Argentina’s electronic music scene and clubs are perfect venues for testing the country’s latest illegal recreational drugs. The favorites then go on to the bigger markets in Europe.
Category: Geopolitics
An exclusive look at the evolution of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade through the words of members and locals in the Yarmouk Valley in southwestern Deraa.
Turkish President Erdogan was quick to blame U.S. and French leaders after terror attacks struck those countries, but has failed to take responsibility for allowing the deadly Ankara attacks to occur.
Molested, harassed, abused: Women in refugee camps are increasingly victims of sexual violence. Authorities in Hamburg try to react.
A military court has convicted 26 military officers with conspiring to overthrow the current regime in collaboration with two prominent Muslim Brotherhood leaders, according to a copy of the secret indictment obtained by Mada Masr.
Brazil has utterly failed to find an environmentally friendly response to waste disposal. The struggling economy makes change unlikely, meaning ever more garbage “pickers” making modest livings sifting through the dumps.
Born around the time of the 1993 Oslo Accords that were supposed to usher in Middle East peace, these young people are well-informed, disillusioned and very, very angry.
VANCOUVER — James Hankle, a software engineer in his 50s sporting bluejeans and a Green Party T-shirt, is explaining his fix for Vancouver’s runaway property prices when he’s interrupted by an eavesdropping passer-by: “Stop allowing people from China to buy our houses and leave them vacant,” she says and walks away. Despite British Columbia’s aversion to pipelines and affection for pot, housing affordability has pushed both aside as the No. 1 issue raised by area residents in the run-up to Canada’s election this month. It’s not completely surprising given that Vancouver has become North America’s most expensive city. Surging purchase […]
MOSCOW — Russian intelligence services are pursuing a network of Islamic State (ISIS) militants operating in Russia as the country faces an increase in terrorist activity, in response to Moscow’s recent air campaign in Syria. Kommersant has learned that a group of terror suspects, said to be trained in Syria, were detained after a raid […]
Typically reliant on solid argument and logical persuasion, Merkel is now turning to the humanity of Germans on the refugee crisis. It’s a revolutionary approach for the world’s most powerful woman.
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 […]
BEIRUT — American antitank missiles supplied to Syrian rebels are playing an unexpectedly prominent role in shaping the Syrian battlefield, giving the conflict the semblance of a proxy war between the United States and Russia, despite President Barack Obama’s express desire to avoid one. The U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles were delivered under a two-year-old covert program coordinated between the United States and its allies to help vetted Free Syrian Army groups in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. Now that Russia has entered the war in support of Assad, they are taking on a greater significance than was originally intended. […]
Saturday’s bombings in Turkey’s capital may be the worst in the nation’s history, with a toll approaching 100 dead. Some point the finger at President Erdogan’s ruling AKP party.
While officials in the Argentine city of Bariloche insist it was never a “Nazi refuge,” a tidy little tourist business is growing around visits to local sites associated with Nazi war criminals like Mengele and Eichmann.
Moscow’s decision to enter the Syrian conflict with bombing raids may bring smiles to the Assad regime. On the ground, ordinary Syrians are paying the price.
BHAKTAPUR — With one arm, Rabindra Puri slowly clears a pile of rubble, followed by a second, and a third, until a statuette of the god Shiva appears. He delicately wipes the object’s dust-covered face, then puts it on a stretcher so that it can be carried away and placed in a locked cabin nearby. […]
On the island of Sardinia, asylum seekers rebuild their lives on the football pitch.
ISTANBUL — The program to train and equip the “moderate opposition” in Syria, as long planned by the United States alongside Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, ended in utter failure. What led to this global diplomatic fiasco that has left the future of Syria looking so grim? The chain of problems began with the most […]
As a border guard in 1989, Arpad Bella personally opened a portion of the Iron Curtain between Hungary and Austria to a crowd of East German refugees. Today, while migrants rush to the gates of Europe, he sadly watches history run backward.
Latin American history in the 20th century is stained with autocrats and human rights violations. But with former victims now elected leaders, why don’t they speak up about political prisoners in Venezuela?
Only three ministers in Egypt’s 33-member Cabinet are women. But the media is apparently too dazzled by their looks to notice there’s a problem in the first place.
Tensions rise between northern European neighbors. Sweden is second only to Germany for hosting the most refugees, while Denmark is dubbed Hungary of Scandinavia.
MOUNT ALFAF — Seven eagles are swirling in the blue sky above Mar Mattai, Iraq’s oldest monastery. Can they see Mosul? The northern Iraqi city that has been occupied by ISIS since last year is only 20 kilometers away. Perched alongside Mount Alfaf, this orthodox Syriac monastery founded in the 4th century by hermit Matthew […]
Tomomi Inada may be a more fervent Japanese nationalist than current Prime Minister Abe. She was in Washington this week to meet top officials.
AIX-EN-PROVENCE — Over the past two days, Hervé Pighiera has picked up 118 cigarette butts, 60 cigarette packs, 69 plastic bottles and 7.75 kilos of non-classifiable garbage, including a little dollhouse armchair made of wicker and plastic. Pighiera is on a mission to clean roadsides. On July 12, this smiling fellow in a straw hat, […]
Two Syrian refugees who attempted to swim part of the way to Europe recounted why they wound up making such a dangerous journey.
Though the Egyptian president has authorized the release of some 100 political prisoners, the global human rights organization says thousands more are languishing inside prisons for doing no more than engaging in peaceful protest.
CHISINAU — The tent city in the center of Moldova“s capital sprung up the evening of Sept. 6, just after a downtown protest had drawn thousands. The demonstrators decided on the spot to stay until they could claim victory; and by nightfall, a few dozen tents had appeared. By the next day there were at […]
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The World Comes To New York
With the United Nations General Assembly meeting this week, heads of state and all the many faces of the world are filling the streets of New York. Take a tour!
This week we shine the spotlight on Mexico: CHILD TRAFFICKING PROBE IN SONORA Mexican national daily Excelsior reports that the country’s Attorney General formally charged two officials from the northern state of Sonora with child trafficking. The case first emerged last month, when Vladimir Alfredo Arzate and José Hernández López, both officials at a government […]
The bloody Syrian stalemate unites Russia and the West, in a shared urgency to defeat ISIS. But the Syrian dictator, also an ISIS foe, should not be seen as a lesser evil.
A showdown over Israel’s choice for ambassador to Brazil, pro-settlements leader Dani Dayan, shows the Netanyahu government may be set to abandon the two-state solution that has promised Palestinians a homeland.
A redeployment of Russian missiles to Kaliningrad and the Western borders could be a response to reports of U.S. nuclear bombs arriving at a German air force base.
It’s home economics, not geopolitics.
After Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, ISIS tries to take root in the Palestinian enclave governed by the Islamists of Hamas. Internecine conflicts get ugly fast.
And watch out for Pablo Iglesias, leader of Spain’s leftist Podemos party.
The breakaway country’s fight for independence has lasted 25 years in the rubble of the Soviet empire. There is, inevitably perhaps, a growing religious rhetoric to the battle.
Peyrelevade, a village of 800 people in central France, has welcomed 60 refugees since April. Its former retirement home has been renovated, the primary school has avoided a class closure, and there are new jobs for residents. But the future is no less un
More than 3 million people die prematurely each year from dirty air. But researchers can now trace what exactly causes the bad air in different locations. A way to begin to fix it.
The Mexican government’s recent actions suggest the ruling party yearns for the days when it governed unchallenged through cronyism. But order comes at a price.