By Léa Surugue Patrick Roca never used to consider himself a rebel. But times have changed. “We Catalans do not reject Spain, but we feel very disillusioned,” said Rocca, who was born in France of parents from Spain’s Catalan region. Rocca is one of...
By John Mehaffey An Olympic quiz question, which usually surprises sports followers, is to name the current rugby union gold medalists. The answer is the United States, victors over France at the 1924 Paris Games. Rugby was dropped from the Olympics after the Paris...
The world is grappling with its biggest migrant crisis since World War Two. To understand, it’s important to distinguish between refugees and migrants. See also our Decoder on migration crises. If it were a country, the “nation of the displaced” would be the...
By Diana Montaño As the guide led us through the dimly-lit concrete tunnels of Josip Broz Tito’s socialist era military bunker, I pieced together fragments of my American education. The bunker, an underground compound able to hold more than 300 people in the event of...
The world is in the midst of the largest immigration crisis since World War Two. How is it being handled? This article is part of a News-Decoder series of “decoders” that explain crucial background to big issues. For more decoders, click here. Why is this...
By Colin McIntyre A quarter century after the fall of the “Iron Curtain” and the Berlin Wall separating Communist East Europe from the West, new barriers are going up across the continent. In stark contrast to the old barriers erected by the Soviet bloc to keep its...
Demonstrators hold balloons portraying Italian premier Matteo Renzi with a long nose as Pinocchio, during a protest in Rome, 12 Dec 2014. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) By Barry Moody As the Greek crisis reached its worrying climax, nobody watched with more anxiety...
Greece’s debt woes bring back memories to Tiziana Barghini, who says this small country can teach us a lot. A woman sells bread next to posters reading ”NO to EU, IMF, ECB proposal” in Thessaloniki, 1 July 2015. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos) Greece’s...
By Jasmine Horsey In the center of Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo, a permanent photo exhibition remembers Srebrenica. The photographs show coffins filling a large warehouse; forensic teams excavating mass graves; a child’s doll in the dust, throat slit. The images, in...
Years after Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two, Bosnia is split by ethnic divisions and questions persist about how to prevent such tragedies. By Colin McIntyre The massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims on European soil 20 years ago continues to...