The popular U.S. streaming service has finally made it into the biggest Arabic-speaking market. Some of the normal content (House of Cards, for example) is missing. But for Egyptian viewers, it’s a big step up from dubbed Turk
Category: Future
TIANJIN — A stone’s throw from the highly polluted Bohai Gulf, the Tianjin eco-city is like a mirage. Its buildings, surrounded by trees, offer a rare green and airy setting in the surrounding industrial development zone, which is choked, for much of the year, in a blanket of smog. Public lighting is charged through solar […]
NASA scientists believe we may be just 10 or 20 years from discovering life in outer space. While they may not manifest as the kind of fantastical creatures we see in Star Wars movies, experts are convinced they’re out there.
The fate of our personal data after death has become both a legal and economic issue. Online businesses such as Facebook and Google want to be able to monetize even dead users, while some families who want to erase accounts may find it problematic.
Perhaps just as fascinating as the electric cars is the company’s founder and the genuinely earnest ideal among employees to make the world a better place.
Hey Donald Trump, Hugo Chavez Would Be So Proud CHILE / America Economia, Aug. 25 Jihadism As Nihilism, An X-Ray Of Homegrown Terror In France FRANCE / Le Monde, Dec. 3 The Siberian Fasting Cleanse For Body And Mind RUSSIA / Le Temps, Aug. 17 El Chapo Escape, When Income Inequality Breeds Corruption MEXICO / […]
TURIN — In Brussels, it doesn’t matter if your 8-year-olds have a smartphone in their pockets with more computing power than the Rosetta space probe. The European Union passed a regulation this month that raised the legal age for the use of social media to 16, requiring parental consent before teenagers can open Facebook, Instagram, […]
From Alexandria to Aswan, urban gardening in Egypt is growing, especially on rooftops. The movement wants to be allowed to develop without the prying policies of a government that has other priorities.
PARIS — Our fair-minded but ever subjective staff of journalists, translators and editors have chosen what we believe to be the year’s most engaging and provocative stories. Why The Chinese Are So Good, But Rarely Great CHINA / Caixin, Jan .5 That Slippery Euphemism We Call “Cultural Differences” FRANCE / Worldcrunch, Jan. 15 Artificial Intelligence […]
PARIS — No country has yet decided to send anyone to Mars. But private-sector initiatives reported by the media — and the global film industry — suggest that things could change within the next decade. If nothing else, such efforts are proof of our collective impatience to see a new stage of space exploration and […]
-OpEd- SAO PAULO — Imagine the following situation: You go to the bathroom, but because you’re in a hurry, you head toward the exit without washing your hands. As you try to open the door, you notice that it has locked automatically. An alarm bell sounds. Only then you understand that the door won’t open […]
A look inside Huawei’s HQ in Shenzen, the Silicon Valley of China, where plans are being laid to overtake Apple and Samsung.
Bicycles with electric motors are becoming more popular and controversial at the same time. Environmentalists wonder if cyclists are losing their carbon neutrality in pursuit of an extra boost.
BEIJING — China can be proud of its achievements in both business innovation and in creating a technology-driven economy. In recent years Chinese enterprises have taken their place among the heavyweights in the technological sector and, in particular, in the information and communication industry: names such as Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, Tencent and Xiaomi are recognized […]
The very essence of intelligence is that it’s human, and can never be recreated by something artificial.
In our increasingly digital world, people often feel the need to disconnect from the Internet for a dose of silence and breath of fresh air. Worldcrunch has reported recent stories from Brazil to California, about the hunt for “digital detox” solutions. With the help of the Internet (!), we’ve tracked down five other examples of […]
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NAUBISE — In the village of Naubise, about 90-minute drive from the capital Kathmandu, farmer Nirbhaya Sapkota is experimenting with crop rotation, mixed cropping and even intercropping — anything to maintain soil fertility and moisture. Sapkota, 45, and others this area are contending first-hand with the effects of climate change, which is particularly hard-hitting in Nepal because of its high poverty rates and low adaptive capacity. The major earthquake that struck in April has complicated matters even more. But in this community, at least, Sapkota and other smallholder farmers refuse to go down without a fight. With the help of […]
To both improve cities and conquer markets, companies are turning to urban simulators with the interactive power and graphics of video games.
HAMBURG — In Birgit Böhm’s opinion, the “4” she’s looking at is balancing on one leg, like in the nursery rhyme “A little man in the forest,” and wearing a little red cloak. The “7” next to it looks like it’s made of thick gardening wire. And it’s green! The rest of the numbers and […]
German carmaker Audi has commissioned Etogas Ltd. to build the planet’s first power-to-gas plant to fuel cars with transformed wind and solar energy. Could this “windgas” technology make today’s electric cars obsolete?
An in-depth interview with the 45-year-old billionaire who has developed groundbreaking lens and smart-screen technology. Business, she says, is about distinguishing between rice pots and hotels.
Much of what we think we know about sadness is still based on what the father of pychoanalysis wrote 100 years ago, but psychologists and brain researchers are starting to discover more about the feeling’s true mechanisms.
Categories
When Algorithms Create Our Culture
Music, books and other intellectual artifacts are increasingly being produced automatically by machines. A new book explores the ways in which artists exploit this new reality.
Startups are shaking up the dry cleaning industry by offering more convenient options for customers. The industry, which has shrunk by half in the last few decades, is also coping with gradual limits placed on using a common cleaning substance.
Because of overscreening and the diagnosis of contrived or harmless ills, the so-called nocebo effect is wreaking havoc on otherwise healthy people.
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Patients versus doctors, electors versus parties and disappointed refugee aid response. The Internet may actually widen the gap between citizens and modern democratic institutions.
PARIS — In today’s globalized automotive market, the average driver has two dreams: to purchase an SUV, and to switch from a manual to an automatic transmission. Used by just about everyone in the United States, Japan and China, this transmission mode is gaining ground in Europe and is set to takeoff in India and […]
Hosting 30 million people in the world’s largest pilgrimage, Nashik is a temporary example of “extreme urbanism,” and researchers are studying what happens in the process.
By announcing the end of its exploration campaign in the north of Alaska, Shell delighted environmental NGOs. But the self-imposed moratorium, to the degree it even exists, will not last.
With writing and then printing, man had already externalized a part of his memory. But those transformations pale, in both speed and breadth, with the current digital revolution.
Chile was struck last month by an 8.6-magnitude earthquake that killed 13 people and forced thousands to evacuate their homes. The tremor, followed by a tsunami, was the most powerful recorded since the beginning of the year in the world’s most earthquake-prone country. But what was perhaps most notable was the contrast between the quake’s […]
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TEL AVIV — Israeli Defense Forces are turning their attention to a new front: the war raging in cyberspace. And in an attempt to coordinate what up to now have been disjointed, sometimes overlapping operations, the Israeli military’s chief of staff recently announced the creation of a special cyber unit. The unit will be similar […]
The sinking cost of crude has disrupted the Scandanavian country’s national economy. Norwegians now start to ask how wide the hardship will spread.
The pharmaceutical industry looks to identify new diseases so it can push new drugs on the market, and patients play along. The approval of reduced female libido as a pathology is a case in point.
Plus, bonus coverage from the *celestial* hometown rag …
-Analysis- BEIJING — China has been woefully behind its Western counterparts in the use and sharing of big data. A recent proposal by the government’s State Council aims to make up lost ground, promoting the collectioin and sharing of data between government departments and a gradual opening up of public data resources to improve social […]
TEL AVIV — From the beautiful beach of Palmachim, on the Israeli coast, it’s hard to picture what’s happening below your feet, where 624,000 cubic meters of sea water are being sucked up every day by two enormous pipes and transported more than two kilometers inland to be transformed into drinkable water. Welcome to Sorek, […]