ALL I FEATURED I EUROPE I MIDDLE EAST I AFRICA I VIDEOS
FORTUNE MAGAZINE: Iran’s Startup Spring
As sanctions are lifted, can a burst of entrepreneurship succeed—and even transform the nation? By Vivienne Walt ~ TEHRAN The sun is streaming through the windows of a loft-like office where a half-dozen [...]
OPC: Europe Under Attack: How Paris Changed Us
By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS Friday, November 13, 2015 was a strangely balmy night in Paris, the kind that makes visitors fall in love with the city. People spilled out of the cafés, winding [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Europe’s Terror Fears Won’t End With the Arrests of the Likely Last Paris and Brussels Attackers
The capture of Mohamed Abrini and Osama Krayem is a major win for terror investigations, but there's worry the ISIS cell is still active By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS Belgian police on Friday [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Belgian Police Knew Where Paris Attacker Was Likely Hiding—and Did Nothing
News that police in small Belgian city knew where Salah Abdeslam was likely hiding out is the latest in a string of errors By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS With Belgian officials struggling to explain [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Belgium’s Security Failures Made the Brussels Attacks All But Inevitable
Underfunded and factional, Belgium's security services were struggling to track down a jihadist network embedded in the capital By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS Just three days ago, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders issued [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Belgian Police Discover More Explosives and Identify Bombers
Several suspects are still on the run By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS With Belgians reeling in shock from Tuesday’s deadly suicide bombings in the capital Brussels, officials said several suspects were still the run, and [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Brussels Bombing Reveals Europe’s Security Dilemma
Security services are trying to track scores of suspects, many of whom have fought in Syria and Iraq By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS It was the nightmare scenario European officials have warned about for [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – European Officials Struggle With Red Tape and Rules to Protect Against Terrorism
Simple safety measures are still to be implemented, even after two Paris attacks By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS Just last Thursday, French riot police converged on a soccer stadium in Nimes in the south [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – How Europe’s Most Wanted Man Was Finally Caught
How authorities brought down a top suspect in the Paris attacks By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS Until just a few days ago, the manhunt for the most wanted fugitive in Europe seemed at an [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Paris Terror Suspect in Custody After Brussels Raids
Europe's most wanted man taken alive in the suburb where he grew up By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS Police in Brussels cornered and wounded the last Paris attacker known to have survived the Nov.13 [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – France’s Terror Crackdown Hurts Civil Liberties, Amnesty Finds
Human rights groups say country's state of emergency is being abused by police and officials By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS The national state of emergency in France declared hours after ten gunmen killed 130 [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Europe to U.S. on Iran: You Snooze, You Lose
Europeans rush in where Americans fear to tread By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani whizzed around Rome and Paris this week with dozens of Iranian CEOs in tow, signing deals worth [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Belgium Races To Plug Its Holes In The War Against Terror
By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS A cell phone chimed in Brussels’ heavily Muslim district of Molenbeek after midnight on Nov. 14, as much of the world watched the carnage in Paris, where dozens lay [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Paris Warily Marks a Year of Violence
By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS A year after Paris’s spate of terror attacks began with the Charlie Hebdo massacre, French officials have held a series of ceremonies for the victims, both from those attacks last [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Obama Doesn’t Need Congress to Tackle Climate Change: U.S. Energy Secretary
Ernest Moniz says COP 21 is already a “substantial success.” By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS At the tail end of the U.N.’s mammoth climate-change negotiations outside Paris, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told Fortune [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Obama Woos Climate Activists But ‘Once Bitten, Twice Shy’
Momentum Is Building But Paris Delegates Doubt U.S. Resolve By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS During his 4o-hour stay in Paris, President Obama delivered impassioned pleas for the world’s leaders to cut down on greenhouse [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – The Hardest Question: Explaining the Paris Attacks to My Child
By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS How to explain the inexplicable? “Mama, were kids killed?” The question came two days after the devastating terror attacks in Paris killed 129 people, when I finally sat down [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – A Sister Rushes to Paris After Attacks Only to Find Out: ‘I Just Lost a Part of Myself’
One woman's frantic search for her sister By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS Slender and dark-haired, Aurélie de Peretti loved music, played the guitar and piano, and reveled living near the beach in her hometown [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Paris Terror Probes Focus on International Connections as Details About Attackers Emerge
Police found a Syrian passport on one attacker, and evidence that some came via Belgium By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS As Paris reeled from the worst terror attacks since World War II, French officials [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – France in State of Emergency as Terrorist Attacks in Paris Kill at Least 128
The French prosecutor's office says eight extremists are dead, seven of them in suicide bombings By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS In what appears to be the deadliest terror attacks in France in many decades, [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Mark Zuckerberg: we have a ‘moral responsibility’ to get millions more online
At a town hall meeting with students in India, the Facebook CEO explained his plan to spread Internet access—and promised to help stop the flood of annoying Candy Crush ads. By Vivienne Walt [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – The Lost Boys of Europe
Teenage refugees are strangers in a strange land By Vivienne Walt ~ CATANIA, ITALY As the August heat in Eritrea grew torpid, Mahari, 17, laid plans to flee his homeland. With relatives in [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Europe’s Top Court Just Gave U.S. Tech Firms a Huge Headache
It could get harder for companies like Facebook to send data around the world By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS The Atlantic Ocean just got a lot wider. On Tuesday the E.U.’s highest court threw [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – The Aunt of Drowned Syrian Boy Says It Is Not Too Late To Save Other Refugees
Tima Kurdi feels responsible for the deaths of Aylan Kurdi, his brother and their mother By Vivienne Walt ~ BRUSSELS Tima Kurdi awoke on Sept. 2 at home in Vancouver to dozens of [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – As Europe Begins to Welcome Syrians, African Refugees Fear Being Left Behind
There is growing concern that Europe may unwittingly divide migrants into two distinct classes By Vivienne Walt ~ CATANIA, SICILY With E.U. leaders finally working on a Europe-wide refugee policy, there is growing [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Europeans Fear for the Security of their Rail System After Attempted Terrorist Attack
Free movement has been a cornerstone of European integration By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS For days, Europeans have hailed the courage of three American tourists — two of them off-duty military personnel — who [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Barcelona: The most wired city in the world
It’s a showcase for the “smart” metropolis of the future—in which tech giants like Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM see big profits in helping governments save by tracking data on everything from garbage to traffic [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – U.S. and International Businesses Eye an Iranian ‘Gold Mine’ After Nuclear Deal
Lifting sanctions could unfreeze $150 billion of Iranian money and open borders for business By Vivienne Walt Even before the crowds on Tehran’s streets staggered home on Tuesday night from partying to celebrate [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – The bureaucrat who has tech terrified
After less than a year on the job, Europe’s competition cop, Margrethe Vestager, has picked a fight with the biggest names in global business. She’s not done yet. By Vivienne Walt It’s early [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Europe’s Crisis of Conscience
As more migrants drown in the Mediterranean and anti-immigrant sentiment on the continent continues to rise, what will Europe’s leaders do? By Vivienne Walt Abu Mohammed was in the living room of the [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Google’s legal woes in Europe might only just be beginning
For the U.S. technology giant the EU antitrust case is serious indeed, and potentially extremely expensive. By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS The E.U.’s case against Google made big news on Wednesday—so big, in fact, that [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – The Disunited States of Europe
Scottish voters decide this month whether to split from Britain. Catalans in Spain have called for their own independence vote soon. Can the continent weather the separatist storm? By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS In [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Ukraine ‘will not lose’ economically if Crimea secedes, official says
Fortune‘s reporter in Kiev writes that, although losing Crimea to Russia would be a devastating political blow to Ukraine, it might, in fact, be a financial gain. By Vivienne Walt ~ KIEV Ukraine’s capital [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – The Next Oil Boom
By Vivienne Walt ~ KURDISTAN If you head up the northern highway that cuts through Iraq's semiautonomous region of Kurdistan, a turnoff to the east leads you into the picturesque mountain village of Al-Kush. [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Can This Woman Fix Europe?
By Vivienne Walt ~ PARIS On a chilly night in March, in a concrete building on the grand avenue d’Iéna in Paris, a silver-haired woman sits at an empty conference table. Most of the offices [...]
TIME.COM / Congo’s Misery Amid Natural Wealth
VIDEO REPORT: A journey into the DRC's conflict-ridden province of Katanga shows rape, displacement and killings.
TIME MAGAZINE – Escape from Syria
By Vivienne Walt ~ SYRIA In a war zone, some buildings are obvious targets--command centers, weapons depots, enemy hideouts-- and some are not, like schools, hospitals, media centers. But in the battle for Syria, [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Hunting the Dictators’ Loot
By Vivienne Walt ~ CAIRO Yehia Hussein Abdel-Hady still shudders at the memory of that morning in 2006 when he was summoned to Egypt's Ministry of Investment and handed a three-page document. "They [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Gaddafi and the Unbearable Lightness of Crisis
By Vivienne Walt ~ TRIPOLI I call a business consultant in the Libyan capital on the telephone, and ask if he wants to join me at the café where we shared a long, [...]
TIME.COM / The Battle for Tahrir Square
VIDEO REPORT: In Cairo's Tahrir Square, reporter Vivienne Walt finds protesters tired and wounded, but resilient. And volunteer doctors have turned a mosque into a makeshift hospital. Watch the video on Time.com
TIME MAGAZINE – Tunisia’s Nervous Neighbors Watch the Jasmine Revolution
By Vivienne Walt ~ TUNIS No bomb exploded announcing the start of the Jasmine Revolution, and in the end, there was no iconic figure — no Nelson Mandela or Vaclav Havel — to [...]
TIME.COM / Fighting for Press Freedom in Tunisia
VIDEO REPORT: In Tunisia, reporters and editors at a former state-owned newspaper battle over its identity as the paper reinvents itself with reporting free from government censorship. Watch the video on Time.com
Lost Treasures of Timbuktu
By Vivienne Walt ~ TIMBUKTU Stepping through a low doorway into his small house, Fida Ag Mohammed sits at a table and pats a pile of books in front of him. Even in [...]
TIME MAGAZINE – Death in Birth: A Tragic Toll
By Vivienne Walt ~ FREETOWN In a hospital ward in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, Fatmata Conteh, 26, lay on a bed, having just given birth to her second child. She had [...]
TIME.COM / A Senseless Death, and a Birth
VIDEO REPORT: In Freetown, Sierra Leone, I witness a young mother giving birth and then dying. The family is left to make sense of her death, and figure out how to raise the baby.
TIME MAGAZINE – Dubai’s Dark Side of the Dream
By Vivienne Walt ~ DUBAI and MANAMA It was the birth of his second daughter that finally forced Raju Singh's decision to leave home. The stonemason borrowed about $2,500 from a labor recruiter [...]
TIME.COM / Ukraine’s Witnesses Finally Speak
VIDEO REPORT: A priest's extraordinary four-year quest to document mass executions has shattered decades of secrecy and denial about the slaughter of Jews. Watch the video on Time.com
TIME MAGAZINE – Genocide’s Ghosts in Ukraine Killing Fields
By Vivienne Walt ~ LVOV and REVA-RUSKA Treading across a snowy field in the middle of the Ukrainian town of Rava-Ruska, Olga Kushta says quietly: "This is where they were shot. I watched [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Sudan Booms, Courtesy of China
By Vivienne Walt ~ KHARTOUM Late last year, Adam Ibrahim Ali and his two teenage sons fled their ravaged village in Darfur and headed for Sudan's capital, Khartoum, riding on trucks and walking [...]
FORTUNE MAGAZINE – Diamonds aren’t forever
A new Hollywood movie is raising tough questions about Africa's bloody diamond trade. Fortune's Vivienne Walt reports from the pits. By Vivienne Walt ~ SIERRA LEONE Sahr Amara is stooped low, knee-deep in [...]