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On 22 October the international cycling union stripped US cyclist Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and banned him from the sport for life after concluding that he had practiced doping systematically for years. The EU media is split the people who pulled the strings and other top cyclists being called to account, and criticism that the sentence is doing great damage to the sport

French bands are currently churning out sad song after sad song, but these folks are not having their audiences reaching for the antidepressants. The London-based trio have delivered the perfect remedy for the transition into autumn with their debut EP, Flings, without making you want to throw yourself out of a window

‘Saudade’ and ‘hüzün’ have become famous untranslatable words. They are deeply set in their given cultures, revealing the specific nature and emotion of being Portuguese or Turkish, whilst, simultaneously becoming literary phenomenons. The more ‘longing’ is expressed by these words in point, the more difficult it is to translate them

The local council of Beyoglu, an area sandwiched in between Taksim and the waters of the Golden Horn, closed off all outdoor seating on bar terraces in the popular neighbourhood of Istanbul in June 2011. Over a year later, the ban is announced to be permanent. One anonymous female bar owner explains the dilemma

Poetry has ever come in a multiplicity of forms. We have the sonnet, structuring our words of love, the limerick for comic crudity, the haiku for capturing the essence of one perfect moment. And now? Now we have the tweet. A new medium for a new technology. Can it ever compare to our established forms? Or is it just a blip?

We’re delighted to welcome a new author and Babelian to our midst – Ceris Aston. A self-confessed wanderer of roads less taken, Ceris is currently based in Scotland and studying liberal arts. She’s penned our upcoming article about poetweets – drop by in a couple of days to check it out!

The French head of state is to honour the invitation to Istanbul made by his Turkish counterpart this summer. Among the joyous topics for discussion will be Syria, the crisis and Europe – but only a little. Once a declared candidate for membership in the EU, Turkey no longer enjoys the popularity it once had, especially in France. What's worse, the Turkish application seems to have been shelved indefinitely. Whose fault is it?

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Praise for the art of slow life gets more and more followers, and in Budapest this is encouraged by local movements based on international model. As usual in bottom-up communities, those interested in slow do not have to conform to strict rules and ideologies. That is why an apolitical, atheist young person in Budapest can start to believe in it.

How slow is that! – we could hear this sentence several times on the picnic organized by Slow Budapest movement started this summer and Möbelkunst, a company dealing with recycling and renewing old design furniture. This was one of the launching events of the Design Week 2012, which set slow philosophy into focus. The compliment was given to the mood conjured by the joyful, cool jazz, the homemade delicacies, the ’lecsó’ (Hungarian kind of ratatouille) made of locally produced ingredients, the fresh lemonade and the Hungarian wine drink, Fröccs into the factory site of Möbelkunst. But travelling, raising children, eating, cities, cinema, design or even emailing can be slow, too. It is essential to encourage thinking over and decelerating our accelerated lives. As Nelli, one of the founders of the Slow Budapest movement, says when asked for an exact definition of slow: „Deceleration is only a tool, the aim is to build quality relationships among people,  to discover the power of communities and to create a meaningful life”.

Any sort of joint bond issue would be vigorously opposed by northern member states of the European Union. So a new idea has been thought up since the summer – why not centralise Europe’s banking system? Part three of our examination of the financial crisis from a transatlantic point of view sees how it’s done in the USA

In April ‘motion 312’, authored by conservative MP Stephen Woodworth, was debated in the Canadian parliament and has been subject to discussion in the country ever since. What does the step to define the human rights of a foetus mean for the abortion debate? How is the situation in the EU member states?

On 15 October British prime minister David Cameron agreed to a referendum on Scottish independence. In Belgium's Flemish region the nationalist party N-VA won local elections a day before. Some commentators fear the desire for autonomy in these regions poses a threat to the European community, others welcome the emergence of solutions to long-seething conflicts

The best thing about Orient Express Reporter II is having a chance to learn something new about your own homecountry, writes the co-founder of cafebabel Belgrade, Senka Korac