Last October, Australian daily newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald and the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel pinpointed the cooperative action of the Australian Signals Directorate surveillance agency (ASD) in the American large-scale surveillance operation revealed by former NSA employee Edward Snowden. The recent revelations pointed to the “Stateroom” collaborative listening device that involves several Australian embassies and consulates in Asia (Jakarta, Hanoi, Beijing, Bangkok or...

The Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are not countries that one would associate with elegance and fashionable extravagance but rather one bearing a history of poverty, disease, malnutrition and heavy conflict throughout the 1990s, taking the lives of thousands upon thousands of civilians. Yet, positioned at the centre of Congo’s chaos, the self-confessed dandies of sub-Saharan Africa, known as the Sapeurs, lead a life that is paradoxical in the context of their...

Seems like orange will be the new black for famous fashion duo Dolce & Gabbana as the Italian appeals court upheld a ruling by a lower court from last June that Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are guilty of tax evasion. Domenico Dolce was born in 1958 near Palermo, Sicily and Stefano Gabbana four years later in Milan. Dolce studied fashion design and worked at his family’s small clothing factory, while Gabbana was a graphic designer. They met each other at an atelier in Milan, where...

Since 1991, the five independent republics of Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan) have known political, socio-economical and strategic developments that are increasingly divergent. In a time where the soviet heritage is fading away, the notion of a central Asian ‘common destiny’ is more relevant than ever. Despite those previously mentioned common points, the Central Asian countries have not ceased to pull away from each other despite their overlapping....

Since 1991, the five independent republics of Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan) have known political, socio-economical and strategic developments that are increasingly divergent. In a time where the soviet heritage is fading away, the notion of a central Asian ‘common destiny’ is more relevant than ever. By the end of 1993, only two years after the arrival of the five Central Asian states on the political world map, The Economist was predicting that the...

If you thought Xavier Dolan’s latest film would bring you back to a more youthful time, then the title did a good job. "Tom at the Farm" is a schizophrenic and anxiety-inducing thriller that calls on a Hitchcockesque influence. The plot is simple. Tom, a young publicist from Montreal heads to his very close colleague Guillaume’s funeral. With a bleached-out, dandy, and voluntarily disheveled look, he arrives at a sinister-looking isolated farm. There, he meets Agathe, the strange mother of the...

It’s the butterfly effect, what happens in the West has repercussions in the East. Though Russia recently annexed Crimea from the Ukraine, we tend to forget that other countries still claim parts of Russian territory. The Ukrainian conflict reactivated tensions between Japan and Russia around the Kuril Islands this week. Representing Russia, the Eastern Military District Commander, General Sergei Surovikin, announced on April 18 the implementation of a plan to rearm the Kuril Islands by...

A year of academic exchange in Uruguay, three months of holidays between two semesters : this is enough to tour the continent. Third stop : Atacama, a gigantic desert with varied landscapes, and enough to delight anyone's eye. Let us focus on this desert of a thousand facets. A twenty-four hour bus ride to the North later and there we had it : we had crossed Chile half way. Dry landscapes, orangey deserts, the heat, and a city on the seaside were all we saw before reaching the border between...

We simplify the idea of games as simple distractions, when for ten years now, they’ve been taken very seriously, thanks to the work of NGOs The UN, Red Cross, academics, and more all use video games and put their own spin on them, with the idea of having fun while increasing awareness. It’s tempting to simplify the idea of the video game to a mere distraction reserved for young men in search of an adrenaline rush, bent on massacring zombies and saving damsels in distress. It’s supposedly just a...

On April 10th, about fifteen UNIRIO drama students found themselves in the Santa Marta favela for a most atypical class, given by performance artist and professor, Tania Alice. As with every Thursday, the students meet at 3:00 p.m. for their performance course. However this time, the meeting point is at the bottom of Santa Marta, a pacified Rio favela situated in the city’s Zona Sul area. Throughout the semester, the course’s objective has been to discover the different aspects of performance...