Analysis: Greece or no Greece, the problem of the European single currency runs deeper. So no tricks — no Northern and Southern or National versions of the euro — can save it. Europe’s leaders must decide if they are playing for keeps.
Month: June 2012
A new book by German neurobiologist Martin Korte dispels the most common stereotypes about aging. He calls for a “radical reassessment of old age.”
Worldcrunch THE JAPAN TIMES, THE MAINICHI (Japan) TOKYO – Katsuya Takahashi, the last fugitive from the Aum Shirinkyo cult that launched a sarin attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, was arrested in the capital on Friday morning. The 54-year-old had been on the run for the past 17 years, until someone spotted him in […]
Worldcrunch CAIXIN MEDIA / SINA NEWS (China) CHINA TIMES (Taiwan) BEIJING – China officialy has its first female taikonaut, as “astronaut” is called in Chinese. Liu Yang (below) will be on board for Saturday’s launching of the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, scheduled for 18:37 local time, Chinese official media have confirmed. Liu, a native of Henan […]
Worldcrunch CADO IN PIEDI, DIRITTO DI POLEMICA (Italy) ROME – An economic crisis makes creative thinking an imperative. And in Italy, there are always political leaders out there thinking creatively. Here’s one recent thought from Pier Luigi Bersani, head of the center-left Democratic Party (PD): “I say that someone who pays their taxes has the […]
Worldcrunch AL MASRY AL YOUM (Egypt), BBC NEWS, AL JAZEERA CAIRO – The Egyptian capital remained tense Friday as pro-democracy activists and Islamists called for massive protests after a pair of judicial rulings by the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court have again put both civil order and longterm democracy at risk. One day ahead of the […]
L’ORIENT-LE JOUR (Lebanon) RIYADH – “We just want to enjoy the right to drive, like all women in the world…” This request is clear, and it is set to be made — once again — directly to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. One year after the launching of a campaign entitled “Women 2 Drive,” Saudi […]
China’s local family planning officials — and the country’s one-child policy — are under fire after a woman took an extreme and public response to a late-term forced abortion. Caixin speaks to the heartbroken would-be mother.
A trip to Tunis’s slums finds young Salafi Islamists who were at the vanguard of the Arab Spring, and are now set to take the fight to Syria to take down the ruling secularist regime.
Brazil, China, India and Russia were once the flavor of the month for investors, but this may be coming to an end as high inflation rates and slowing growth weigh on the respective national economies — and the world’s too.
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Élysée, The Daytime Drama Continues
Worldcrunch LIBERATION, LE PARISIEN (France) PARIS –All’s fair in love and politics, especially in France. Two days after First Lady Valérie Trierweiler’s morning tweet set French politics in a tizzy, President François Hollande’s former longtime partner Ségolène Royal has fired back. Royal granted the French newspaper Libération her first interview after Trierweiler took to the […]
LE TEMPS (Switzerland) CNN, BBC GENEVA – Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Europe for what some have seen as a sort of victory lap for democracy. The Burmese pro-democracy leader arrived on Wednesday at the annual conference of the U.N. International Labour Organization in Geneva. Watch a clip of Suu Kyi at the International […]
Worldcrunch EL MUNDO (Spain), LE FIGARO (France) BLOOMBERG (U.S.), MADRID – At the beginning of the week, Spain was supposed to have been saved. So much for that: Moody’s downgraded Spain’s debt rating three steps to Baa3. The main reason for this downgrade “is obviously the need of Spain’s government to ask for external help,” […]
Worldcrunch L’EQUIPE, LE MONDE (France) PARIS – As the cycling world gets ready for the 2012 Tour de France, the man who dominated the competition for years is once again accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs, and risks losing all of his record seven titles. Lance Armstrong has confirmed that he is under investigation by the […]
Prime Minister Erdogan has confirmed the introduction of Kurdish language elective classes, beginning in the fifth grade, hoping to placate the country’s largest minority. But some Kurds are hardly satisfied.
Worldcrunch ORIGINAL CONFIDENCE (Japan) TOKYO – What do Japanese animated films (anime) and automobile industries have in common? They are joining forces together, bringing product placement (in this case Japanese cars and motorcycles) to animation. Carmaker Subaru and famous anime studio Gainax collaborated on the web series Hōkago no Pleiades (Wish Upon the Pleiades), a […]
Valérie Trierweiler, companion of France’s new President François Hollande, wants to keep up her journalism career. She wants to be free to speak — and tweet — her mind. But when she took a political slap at Hollande’s ex, France was r
Op Ed: What happened in Chinese society for nepotism and corruption to become so entrenched that children already have it in mind as they make plans for the future.
TUNIS TRIBUNE (Tunisia), FRANCE 24 (France) TUNIS – Former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was sentenced to 20 years in prison, for “incitement to public disorder, murders and lootings on the Tunisian territory.” The sentence was handed down Wednesday morning by a Tunis military court, following a trial focused on the days around […]
Worldcrunch AL ARABIYA, BBC NEWS, CNN BAGHDAD – A wave of bombings in six Iraqi provinces, including 10 locations in Baghdad, has killed at least 62 people and wounded dozens more in the country’s worst attack in more than a year, BBC News reports. Al Arabiya reports that the string of car and roadside bombs […]
From the G8 summit later this month in Mexico to her own domestic political fortunes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will have all the world asking if she can lead the charge to save the euro, and help reverse a sinking world economy.
Worldcrunch CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY (Taiwan), VOA TAIPEI – These are not the kind of words that typically go “viral.” Following the mysterious June 6 death in China of prominent dissident Li Wangyang, a growing number of Chinese human rights activists in China have been using Twitter and other microblog services to personally declare: “I will […]
Analysis: Much has been made about China’s move toward a market economy. But seen from up close, the private sector is still a second-class player in the face of state-run economic interests.
Analysis: A Swiss correspondent in Washington, like others from the Old Continent, has concluded that Obama lacked the leadership skills necessary to meet the challenges of his times. He also made one crucial error from Day One.
Alexandre Herchcovitch, one of Brazil’s top designers, says the future of fashion in this Bric country is in clothing the rising middle class — even if he won’t ever stop making super-expensive stuff for the super-rich.
Worldcrunch LE NOUVEL OBS (France) PARIS – #trierweilergate, #vaudeville… Hashtags have been flourishing on Twitter since Valérie Trierweiler —French President François Hollande’s girlfriend— posted an unexpected message endorsing the Socialist candidate running against Hollande’s former long-term partner Ségolène Royal in parliamentary elections. At 11.56AM, Trierweiler (@valtrier) tweeted “Good luck to Olivier Falorni who is a […]
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German Austerity v. Europe’s Luxury Lobby
Is the European economic paradox such that the luxury sector is the best hope for relaunching the moribund economy?
NGO’s and activists are denouncing the way police officers strip and examine “suspects” to determine if they are homosexual, which is illegal in what many consider the Arab world’s most open society.
Although 3.5 million tons of garbage are floating in the North Pacific, most of it is hard to track down. Could satellites help spot this elusive yet lethal garbage patch?
Worldcrunch BOSTON GLOBE, AP (United States) MIDDLEBOROUGH – When in Massachusetts, watch your language! Residents in Middleborough, a town of about 20,000 inhabitants outside of Boston, have voted to make the foul-mouthed pay $20 fines for swearing in public. Town Meeting members, by a 183 to 50 tally, voted to institute as a non-criminal civic […]
BBC NEWS (United Kingdom), PAJHWOK (Afghanistan) PUL-I-KHUMRI – A dramatic landslide killed at least 80 people in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan. The landslide was the result of two successive earthquakes that were felt as far as Kabul, 105 miles away. “A quake measuring 5.4 struck the Hindu Kush region, followed by a 5.7 […]
Worldcrunch AP, LENTA.RU (Russia) MOSCOW – Thousands of Russians have gathered in the capital for the first protest march against Vladimir Putin since his reelection last month as president. According to organizers, up to to 20,000 people took part in the “March of Millions’, the Moscow-based news website Lenta.ru reports. The protest began without top […]
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When Kurdistan Won The World Cup
THE KURDISH GLOBE, RUDAW (Kurdistan) ERBIL – While all eyes turn to the European Football Championship in Poland and Ukraine, another little known soccer World Cup quietly found its new owner over the weekend. The Kurdistan soccer team became VIVA World Cup champions after beating Northern Cyprus 2-1 in the finals, held at the Franso […]
A little lesson in what not to do when a porn star killer posts a photo of himself on Facebook drinking a bottle of your delicious beer.
LA TRIBUNE (France) BORDEAUX – Bordeaux wines have become so popular in China, reports La Tribune, that they are now widely targeted by counterfeiters. Wine consumption in China – a relatively new phenomenon – has doubled in the past five years, and should continue to become more and more mainstream. So much so that China […]
On the eve of another mass protest in Moscow, opposition leaders had their apartments turned upside down by special security forces.
Worldcrunch LIBERATION (France) PARIS – Three months after the Toulouse shootings, the father of the slain killer Mohamed Merah is suing France for murder. Mohamed Benalel Merah lodged a complaint on Monday in Paris, accusing senior French police officials of murder with aggravating circumstances. Merah’s son killed seven people around the French southern city of […]
Established in 2007, the Monumenta series challenges an artist to occupy the vast open space of the Grand Palais of Paris. French artist Daniel Buren has a colorful response.
A new tax agreement signed with Germany, Britain and Austria has the smaller Swiss banks thinking about “phasing out” customers from these countries, while bigger banks like UBS and Credit Suisse are rubbing their hands with glee.
Worldcrunch THE TIMES OF INDIA, OUTLOOK (India) MUMBAI – Citing slowed growth and stalled reforms, Standard & Poors has warned India that it risks losing its investment-grade rating, and being downgraded to junk category, reports the Times of India. S&P assigned much of the blame to politicians, notably Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “It would be […]