This article is part of a News-Decoder series of “decoders” that explain crucial background to big issues. For more decoders, click here. By Pauline Bock Waves of migrants and refugees are threatening one of Europe’s bedrock achievements — the...
By Nelson Graves Here at News-Decoder we take stock on Fridays and look ahead to the next week’s news themes. It’s a way of making sense of developments that in the digital age can go by in a flash and confuse more than illuminate. Here’s a note I...
By Colin McIntyre At a time when the European Union’s borders are under siege from thousands of refugees and immigrants fleeing war, persecution and poverty, the prospect of enlarging the 28-nation bloc would seem a distant dream. Yet negotiations continue with a view...
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...