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.
OXFORD — The walls in this Oxford, Mississippi, bookstore are covered with pictures of authors. One by one, Richard Howorth comments on them, as if this place were an open book narrating a multitude of unfinished stories. With his wife, this keen-eyed slender man with a dry humor has owned and managed Square Books, housed […]
Switzerland’s Federal Council, it’s seven-member collective head of state, has been called to intervene to guarantee children the right to be heard, notably in divorce cases.
Video game competitions can attract millions of spectators online. A Swiss “cyber athlete” shares his story as the booming industry sets its sights on real-world credibility.
Tiny freshwater hydrae have incredible powers of regeneration. In the quest for human longevity, researchers in Switzerland are trying to learn from their very little and long lives.
GAZA — Days after Israel’s “elimination” of four senior Hamas commanders, the “hunt for traitors” is in full swing inside the Islamic organization. At least 24 suspected “collaborators with Israel” have already been executed, but the hunt continues. The same happened for several weeks in 2009, immediately after Operation Cast Lead. It led to the […]
The Russian hacking community is as ambigious as the country itself: admired and feared, all at once. A reformed hacker takes us into the bowels of the criminal Deep Web.
Top executives and even ordinary folks use the skills of the French company Net Dating Assistant to pose for them online and woo would-be lovers.
Parallel portraits in the making of a civil war: one man is fighting for Kiev, the other is a Russian separatist.
Like hip hop in American cities, funk carioca was born in Brazil’s inner cities, and now has arrived in one of Rio’s most prestigious theaters. Yet police remain wary of what’s behind the beats.
SAINT PETERSBURG — It is two steps away from the Hermitage Museum, a few steps more from the Kazan Cathedral, at the corner of Nevsky Prospect, Saint Petersburg’s principal avenue. This is, in other words, a prestigious address. The spacious premises exude comfort and money and are seemingly designed for welcoming businessmen rather than students […]
So-called lifeloggers track and record their personal data, often sharing it with the world. Why? To make connections that can improve health and sleep…and maybe avoid oblivion.
GENEVA — Philippe Rey-Gorrez, founder of the software company Teamwork, has a passionate belief in what can be achieved in groups. And this self-taught IT engineer, officer in the French army at 18 and sports enthusiast has applied his passion to his work in a very real way: He offers the 280 employees of his […]
BUREBIEY — Six months ago, the brown water of the Baro River was flowing peacefully between South Sudan and Ethiopia, and the town of Burebiey was just another dot on the map in western Ethiopia. But now, we are standing at a key crossing point for refugees of a spreading civil war. Throughout the day, […]
Facing advancing jihadist fighters, the Iraqi army fled without fighting, and the city of Mosul fell on June 10. Kirkuk, a multiethnic oil city, has been saved by Kurdish fighters. So far.
Kneeling on the sidewalk, Guilherme and his friends are busy preparing their banner ahead of a protest march against the World Cup, which starts in São Paulo on Thursday. In the nation of soccer, people have grown increasingly disenchanted and the Copa is growing more unpopular by the day. Only 48% of Brazilians support the […]
-OpEd- PARIS — Let’s be honest, Syria’s June 3 presidential election was nothing but a giant government-orchestrated masquerade. Bashar al-Assad will remain president of Syria, a country whose population has been largely decimated, as the three-year-long conflict has turned the country into a battleground for international jihadists from Shia and Sunni Islam, with the direct […]
GENEVA — It used to be that friendships ended in all sorts of ways. But these days, we simply “unfriend” instead. From the playground to Facebook, the process has evolved. You put the cursor on the name of the person you want out of your life, you slide over to the “Friends” button, let the […]
GENEVA — When it comes to insomnia, some use the megaphone of the digital era, posting Facebook status updates to round up companions of misfortune — one-night or lifelong problem sleepers who want to talk. But there are myriad other coping mechanisms for this growing societal issue. And though insomnia can mean pure agony, it […]
“Science needs time. Bear with us, while we think,” declares a new movement of researchers pushing back against the demands to always make breakthroughs and publish findings.
The Chinese-born fashion designer creates clothes that react to light, sound, even a passing glance. What would Lady Gaga think?
In Switzerland, famous and infamous for its secretive banks, the digital currency Bitcoin is already arriving in the real economy.
The French navy has announced it will allow women to work in submarines starting in 2017. A Le Temps columnist contemplates whether that takes gender equality too far.
Falsely considered a type of magic, achieving hypnotic trance is already part of our everyday lives. Its potential applications for medical science are vast, if still largely unexplained.
WASHINGTON — Calvin is discovering a new popularity in America. No, not the character from the Bill Watterson comic Calvin and Hobbes, but John Calvin, the 16th-century French Protestant Reformer. The rise of this latest wave of neo-Calvinism, which follows another revival at the beginning of the 20th century, is all the more surprising because […]
KABUL — Boxing is Shigofa Haidari’s passion. But in Afghanistan, that means practicing three days a week in Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium, where the Taliban used to organize public executions. Haidari is wearing a light headscarf today. An injury prevents her from training, but she is happy to watch her friends go through all the basic […]
MILOVE — This town located 900 kilometers from Kiev and Moscow is unwittingly embroiled in the bitter, and at times deadly, dispute between Russia and Ukraine. The border separating the two countries divides the town of Milove in half, and Ukrainian residents in this poor region vitally need to trade with the richer Russia to […]
Did you know that city life is good for bees?
A February double murder in the South African city of Soweto illustrates a quiet rise in demon worship among teenagers, influenced in part by American pop culture icons.
The massacre of 29 people in Kunming this month is related to Xinjiang, a province where the relations between the Han Chinese and Uyghur are more tense than ever.
CAIRO — He might as well already be president. His photo is on every wall in Cairo. His constant television appearances, broadcasts of his speeches and video clips glorifying the army eclipse the presence of interim leader Adly Mansour. Even Field Marshall Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s mention of his night visions from 35 years ago, in […]
A national referendum to limit new immigrants shows Swiss society split along political, geographic and linguistic lines. It also leaves the nation isolated from its EU neighbors.
GENEVA — If the term “fast-track surgery” conjures a fast-food restaurant in your mind, then some explanation is in order. The term refers to a protocol that can reduce hospital stays by 30% to 50%, without any higher risk of readmission than ordinary surgery. In a study published last June in the British Journal of […]
The comparisons to the present are striking: a 1830s Swiss banker who helped launch the newly formed nation of Greece on the back of credit it could never pay back.
A unique competition for humans seeking to inhabit Mars has prompted more sign-ups than you might have ever imagined. Inside a space program with the most pioneering of spirits.
Some 400,000 people leave the country every year to work abroad, often recruited by agencies that are really human traffickers. A close-up view of the human toll in Katmandu.
BAKU — Amid the crashing and banging of dumpster trucks loaded with ballast, Fazil Gazi is a prime witness to one of the most famous oil hills in the world as it enters a new era. In all the books dedicated to the black gold of the Caspian sea, this maze of small streets with […]
GENEVA — Have you heard the story of the white supremacist who found out on live television that he’s part-Sub-Saharan African? It happened on NBC last month when Craig Cobbs, who wanted to turn a small North Dakota town into an all-white enclave, agreed to take a DNA test. Broadcaster Trisha Goddard, a British woman […]
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 […]
The recession of 2008 created a new population of poor in the U.S., concentrated in the outskirts of once thriving urban areas. In Atlanta, poverty has risen by 122%.