Braden Phillips

History
Fingers started wagging when 16th-century European women began wearing masks to protect their skin and hide their identities.
Masked women on a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Laeken (now part of the city of Brussels) in an anonymous oil painting from 1601.
Photograph by Oronoz, Album
Masks have been used by many of the world’s cultures, from Asia to Africa, for many purposes, from the holy to the medical to the mundane. At times, mask wearing has been embraced as fashionable, much lik...

A résumé for the Netherlands would list water management and the development of advanced agricultural technology among its top skills. The country is one of the smallest in the European Union and has more people living below sea level than any other country in the world. Yet, it is among the world’s largest exporters of food by value.
It makes perfect sense, then, that the world’s first experimental floating dairy farm—the culmination of a seven-year, US $2.9-million effort—is sited in the in...

Even as millennials dominate marketers’ attention, some agencies and brands are recognizing the superior buying power of the baby boom generation.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The leaders of Germany and Spain on Saturday promoted a shared approach to immigration into the European Union amid growing populist opposition in other EU nations to taking in more asylum-seekers.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, meeting at a country estate in the southern region of Andalusia, advocated a “fair distribution” of migrants for EU nations. They said they will share their common vision at an EU summit next month in ...

A chemist accustomed to the clean and orderly conditions of a lab, Katja Klun has spent the past year immersed in the messy business of trying to figure out the best way to collect, extract, and store jellyfish mucus. To say she’s been working with bucketfuls of mucus is no exaggeration, and she’s had to remove more jellyfish gonads than she would ever care to count.
“There is lots of nasty work and the smell is not pleasant. But everything for science,” says Klun, who works for Slovenia’s Na...

Newslook
BARCELONA — A TV program asked Mustapha Aoulad Sellam to be a guest the day after the deadly Aug. 17 van attack by Muslim terrorists. As he passed through security, the guard looked at Aoulad Sellam's ID and asked if he is Muslim.
“I said yes, and he got up to greet me, holding out his hand and saying, ‘These are going to be hard days for you. You have my support,’ ” said Aoulad Sellam, president of the Spanish group Stop Islamophobic Phenomena. “I was taken aback, then shook his han...

The Ebro Delta, famous as a battleground during the Spanish Civil War, is now the setting for a different contest, one that is pitting rice farmers against two enemies: the rice-eating giant apple snail, and rising sea levels. What happens here will have a bearing on the future of European rice production and the overall health of southern European wetlands. Not to mention the future of Spanish paella and Italian risotto.
Located on the Mediterranean just two hours south of Barcelona, the Ebr...

Enigma Concept | Having opened seven restaurants in eight years, Albert Adrià did not need to open another.

Smart City designer Daan Roosegaarde's Smog Free Tower, the world’s first outdoor air cleaner, will be temporarily installed in Beijing in September. It will then go on a sort of smog-fighting tour, with related educational events, to four other Chinese cities over the next year.

BARCELONA, Oct 30 (Reuters) - For years considered a haven for drug cheats in sport, Spain is facing up to its chequered past and trying to clean its image with a beefed-up anti-doping law.

Video for Crane TV on the making of a mural in Barcelona, an homage to the women of the Sant Martí neighborhood, by Cuban American artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada.

Europe’s oldest boys choir, the Escolania de Montserrat, has eased its residency requirements to raise enrollment. The move was effective and now they are on their first American tour....

In the Mojave Desert's 25,000 square miles of sun-blasted earth there is a patch of sand 100 yards long that is looked after as dotingly as any garden, though nothing can ever grow there.