Worldcrunch
PARIS — Bob Dylan has long inspired musicians around the world, professional and otherwise, to sing his songs — and write their own. Some have done a bit of both, translating and singing versions of his masterpieces in different languages. With the Nobel Academy awarding the 2016 Literature prize to Mr. Bob, it seemed times […]
Manipulation and violence, animus and hypocrisy: Such is the stuff of politics on almost any given day, in any corner of the world. But, on our best days, politics holds out the possibility of actually making things better and solving our problems. These are not our best days. In the war-torn country of Colombia, a […]
The newspapers, they all went along for the ride …
PARIS — With all its historical warts, the United States has managed to hold on to its status as a model of a robust democracy. But the spectacle of Donald Trump’s run for the White House is reminding the world just how fragile democracies can be. Trump has used his campaign for the presidency to […]
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s first question at Sunday night’s presidential debate was, not surprisingly, about the just-released lewd 2005 recording of Donald Trump boasting of being able to force himself on women. Cooper looked up at the billionaire Republican nominee: “You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?” After Trump circled […]
When Hillary Clinton became the first woman to win the presidential nomination from a major party, the historic moment got a rather lukewarm response. Many young women who had grown up taking gender equality as a given were unmoved. One twentysomething concluded that Clinton’s nomination was “greeted with a collective millennial yawn”. Was there really […]
House for rent, move in date after Nov. 8. Quiet neighborhood, 18 acres of grounds, well-equipped security system. (Exterior unchanged from date of photograph, alterations to interior; tenant at the time: George H. W. Bush.)
SPOTLIGHT: ABORTION BACK ON WORLD AGENDA The recurring battle over abortion was bound to resurface in the U.S. presidential campaign, becoming what the Los Angeles Times called “one of the most personal, intense” moments of last night’s debate between the respective running mates of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Both Republican vice presidential candidate Mike […]
SAN FRANCISCO — A billboard for a new housing complex being built in San Francisco caught people’s attention last spring. Its sales-pitch slogan? “From the low 1,000,000s.” Some may have chuckled at the absurdity, but the price of the new units reflects the current reality of the market. The median price of a house in […]
Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 27, 2016 Most pundits agreed that Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton scored a solid victory over Republican Donald Trump in the highly anticipated first debate of the 2016 U.S. general election. Here is a quick video recap of Monday night’s debate that includes questions about Trump’s tax returns, Clinton’s flip-flop on trade deals, […]
Donald Trump has few supporters in liberal Silicon Valley: Even Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member, who spoke for Trump at the Republican National Convention, hasn’t given a cent to the campaign. Yet the tech world doesn’t unanimously favor Democrats. Consider, for example, the financial support that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has given to a pro-Trump trolling campaign. Luckey, 24, sold his virtual reality startup to Facebook for $2 billion after Oculus became a crowdfunding star. He has confirmed to the Daily Beast that he’s donated money to a group called Nimble America to produce memes and […]
The United States, and much of the rest of the world, will turn its collective attention tonight to the campus of Hofstra University, where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will hold their first presidential debate. A quick look at the American and international press today shows just how much anticipation there is ahead of what’s […]
Donald Trump is a master of TV. Monday night’s one-on-one showdown with Hillary Clinton will be a new test.
In our globalized world, climate change, economic collapse and all sorts of warfare (nuclear, biological, cyber, etc.) are viewed as the most terrible and frightening danger threatening our planet. But scientists recently pointed to an imminent threat that could wipe out the human race — the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria or, simply, “superbugs.” Today, the […]
Driverless cars used to seem like the stuff of sci-fi. But as the U.S. unveils a list of guidelines about self-driving vehicles today, it’s safe to say that these cars have zipped from the realm of a distant future to the regulatory thicket that’s an all too clear reminder that this is very much a […]
New York is again testing the limits of its status as “the city that never sleeps.” A week after marking the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks at Ground Zero, an explosion a bit farther uptown Saturday injured 29 people. And now, even as the investigation continues into that attack in the Chelsea […]
Slovenian-born Andrej Mrevlje has lived all around the world, sharing his stories and ideas. Now, after five years in the Big Apple, it’s time for life inside the beltway.
Beyond the Middle America stump speeches and coast-to-coast pancake breakfast stops, a U.S. presidential elections is also very much a global event. All the talk of the decline of the economic, political and cultural might of the American empire starts sounding a bit premature every four years, as November approaches. So this morning, it’s no […]
Not since Pope John Paul II’s health woes a decade ago has the world been so focused on one person’s medical updates. Forced off the campaign trail for four days following a woosy exit from a 9/11 commemoration, Hillary Clinton has the global media zooming in on her every move. The Democrat’s return to the […]
Whatever the hopes for Cuba, the country’s regime seems keen to follow the profit model for the economy to shore up its political grip. Just like China and Russia.
History mostly knows him as the disgraced architect of the Vietnam War, but McNamara first made his mark in the corporate world with his mastery of numbers before it was as fashionable as it is today.
In Philadelphia, a group of U.S. Marines were petitioning to change the Constitution and make any desecration of the American flag a crime. That hasn’t happened, though the debate over national symbols is apparently still very much alive across the Atlantic.
The two presidential candidates are at that age when “things start happening …” says President Obama’s former personal physician.
It is a philosopher’s job to debunk prejudice and foregone conclusions. But isn’t there also a duty to not ignore the facts? A look back 15 years later from a prominent Paris thinker.
Even for those who abhor the Republican nominee, it’s important to get the terminology right.
WASHINGTON — The morning after Donald Trump once again embraced his hard-line immigration posture in a shouted speech, at least four members of his two-week-old Hispanic advisory council said they might not vote for the Republican presidential nominee and warned that his harsh rhetoric would cost him the election. At meetings Thursday on the 14th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan, the candidate’s top aides held the opposite view. They thought his tough talk on immigration — combined with a whirlwind trip to Mexico on Wednesday — had, in the words of one adviser, “won him the election.” “How do […]
It was the week two U.S. tech giants saw their seemingly unstoppable sprint toward global domination hit a wall. First, on Tuesday, Apple was ordered to pay up 13 billion euros in back taxes after the European Union ruled that a series of sweetheart tax deals made with the Irish government were illegal. That’s a […]