Czech Republic: Unconventional libraries sprout up around Prague
Two friends are transforming the way we think about phone booths
Two young Czechs have decided to use old discarded telephone booths in Prague as small free libraries situated at public places, the first of which will be opened in the Institute of Experimental Medicine (IKEM) today, daily Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD) writes in its Prague supplement. ...
Prague Post
France: French ban on anti-Semitic comic fuels free speech debate
A decision to ban performances by French comic and convicted anti-Semite Dieudonné M‘bala M’bala has been praised as a “victory” by the government, while many say the ban undermines free speech. ...
France 24
Wales: Dad takes heart-wrenching photographs of his premature baby boy’s fight for life
The father of a baby boy born the size of a slice of bread documented his son’s desperate fight for life in a series of heart-wrenching photographs.
The pictures of tiny baby Saxon, born prematurely at just 26 weeks, were taken by his photographer father Edmund Shum, 34. ...
Wales Online
Italy: Bonino says Italy needs to rebrand
Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino called for Italy to be presented in an elegant and intelligent way, likening its image to that of a dolphin, in contradiction to the current depiction of the nation like a worn-out siren waiting on a sea rock for admirers to come. ...
ANSA
Burma: One Week, 30 People, 300 Images of Burma
RANGOON — The latest photography book about Burma to hit bookstores, “7 Days in Myanmar,” offers something different.
Unlike other coffee-table books on the Southeast Asian nation, this large-format, 276-page book by Editions Didier Millet publishing group includes photographs not only by well-known international photographers, but also by local photographers.
Twenty-one foreigners from 10 different countries and nine Burmese photographers traveled to every corner of Burma— from major cities to small villages in the country’s hilly regions and the southern and western coasts —over seven days in April to May last year. ...
The Irrawaddy
Georgia: A Statue for Stalin?
Stalin was responsible for the deaths of very large numbers of civilians, outside any war or military campaign
Hitler and Stalin were ruthless dictators who committed murder on a vast scale. But, while it is impossible to imagine a Hitler statue in Berlin, or anywhere else in Germany, statues of Stalin have been restored in towns across Georgia (his birthplace), and another is to be erected in Moscow as part of a commemoration of all Soviet leaders.
The difference in attitude extends beyond the borders of the countries over which these men ruled. In the United States, there is a bust of Stalin at the National D-Day Memorial in Virginia. ...
Prague Post
Kazakhstan: Kazakh song of gestures stole American heart
Things lost in translation and the cultural gap are not jokes in the modern age of seemingly enhanced global communication. But a story of love that surpasses barriers like language, culture and even silence will certainly melt the hearts of even hard-boiled skeptics. The story starts with Aaron Bean who volunteered in 2011 to be a part of Peace Corps in Kazakhstan and fell in love with a deaf Kazakh girl Botagoz Usenova. ...
Tengri News
*Image of a phone booth in Prague, Czech Republic, via Shutterstock
