Worldcrunch
Greece’s anti-austerity party Syriza won Sunday’s general election with 36.3% of votes, putting the country on a potential collision course with the European Union over its 240 billion euro bailout package. Party leader Alexis Tsipras said that, “The verdict of the Greek people renders the troika the IMF, the EU Commission, and European Central Bank […]
Greece will vote in national legislative elections Sunday to choose its 300 members of parliament, after the ruling conservative coalition failed to maintain its parliamentary majority in December. And no, this is not your ordinary election. Polls suggest a victory of the radical left party, Syriza, with more than 30% of voting intentions, and stakes […]
New Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is betting on Beijing to cement peace and help rebuild the economy. But China will play its cards carefully, especially its historic alliance with Pakistan.
Though both nations have been hit by Islamist terror, Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan hasn’t gotten the same global support as France’s Francois Hollande. There are many reasons, but it starts with Jonathan’s own attitude toward his citize
For many in these very different extremist camps, it all begins with a “lying media.”
Animosity towards immigrants is strong in Hungary. Controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orban was particularly blunt during a recent television interview: “We don’t want immigrants in our country.” But it was also notable that Orban was speaking from Paris, where he participated in the Jan. 11 unity march after Islamist terrorists murdered members of the magazine […]
-OpEd- PARIS — Although the time for emotion and indignation about the recent terrorism in France is barely over, the moment for deeper reflection has arrived. What needs serious consideration, without prejudice or exaggeration, is the French way of dealing with cultural pluralism. The link between this subject and recent events is plain to see. […]
The accusations Alberto Nisman was set to make were harmful to Iran’s interests. And the known intelligence superpower is expert at disposing of its enemies. Many in Argentina doubt that Monday’s death was a suicide at all.
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — The Turkish authorities all condemned the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet for publishing selections from Charlie Hebdo. From the president to the prime minister, from ministers to parliamentary deputies, the government was united in condemning the Turkish newspaper. Insulting the sacred is unacceptable, they said. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda led demonstrations at mosques around the country, […]
PESHAWAR — Shahana Khan had to wake her son up on the morning of December 16. He was late for school and she had to push him out the door. He was one of the 132 students who didn’t come home. “I cry all the time thinking I told him to go to school. I opened the gate for him,” mourns Shahana. At this time she would normally be making him breakfast: “I feel him in the house all the time and hear him. People say it’s just in my head but for me it is very real. I hear […]
The increasingly authoritative stances of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Erdogan are only isolating them inside their own countries and on the global stage.
A satirical comedy about an alien who comes to earth and questions religious dogma has found an enemy among many of India’s Hindus. A new view after the Charlie Hebdo killings.
After last week’s deadly attacks in Paris, a passionate open letter from four high school teachers in a French neighborhood not unlike those where the killers grew up.
The attacks in Paris last week put us face-to-face with the fact that our neighbors may live their lives in ways that make no sense to us. How do we keep this from spiraling toward hatred?
An odd postscript to the dramatic events in Paris that says much about the evolving state of the media in China, which sometimes can be as “free” as it wants to be.
MOSCOW — If you happen to produce widgets in Russia and sell them in foreign currency, your time has come. Konstantin Babkin, president of a company that produces tractors, is convinced that the ruble should have been devalued long ago. “An excessively strong ruble already killed our airplane construction, food and light manufacturing industries,” he […]
PARIS — As the world watched France taken down by an Islamic terrorist attack last week, and followed live coverage of the nation getting back up with Sunday’s historic march through Paris, another devastating wave of terrorism did not get quite as much media attention. Reports that Islamist militants from Boko Haram has killed as […]
KUCHING — For eight years now, Irwan and his buffalo have worked through the neat rows of palm trees at the United Plantation in Teluk Intan, a town three hours drive north of Kuala Lumpur that overlooks the Straits of Malacca. For just less than 450 euros a month, he collects large clusters of oil-rich […]
TEL AVIV — After Israel announced plans to freeze the transfer of $126 million in taxes it collected for the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah attended a round of meetings in Saudi Arabia to nurture solidarity for his government. And they obliged. The Arab States promised that if Israel wouldn’t transfer the money, […]
As the ruble nosedives and Russia chokes on Western sanctions, the president –once compared to a bear or bull — now looks smaller to his countrymen in an unusual recurring survey.
Where the French Revolution took place, religious terror now haunts the streets. Today’s voices of free speech must turn to state authority to feel secure. What we need to do now.
Argentina’s electoral routine fosters inequality and injustice, enabling opportunists to cash in. It’s time for a new approach.
PARIS — The Jewish community in Paris lived through the manhunt for the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in a state of extreme tension. The hostage-taking Friday in a Kosher supermarket, which resulted in the death of four Jewish men, confirmed their worst fears. Francois Hollande called the act a […]
PARIS — First came the shocked reactions, not just form France but from all over the world, in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s cold-blooded killing of 12 people at the offices of weekly satirical paper Charlie Hebdo. But as events carried through to a hostage standoff and climactic showdown late Friday, which saw four more […]
After the deadly attack against French magazine Charlie Hebdo, two other Paris-based news organizations, L’Obs formerly Le Nouvel Observateur and Worldcrunch, have collected those three plain words of support — “Je suis Charlie” — from 21 different people around the world, in their native languages. I Am Charlie …
PARIS — Like every Wednesday, they were all there, almost all. Gathered around sugar chouquettes and croissants at the large oval table that takes up the whole room, for the weekly editorial meeting — a fixed ritual since the founding of Charlie Hebdo. To the left, Charb, the editor-in-chief. On this Wednesday, Jan. 7, cartoonists […]
After the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, the reaction in Paris is raw: war has been declared on the values of the French Republic. First order of business: know your enemy.
PARIS — Initially a welcomed spark for a global economy in need of a boost, the drastic fall in the price of crude oil — losing half its value since mid-2014 — has now begun to destabilize markets and worry investors and political leaders around the world. Still, this rapidly evolving situation is prompting some […]
PARIS — There’s a nice trompe l’oeil mural on rue Nicolas Appert here in the 11th arrondissement. I once stood in front of it for a little while on my lunch break, trying to make sense of the artist’s visual tricks. Today, making sense of what happened on that street feels impossible: Twelve people, among […]
PARIS — The brazen terrorist attack against the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo that left at least 12 dead Wednesday has shocked the nation and the world. But it doesn’t come in a vacuum, following a series of attacks in the past few years that have no parallel in any other Western country. There […]
The Pegida movement’s weekly Monday night protests against the “Islamization of Europe” were supposed to rally Germans to their cause. But it now appears to be having the opposite effect, as counter-demonstrations have sprung up around the country. “Pegida flops outside of Dresden,” Tuesday’s German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung’s declared, citing the eastern city where the […]
-OpEd- MOSCOW — The dials of the propaganda machine were never properly calibrated. Instead of talking about fighting Ukrainian nationalists, who like nationalists anywhere are dangerous and unsavory, it was simply Ukrainians and Ukraine that Russians were fighting. Less than a year later, this indiscriminate approach has had identifable results. In an October survey of […]
Guatemala-born Internet activist Gloria Alvarez believes that today’s protest movements contain, as politics always has, the seeds of future complacency, arrogance and corruption.
SINGAPORE — Jashodaben Modi arrives at the police station sitting on the luggage rack of her brother’s motor bike. A simple woman, she wears a white cotton sari with an orange top underneath, wire frame glasses, and her grey hair in a braid. She wants to lodge a complaint with the police of the Mehsana […]
DAKAR — Security concerns in Africa currently revolve around two central issues: the anarchy in Libya, and the Boko Haram caliphate that has taken root in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad. Looking ahead to 2015, the Islamist terrorist threat looms over the continent, even as some question whether the military-driven reaction of African governments may […]
The Castro regime’s about-face to restore ties with the U.S. signals the communist economic system’s shameful failure. But politics is another matter.
The Argentine embassy in Paris has gathered pictures and objects that piece together the life of Eva Peron, the loved and loathed first lady who became a “mother” to the poor in 1940s.
Ukraine’s Pro-Russian Separatists Are Bad News For Russia The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, located on the Moldovan border with Ukraine, has relied on Russia for the past two decades. A perfect example of potential new burdens for Moscow. — KOMMERSANT In India, The World’s First Vegetarian City After monks went on a hunger strike to push […]
DAMASCUS — Maher knows more about trash than a nine-year-old should know. “Some of it stinks more than others,” he says, chuckling at his own remarks. “At first I used to feel like I was about to faint before I finished my job, but I got used to it.” It’s not unusual in different areas in and around Damascus to see children and sometimes older men or women climbing into garbage cans, foraging for scraps of food. Passersby often turn their faces away from the scene. The young children who collect goods from the garbage can are often insulted or […]