Worldcrunch
It’s part trade war, part cyber defense — and the rumblings of conflict grow louder as countries (and companies alike) maneuver to protect their high-tech assets. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently announced that Japan would tighten export controls for advanced technologies in response to new U.S. trade restrictions aimed at China, writes the Yomiuri Shimbun […]
The U.S. president’s abrupt decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria was short-lived. But backpedal as he might, the damage is already done.
Democratic candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have both taken ideas straight from US-based French professors Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez.
Robert Frank, who died last week at the age of 94, was one of the true giants in the history of photography. Known first and foremost for his 1958 book The Americans, a raw, all-encompassing portrait of America’s post-War society
Economic storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. But just because everyone’s talking about it doesn’t mean governments are ready to deal with it — in fact, quite the opposite.
President Trump is not curbing global trade alone, but is part of a trend traced back to the crash of 2008. And the legislation actually dates back to the 1950s.
Burk Uzzle’s image of loving (and muddy) couple at Woodstock has become a symbol for the 1960s hopes for a better future.
A lot of the current debate surrounding the world of work is about figuring who will get the job in the future: machines or humans? We have covered it before, and we will continue covering it. But are we becoming too fixated with the idea that robots and algorithms will replace us, that we have […]
Along with all the hardware to get to the moon and back, the Apollo 11 mission also brought along three Hasselblad 500EL cameras. With video and audio equipment to beam sound and moving images back in real-time, NASA also wanted to preserve the history in crisp, high definition photographs. Two of the Hasselblads were taken to the moon’s surface: one was a Hasselblad Data Camera with a Zeiss Biogon 60mm lens, which was attached to Neil Armstrong’s chest to document what he was seeing during his stroll on the lunar surface; the other, a Hasselblad Electric Camera (HEC) was used […]
A half-century later, Neil Armstrong’s ‘great leap’ still boggles the mind. Here’s a look back at some of the headlines that followed the historic feat.
Though seductive as pure financial innovation, Facebook’s crypto currency project risks a concentration of power that must be stopped at all costs.
Aid groups have plenty of protocols for scaling up humanitarian responses to crises. Less clear is when or how they should phase down — and eventually out.
Before we were able to feast on these luscious oranges and grapefruits of Florida“s many roadside stands, my wife and I had gotten off to a rather bumpy start in the “Sunshine State.” Landing in Miami, the first item on our list was to find our hotel. I knew it was “on the seafront” and […]
-Analysis- For press-freedom advocates, Julian Assange has long been a polarizing figure. And his arrest Thursday in London once again ignited the seemingly endless debate: Is the WikiLeaks founder, who until Thursday had been holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for years, essentially a publisher — though a notably strange one — who believes in taking radical steps to expose government secrets, and who thus should be afforded the same First Amendment protections given to news organizations? Or is he a reckless traitor — and by no means a journalist — who deserves no such consideration and who […]
PHOENIX — The sound of drums, singing and prayers marked the opening of a powwow in Phoenix on a Saturday afternoon this month. Marchers carried the flags of the United States and some of Arizona’s tribal nations onto the grass field, but the procession also included rainbow flags, and the pink and blue transgender flag. […]
As countless important women remain unrecognized in their fields, a collection of campaign groups are springing up to fight to fight that
WASHINGTON — Next, more of the same, but with more entrenched division, a bitter crossfire of allegations and then, finally, a reckoning in the form of the 2020 presidential election. The long-awaited conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is likely to harden congressional Republicans’ wall of support for President Trump, strengthen Democratic demands to hold Trump to account — and result in little change in public opinion, according to historians and politicians who have studied past national scandals. Mueller’s conclusion — he found no evidence of collusion with Russia but […]
Back in 2017, the Philadelphia Inquirer spoke with Chera Kowalski of the city’s McPherson Square Park library, which had become something of a refuge for drug addicts with nowhere else to turn. In the previous two months alone, the then 33-year-old librarian had performed CPR and administered opioid-overdose spray Narcan on eight different overdose victims. […]
The aggressive Republican stance on Venezuela reflects an attempt to seduce Latino voters in Florida.
PARIS — Ebola. Toxic air pollution. The HIV epidemic. Given the plethora of health problems we face, all-but-eradicated diseases like measles, polio and smallpox should be the least of our concerns. And yet, due to what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls “vaccine hesitancy” — the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of […]
Pigeonly is one of several applications that were designed by ex-cons and are transforming the way U.S. prisoners communicate with the outside world.
As the two superpowers get closer to an agreement, the global trade regime could suffer. History offers several precedents.
The straight-talking senator from Vermont energized the 2016 presidential race. But he faces a very different playing field this time around.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/IR3JN13nloA expand=1] Bertrand Piccard’s Selfie — © Solar Impulse | OneShot Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg accomplished a feat of aviation that few believed possible: the first Round-The-World flight, powered only by the sun, with no fuel or polluting emissions. The flight of Solar Impulse demonstrated not only that clean technologies are the future, […]
PARIS — Twice a year (for the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl), I renounce my 6-hour beauty sleep and fight timezones to tune in to a bit of live transatlantic spectacle. Blame it on three reasons, ranked by order of importance: my americanophile wife; a chance to take the temperature of U.S. cultural hegemony; […]
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service likes to boast that it is the nation’s most trusted government agency. It certainly has the trust of dope dealers. A report by the Postal Service Office of Inspector General demonstrates just how valuable the mail is as a marketing tool for drug pushers: “For example, a cocaine trafficker claimed to have used the Postal Service to successfully distribute nearly 4,000 shipments, stating that they had a 100% delivery success rate. In addition, of the 96 traffickers who indicated they used the Postal Service as their shipping provider, 43% (41) offered free, partial, or […]
Google and Amazon are trying to force us to speak politely to their AI-driven personal assistants. But giving souls to our technology is a dangerous return to the past.
There’s nothing (and everything) left to chance in the world-famous image Life magazine photographer Philippe Halsman, shot in 1948, of the legendary surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.
It’s the silent (and sullied) face of an unprecedented presidency. The partial government shutdown that Donald Trump has brought on in his battle with congressional Democrats over funding for the president’s proposed border wall with Mexico has become the longest in U.S. history.
These easy-to-build and ‘climate-change-proof’ homes are growing popular in places like Miami that are prone to hurricanes and flooding.
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — Two newly released reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee about Russian interference in the 2016 election have been nothing short of revelatory. Both studies — one produced by researchers at Oxford University, the other by the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge — describe in granular detail how the Russian government tried to sow discord and confusion among American voters. And both conclude that Russia’s campaign included a massive effort to deceive and co-opt African Americans. We now have unassailable confirmation that a foreign power sought to exploit racial tensions in the United States for its own gain. Ever […]
And why he’ll never be the savior they’re looking for…
-Analysis- NEW YORK — As 2018 comes to a close, attention is turning to what is likely to happen in 2019. I have no idea. But if you follow these questions, you will have your finger on the pulse of the world to come: What will happen with Chinese civil society? Five to 10 years ago, China had a proliferating and diverse group of non-profit groups, think tanks and cooperative civil society institutions, such as charities and clubs. They never stood on a firm legal foundation, but in the last few years they have been subject to a severe crackdown, […]
The Earth also rises … On Dec. 24, 1968, on the first human orbit of the Moon, astronaut Williams Anders looked out the window of Apollo 8. Reaching for his camera, and its color film, Anders would capture an image that would change human perspectives of our planet, ourselves and our place in the universe.
-Analysis- WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pledged in his campaign that he would not be predictable. He’s more than lived up to that promise this week, and along the way, he has made a hash out of the way business is being done in Washington. Three times this week, Trump abruptly and unexpectedly changed course, lending credence to perceptions of a presidency in chaos. The biggest bombshell came Thursday afternoon, when Trump announced that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis would leave the administration at the end of February, and Mattis’s resignation letter explicitly stated that he and the president were not […]
-Analysis- NEW YORK — What a difference two decades make. In 1997, China’s gross domestic product was about 11% of the U.S’s. By 2017, it was up to 63%. But this overstates the difference in living standards between the two countries, since prices are generally lower in China. In purchasing-power-parity terms, China’s economy became the world’s largest in about 2013. So which country’s economy is really bigger? The truth probably lies somewhere between these two figures. If China were to abolish its capital controls and open its currency to foreign speculation, there’s a good chance the yuan would rise in […]
Google tried and failed to play the social media game. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the tech giant, which is doing just fine by sharing the tech market with California rival Facebook.
Monopolistic companies may be near a tipping point where people (and governments) want them reigned in.
In the 1950s, El Morocco was the It-spot for New York’s who’s-who — and the perfect place for a young Garry Winogrand to hone his skills as a street photographer.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/yUa3mH8ixmU expand=1] Solar Impulse Above San Francisco Bay — © Solar Impulse / Jean Renvillard / Rezo.ch | OneShot Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg set out and accomplished something that still seems impossible today: the First Round-The-World Solar Flight, powered only by the sun, with no fuel or polluting emissions. Solar Impulse wanted to […]