In no uncertain terms, the editor-in-chief of Moroccan daily Le Soir/Echos condemns the violence at US embassies in nearby Muslim capitals.
Month: September 2012
RAVENSBURG – Otto Oberländer calls out a friendly “Hello!” as he enters the production hall where a dozen men work at a long table putting garden sprinklers together. The men, who all wear blue boiler suits, give a friendly acknowledgement of the boss’s greeting and then get back to work. The fact that the door […]
CLOSER (France), BBC (UK) Worldcrunch The Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton is reportedly “furious” after a French magazine published topless pictures of the Royal couple when on holiday in the south of France. Closer, a French weekly celebrity magazine, hit shelves on Friday with images of Kate Middleton, along with the headline: “Oh my God! […]
KYODO NEWS, YOMIURI SHIMBUN, JIJI PRESS (Japan), BLOOMBERG Worldcrunch TOKYO – The Japanese government will abolish nuclear power in the 2030s under a new national energy policy. In the wake of last year’s Fukushima disaster, the government was forced to create a new national energy strategy, as the current policy, which calls for increased reliance […]
VATICAN CITY – Three years ago, on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI’s departure for the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, it was the murder of Luigi Padovese, the vicar apostolic of Turkey, which loomed over the trip. This time it is the killing of four U.S. diplomats in Benghazi and the uprising across the region […]
It is a variant of the classic East-West confrontation. And in the conflict pitting Samsung against Apple, the Asian technology giant versus the American one, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Apple won the first round when a Californian court sentenced Samsung to pay more than $1 billion of compensatory damages for infringing patents. But the […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch Predicting earthquakes, floods, droughts and other assorted disasters is hardly an exact science. Still, as the just published 2012 WorldRiskReport notes, just how badly natural catastrophes hit comes down to how well prepared is the country’s government to respond. In a risk index that includes 173 countries, experts of the Bonn-based […]
-Analysis- SANTIAGO – If Mitt Romney’s Mexican father had been deported or had not been able to enter the United States in July 1912, the Republican candidate would not have been born in Detroit in March 1947, Bain Capital would not have existed and, most probably, the citizens of the state of Massachusetts would not […]
Essay: The fury of fundamentalist Muslims should not obscure efforts to consolidate democracy.
EL PAIS (Spain), ITWIRE, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), THE GUARDIAN (UK), M.I.C. GADGET (HONG KONG), LIBERATION (France), MASHABLE (U.S.) Worldcrunch Apple has lost its magic, writes El Pais on Thursday. The Spanish daily asks what happened to the sparkle, where are the surprises with the release of the latest iPhone model? The much anticipated presentation […]
BORDEAUX – The sale of the Château de Gevrey-Chambertin at the end of August has revived the specter of France’s vineyards being transferred en masse into the hands of Chinese billionaires. However, in the Bordeaux region itself, these new investors seem to be rather well received by professionals in the field. Until August 22 of […]
BBC, REUTERS (UK), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), CNN (US) Protestors enraged by an anti-Islam film have stormed the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, following similar rounds of violence in Libya and Egypt that had left four American diplomats dead in the Libyan city of Benghazi. The BBC reported Thursday morning that protesters have stormed the embassy’s security […]
DE TELEGRAAF (The Netherlands), BBC NEWS, THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch AMSTERDAM – Two Dutch centrist parties have secured an absolute parliamentary majority between them in Wednesday’s elections, reports The Guardian. VVD, the party of liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte, claimed victory with 41 seats, two more than center-left rivals Labor, which won 39. According to […]
MILAN – Some stories do have a happy ending. The most multiethnic school in Italy, Lombardo Radice public school in Milan, had a new batch of first graders again this week. Last year it wasn’t allowed to open to a new incoming elementary school class because it had “too many foreigners.” It had appeared to […]
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (USA), CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY (Taiwan) Worldcrunch The United States has become the primary destination for Chinese students wishing to study abroad, receiving more than 170,000 students over the past two years. That shouldn’t really surprise anyone. The real news is the wave heading in the other direction: the multiplying numbers of […]
BEIRUT – Sheikh Hani Fahs lives by the old route to the airport, near the entrance of Beirut’s Dahieh (“southern suburb”). This a Hezbollah stronghold. The Lebanese cleric has had a ringside seat over this main axis, which has often been blocked by angry demonstrators these past few months. Down the street, walls are covered […]
-Essay- The car drove slowly into the early spring night of Hangzhou. The person who had come to fetch me is a new acquaintance named Wang Qixian. As a member of the post-1980s generation he has worked as a white collar worker in the private sector, in Chinese state-owned enterprises, as well as in Taiwanese […]
SAINT-OUEN – At what age does gender inequality take root? As early as the crib, according to the staff at one nursery school in Saint-Ouen, in the northern suburbs of Paris. Bourdarias nursery school was the first pre-school establishment in France to adopt an anti-sexism policy, in 2009. France’s Minister for Women’s Rights Najat Vallaud-Belkacem […]
DER SPIEGEL (Germany), LE FIGARO (France), THE GUARDIAN (UK), POLITICO (US) Worldcrunch According to new international polling data, the majority of Europeans would like to see Barack Obama voted in for a second term. Meanwhile, his Republican opponent Mitt Romney is still a virtual unknown across the pond. Der Spiegel reported Wednesday that according to […]
KOMMERSANT (Russia)


 Worldcrunch MOSCOW – There is a widely held misconception in Russia and abroad that Russian parents want their children to emigrate, hoping they will be able to find a better place to settle down outside of Russia. But it turns out, according to a recent survey, only 12% of parents would be happy […]
-Analysis- MOSCOW – The Russia Arctic Coast is one of the dirtiest places on earth. According to the most conservative estimates, the shores of the Arctic Ocean are littered with 4 million tons of industrial and construction waste, part of which is toxic. More than 20,000 pieces of electronics are strewn across the Russian Arctic […]
AL JAZEERA (Qatar), EGYPT INDEPENDENT (Egypt), ABC (US), SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), AFP (France) Worldcrunch BENGHAZI – The US Ambassador to Libya and three other staff members were killed following an attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi amid protests against an American amateur film denouncing the Prophet Muhammad. Al Jazeera reported that US Ambassador […]
FOCUS, BERLINER MORGENPOST (Germany), LES ECHOS (France) Worldcrunch BERLIN – The German Constitutional Court has upheld the legality of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which had been set up to help bail out countries in the euro zone on the verge of financial collapse. With the decision Wednesday, a great source of anxiety was lifted […]
DAWN (Pakistan), TIMES OF INDIA (India), AL JAZEERA (Qatar) Worldcrunch KARACHI – At least 191 people were killed in two separate factory fires in the Pakistani cities of Karachi and Lahore. Officials said Wednesday that 166 people where killed after a fire broke out in a factory in the coastal megalopolis of Karachi, and dozens […]
BEIJING – From his pigeon house, Wan Lianxi overlooks a sea of misshapen roofs and walls overgrown with weeds. He recently added a corrugated plastic roof for shade. Wan started raising homing pigeons in downtown Beijing 40 years ago – when he was still a teenager. Today, he has about 100 of them. During races, […]
ASAHI SHIMBUN, JAPAN TIMES (Japan), CHINA DAILY, XINHUA (China), ASSOCIATED PRESS Worldcrunch The Japanese government signed a 2.05 billion yen (26 million) contract Tuesday with the owner of three of the five Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, effectively nationalizing the territory and immediately drawing a strong protest from Beijing, which sent surveillance ships […]
A French reporter travels to the heart of the most pivotal swing state in the Obama v. Romney showdown where economic uncertainty is the only sure thing.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, RADIO AUSTRALIA (Australia), CNN, WALL STREET JOURNAL (USA), REUTERS Worldcrunch BEIJING – Xi Jinping, the 58-year-old Chinese Vice President, widely expected to be the next leader of the People’s Republic of China, has not been seen in public since September 1. Several meetings planned with foreign leaders have been canceled, reports Reuters […]
Maged, a young officer who’s defected from the Syrian police, says his countrymen often never even knew each others’ religious and tribal backgrounds. “We used to live in peace,” he says, recalling life before the past year of violence. “But the regime has managed to breed sectarianism in people.” Syria has not yet turned into […]
NTV, DAILY HURRIYET (Turkey), CNBC (USA) ISTANBUL – One police officer has died in Istanbul’s Sultangazi district, after a suicide bomber threw a grenade into a police station in the area, Turkish news channel NTV reported. Up to five people were injured and taken to hospital in critical condition, according to Daily Hurriyet. “First (the […]
NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch NEW YORK – Eleven years after 9/11, a writer with unprecedented access to pertinent classified documents says the Bush Administration ignored multiple “direct warnings” that Al Qaeda was planning to strike on American soil leading up to the Sep. 11, 2001 attack. In a piece published in the Op-Ed pages […]
BERLIN – Even the ever competent European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi stumbled when he was asked how he was dealing with the fact that the Germans had reservations about his latest moves. That’s because the journalist at last week’s press conference didn’t address him as “President Draghi,” but as “Herr Weidmann.” Of course, […]
THE GUARDIAN (UK), LE FIGARO (France), WALL ST. JOURNAL (U.S.) Worldcrunch The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has risen to the top spot of the annual QS University World Rankings. Last year’s top two universities, Cambridge and Harvard, both lost out to the science and technology university, being bumped down to second and third place […]
TIMES OF INDIA (India), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch NEW DEHLI – At least 28 people were killed after a bus plunged off a highway Monday night in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, reports BBC. The bus fell into a 500-foot-deep gorge in the Kangra valley, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the state […]
WELKOM – It’s a small open-air factory, impossible to spot from the road. You have to go into Thabong, the township in Welkom, three hours south of Johannesburg, to discover it in an old mining town in the G-Hostel, where a dozen workers are clustered, busy transforming rocks into gold. Behind the apparent disorder hides […]
LE MONDE (France), THENEXTWEB (USA) Worldcrunch A group called AntiSec, linked to international hacker movement Anonymous, claims that it has broken into an FBI computer to obtain the User IDs of 12 million Apple iPad and iPhone owners, which include private user data. Apple has declared that it has nothing to do with any collection […]
BRASILIA – There’s a strange section on Walmart Brazil’s website, strange at least for a retailer. It’s not the usual invitation to apply for a job, “Work with us,” but an invitation to make real estate deals with the huge multinational company. “If you own land or a building where it would be possible to […]
LE FIGARO, LIBERATION, EUROPE 1, AFP, FRANCE 24 (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – French newspapers are tracking tax exiles after Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man and head of luxury good giant LVMH, said Sunday he was seeking Belgian nationality. The luxury tycoon’s move to seek Belgian citizenship has caused outrage in a country hit by a […]
Made By ABVH (Serbia and Montenegro) Worldcrunch Serbian artist ABVH has created a series of animated GIFs bringing world famous street artist Banksy’s work to life. The result is amazing:
A shockwave, an explosion, a fire. The boat lets in water and topples over, passengers hang on to life boats or jump into the waves. Few circumstances have the tragic intensity of a shipwreck, which takes mere seconds to throw human beings into life-threatening situations, where the cruelest of decisions have to be made: who […]