BERLIN — Not everything about big-time professional soccer is bad. Among the players, there are still good guys doing decent things. This summer, French left-back Lucas Digne jumped into action to help the injured after the terrorist attack in Barcelona. And Juan Mata of Manchester United decided to permanently give 1% of his salary to an NGO. Mats Hummels, a defensive midfielder for Bayern München, joined the initiative too. And yet, the past few months have put many fans and bigwigs of Europe

SONGDO — On Saturday morning, Mr. Lee brings the trash downstairs, one bag with combustible waste, the other with organic. His wife is already working at the cafe they own in "Central Park." There are two high-tech garbage chutes — green and red — in the collection point of the high-rise building where the Lee family lives. Lee holds his identity card over the sensor. The hatch opens. Inside, he places the bags, which he purchased at the supermarket for about fifty cents. At the collection poin

ISTANBUL — Forget about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Starting this year, Turkish students will instead be taught that human beings were created by God. They'll also learn about jihad, an announcement that triggered an outcry in secular circles. To be sure, Turkish Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz rushed to assure everyone that students would not learn about religious wars. The true meaning of the word "jihad," he contends, is "love of country." The secular opposition party CHP has respo

RIO DE JANEIRO — Every night at around 9 o’clock, Fabiana Escobar sits down in front of the TV and watches her life play out on the small screen: whether the police haul her away or her husband cheats on her again; how she beats up his lover; how the cocaine goes out and the bags of money come in. Recently, she watched herself bathe in a room full of gold coins, just like Scrooge McDuck. “I thought it was chic,” Escobar says. "A novela das nove," or the daily telenovela at 9 p.m., is an institu

BERLIN — The movie trailer opens with "Ali Avci presents." Daybreak. Someone washing his hands. Soldiers penetrating a house. Cufflinks on a freshly starched shirt. An overlay: "July 14, 2016." Gunfire as the armed men shoot several people in the house. Then, silence. Two legs dressed in the green pants of the Turkish army stride past bloody corpses. A general. He inspects the bullet-ridden bodies of a family in the living room. And then, a close-up shot: a pistol on the head of a kneeling man,

BERLIN — Of course, it begins on a racecourse. Curvy women run around until they obtain a golden ticket, just like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Giving up isn't an option. One of them will become the new "Curvy Supermodel", a leader of the Body Positive movement, a fresh face of the Body Revolution. At least, that's what's promised by the voiceover on the television show Curvy Supermodel, which is broadcast on Germany's RTL 2. Body positivity is about accepting your body as it is, wheth

BERLIN — On my Disney Cruise, my eternal bathroom door problem was finally solved. You see, it has always been difficult to figure out how to get out of the bathroom without touching the handle, which other people might have touched without washing their hands? I always take a piece of toilet paper or paper towel. Often, though, neither is near the door. So I have to go get it from inside a stall or from near the sinks, opening the door with the contaminated piece in my hand and with no place to

KRAMATORSK — My car turns off the multi-lane main street, filled with 50-year-old Ladas and Soviet-style trucks, onto a road full of potholes and scrub. Beyond that is the Narkologia Dispenseria, a hospital somewhat hidden in a park in Kramatorsk, a city of more than 150,000 inhabitants in eastern Ukraine. With its crumbling, mint green walls it looks more like more of a bunker than a healthcare facility. Plaster falls off the walls and staircases inside. Neon lights cast a pale glow in the corr

BERLIN — One spring evening in 2015, he said goodbye to his old life. He grabbed that despised book with the white cover, the Holy Koran, and line-by-line, page-by-page, marked all the verses on the topic that troubled him most: sura 2:191; sura 8:39; sura 33:61. These are verses that call on believers to hunt down, seize and kill apostates. When he was done, he had marked more than 700 verses. Then and there, he decided to be baptized. The man, who has asked to remain anonymous, is no longer

The murderers arrived in a bus on a Monday in November: six young men, groomed and freshly shaven, wearing police uniforms. All six were carrying heavy sports bags. Still, they slipped past through three security checkpoints on the bus. Then, on foot, the group made its way to the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. No one asked to see their identification; the guards just assumed they were security personnel. But in those sports bags were Kalashnikovs and knives. On that November day, exactly 20 ye