Marie-Gisèle Sandoz lives by herself, and has no children or siblings. When the retiree decided it was time to make a will, it didn’t take long to decide who would be the benificiaries: three-quarters of her assets will go to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. “Ecology has always been an interest of […]
ALMATY – The sharp rise in tensions between the European Commission and Russian oil giant Gazprom is worrying the central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which are highly dependent on their gas and oil exports to the EU. “The relationship between Europe and Russia, in regards to energy, is similar to that of […]
-Analysis– Karen L. King, the first woman to occupy the Hollis Chair of Divinity at Harvard, recently caused a sensation in Rome. At the International Congress for Coptic Studies, she revealed a fragment of papyrus measuring 4 cm by 8 cm (1.6 inches by 3.15 inches), dating back to the fourth century and covered with […]
TEL AVIV – A small synagogue nestles in a dead-end street near the ocean promenade in Tel Aviv. The synagogue, used by Jews from Aleppo, Syria, was crowded last week for prayer services on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. As in the other 10,500 places of worship in Israel, the congregation recited a special […]
GENEVA – Sami, age 7, is puzzled. On the screen of his iMac, a small Darth Vader orders him to conjugate verbs in the future tense. The boy hesitates at the first question. “You… will likes?” Darth Vader squeaks. Wrong! Sami pulls his grammar book out of his desk, checks it, and corrects his answer […]
GENEVA – People strolling, music, smiles, bursts of laughter. Customers walk between clothes and trinkets, homegrown zucchini and children’s games, spread on tables or on the ground. A neighbor has brought his electric razor; another has just found a book by French sociologist Marcel Mauss. This kind of flea-market-with-veggies could be coming to your neighborhood […]
Essay: The fury of fundamentalist Muslims should not obscure efforts to consolidate democracy.
A shockwave, an explosion, a fire. The boat lets in water and topples over, passengers hang on to life boats or jump into the waves. Few circumstances have the tragic intensity of a shipwreck, which takes mere seconds to throw human beings into life-threatening situations, where the cruelest of decisions have to be made: who […]
Since June, it is possible to witness the extent of deforestation, in quasi-real time, with just a few clicks. This is thanks to Terra-i, the first satellite deforestation detection and surveillance tool in Latin America. Presented at the Rio +20 conference, Terra-i is based on calculation algorithms bio-inspired and developed at the Vaud School of […]
CAIRO – It is 6 p.m. at Shohada metro station in Cairo. On the cramped platform, a group of women use their shopping bags like shields to protect themselves from wandering hands. In Egypt, rush hour is conducive to sexual harassment, and even assault – a real plague. With a deafening screech, the train hurtles […]
LA PAZ – Nationalization is in the air — and on the ground — in Bolivia. On May 1, the country’s armed forces were sent to the offices of TDE, a Spanish company that manages three-quarters of Bolivia’s electricity network, to “take control of management and administration.” On June 20, the Colquiri pewter mine, held […]
She remembers her panic attacks at age six, whenever she lost sight of her mother at the supermarket. Later, to avoid getting lost on her way to high school, she was constantly accompanied. Andrea* is now 47-years-old and lives with her father in Vancouver, Canada. To go to work, she follows an itinerary that is […]
Wandering around Scottish putting greens — this is how Pascal Bonvin, a 52-year old Credit Suisse executive, chose to improve his English language skills. He flew to Edinburgh early this summer to learn English with a private professor. Once his daily language class was over, Pascal Bovin swapped textbooks for golf clubs. Language lessons in […]
It is hard to dispute that Iran’s geopolitical importance, both internationally and regionally, has been on the rise over the past decade. With the Arab Spring, the Islamic Republic saw a new opportunity. For Tehran, the Arab uprisings meant “the awakening of Islam,” the rise of Islamist political parties sympathetic to Iran’s plight, and a […]
JAKARTA – The color of the brackish water running down the drain across Pak Udis’ paddy field changes everyday: it goes from blue to green or red. One only needs to take a look around to understand why. A textile factory was built a few meters away from this Indonesian peasant’s parcel. Over the last […]
LA PAZ – Indigenous people armed with slings and wearing traditional ch’ullu headgear surround President Evo Morales. Soldiers pivot a cannon. A sergeant comes to present arms… If the scene wasn’t taking place on a red carpet in front of La Paz“s biggest mall, it would have been easy to mistake Bolivia for a country […]
TUNIS – Dorra Bouzid is elated as she faces the slogan-chanting crowd. “It’s the first time I’ve seen an audience at such a fever pitch,” says this emblematic journalist, who wrote the first feminist column in 1955. She feels validated in her opinion: “I’m from the generation that built independence, I’ve always believed in my […]
BERLIN – In the posh, lush Pankow neighborhood of East Berlin, nothing indicates that people are squatting the Kunterbunt house. Everything is orderly in the small brownish building, a legacy of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). There are flower bouquets on the tables and water paintings of landscapes hanging on the walls. Yet Doris, […]
ISTANBUL – For the first time in Turkey’s history, the Kurdish armed group PPK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) has kidnapped a Turkish lawmaker. Hüseyin Aygün, an MP for the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was kidnapped last Sunday in the eastern province of Tunceli. PKK has claimed responsibility for the abduction and has promised to free […]
SKOPJE – Cameras flash on Macedonia Square. There aren’t droves of foreign tourists in Skopje, but the Macedonian diaspora, back in the country on holiday, can’t believe their eyes. A huge mounted warrior is in the center of the capital, brandishing his sword skyward: counting the pedestal, the monument has a respectable height of 24 […]