Worldcrunch
MOSCOW – While much has been made of a “reset” in the relationship between the United States and Russia, Pakistan is also trying to find a new starting point in its relationship with Russia, which has yet to recover from Pakistan’s cold-war alliance with the United States. This would-be reset has had both setbacks and […]
TABOÃO DA SERRA – It was Tuesday, 2 a.m., and D. was lying on her sofa, trying to get some sleep. Bang…Bang…Bang. “It sounded like somebody was shooting inside here,” she recalled. D. crouched, waited for the shots to stop, and left home to check the street. She opened the front door and, three meters […]
NOBELPRIZE.ORG (Sweden) Worldcrunch STOCKHOLM – The 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to 57-year-old Chinese writer Mo Yan. 2012 #NobelPrize in #Literature was awarded to Mo Yan “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.” — Nobelprize_org (@Nobelprize_org) October 11, 2012 The official site of the Nobel Prize describes Mo […]
AP OF PAKISTAN, PAKISTANI OBSERVER, PAKISTANI INTERNATIONAL NEWS (Pakistan), HINDUSTAN TIMES (India), DAILY MAIL, BBC (U.K.) Worldcrunch PESHAWAR – A wave of national and international support was growing for Malala Yousefzai, the 14-year-old girl shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat province, who remained in critical condition after her latest surgery Thursday […]
YEMEN OBSERVER (Yemen), REUTERS Worldcrunch SANA’A – A U.S. Embassy employee was assassinated on his way to work in the Yemeni capital Thursday. Yemen Observer reports that Qassem Aqlan, a Yemeni senior security officer working at the U.S. Embassy, was shot dead by masked gunmen on a motorcycle around 10 am Thursday. Gunmen opened fire […]
KIGALI – In Rwanda, getting married has always been a complicated affair. Before anything, the families of the bride and groom sit down for a long negotiation. Once they have exchanged gifts and agreed that the couple should indeed marry, and of course settled on what the dowry will be, the traditional wedding can start. […]
GELSENKIRCHEN – It was just a few days before summer break that nine-year-old Lisa Bahlhaus (not her real name) came home in tears. The teacher had announced that after the school holidays the whole class would be presenting a play, and she’d assigned roles. Of all the kids, only Lisa didn’t get a role. The […]
MOSCOW – In a new twist in the case of Anna Politkovskaya, the prominent Russian investigative journalist murdered in 2006, her children are filing a petition to rescind a plea bargain reached with one of the men involved in their mother’s assassination. Politkovskaya was a well-known investigative journalist who reported extensively for the Russian paper […]
On the left, a wall of washing machines and stoves. On the right, a man is taking apart a vacuum cleaner, another a food processor. A little further away, an employee looking through a powerful magnifying glass pokes at a telephone with tweezers. In the background, a television set without its shell is broadcasting a […]
AP, BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch A Moscow appeals court has freed Yekaterina Samutsevich, one of the convicted women from the punk band Pussy Riot, but upheld two-year jail terms for the other two. The judge ruled that Yekaterina Samutsevich’s sentence should be suspended because she was thrown out of Moscow’s main cathedral by guards before […]
NOBELPRIZE.ORG (Sweden) Worldcrunch STOCKHOLM – The 2012 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to two American researchers for their studies on how body cells react to their environments. Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka were recognized for their “groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family of receptors, known as G-protein-coupled receptors,” […]
ISTANBUL – “Will we go to war with Syria?” That is the singular question on everyone’s mind these days. We journalists are being pounded with it every day from friends and close relatives — but how can we give a direct answer? I say talk of war between Turkey and Syria is overblown and I […]
LOS ANGELES TIMES (U.S.), STERN, DER SPIEGEL (Germany) Worldcrunch A virus called Dorkbot is working its way through Skype users around the world. When users click on the English- or German-language come-on, malware is installed in their computer and it becomes part of a botnet, a network of remote-controlled computers that can conduct denial-of-service attacks. […]
LE POINT (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former leader of France’s Socialist Party and ex-head of the International Monetary Fund, has spent the past year trying to return the focus of attention to his economic acumen. But no doubt, his first interview since September 2011, set to be published in French weekly […]
Worldcrunch LONDON – Lady Gaga, fresh from a public presentation of her new perfume Fame at London’s Harrods, paid WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a five-hour visit at the nearby Ecuadorian embassy, where the famous whisteblower has been granted asylum since June. The meeting between the undisputed Queen of Twitter — Lady Gaga has recently reached […]
CAIRO – Abdallah Seleem doesn’t watch the news anymore. It’s disheartening, he says, to see how far Egypt has slid from its initial optimism after Hosni Mubarak stepped down last year. It causes him too much stress about the future. “You’re too frustrated to talk about it,” says Seleem, 25, who is unemployed. “It’s like […]
BERLIN – Despite considerable efforts, the economic gap between eastern and western Germany is not shrinking fast enough. While the East is indeed becoming more dynamic, it still lags far behind the West, according to the 2012 statistics compiled by the Initiative for a New Social Market Economy (INSM), which ranks German states for dynamism […]
AL WAFD, JANUARY 25TH PORTAL (Egypt), TWITTER, GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch CAIRO –Among the central demands of Egypt’s pro-democracy movement was for Mohamed Morsi to set free all those imprisoned during the many protests linked to the January 25th Revolution. Yet when reports that the new Egyptian president had marked his first 100 days in office […]
TAP (Tunisia), RT (Russia), AFRIK.COM Worldcrunch TUNIS – Tunisia’s Ministry of Women and Family Affairs has filed a complaint against Kaws Kouzah (“Rainbow”), an Arabic-language children’s magazine that published disturbingly detailed instructions of how to make a Molotov cocktail, Tunisia’s news agency TAP reports. The article, published under the “Knowledge Garden” section of the #302 […]
-Opinion- A few weeks ago, the world’s biggest coffee chain, Starbucks, opened a new shop in the commercial district near Lingyin Temple. This temple, whose name means the Temple of the Soul’s Retreat, is in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Founded in the 4th century, it houses one of China’s most famous monasteries for Chan Buddhism (known […]
FRANCE 24, LES ECHOS (France), GUARDIAN, EVENING STANDARD (UK), BLOOMBERG (USA) LONDON – Are the rich and the entrepreneurs leaving France? Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, certainly hopes so. Pointing to the 240,000 Frenchmen who currently live in his city, he invited those unhappy with the French government’s new tax scheme to move to […]
ATHENS NEWS, ZOUGLA (Greece), FOCUS, DAS BILD, DER SPIEGEL, STERN (Germany) Worldcrunch ATHENS – German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Greece this morning to a welcome of police, protestors and armored cars, as well as a “wave of hatred,” reported German newsmagazine Stern, which also called Greece a Pleitestaat, or “broke” country. The Greek government […]
VANGUARDIA, EXCELSIOR, MILENIO, INFORMADOR (Mexico) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – Authorities in Mexico were busy Tuesday trying to determine if one of the country’s most feared drugpins had been killed over the weekend in a firefight with military forces. The showdown took place Sunday at a crossroads in the northeastern Mexican city of Coahuila, when the […]
CORRIERE DELLA SERA, LA STAMPA, TG5 (Italy) TWITTER Worldcrunch ROME – For one brief, shining moment, he was back. For those who like their politics, well, colorful, the prospect of another run for office by controversial three-time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had hung in the air for the past two months in Italy. But on […]
THE NEWS INTERNATIONAL, NEWS PAKISTAN, GEO NEWS (Pakistan), BBC URDU (UK) Worldcrunch SWAT – Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old peace activist has been shot in her hometown of Swat in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in northern Pakistan. The children’s rights activist was injured along with two other girls when unknown assailants opened fire on the vehicle […]
-Essay- On September 18, I was returning from Benin where I had been presenting my latest book, and came to the Aneho border crossing, on the Togo side. After a customs officer spent a long time questioning me on the reasons for my travel in his charming country, writing down where I had been in […]
–Editorial– In spite of what the polls say and the voting urns told us – Hugo Chavez has indeed won another term, which will keep him in power until 2019 – it is also true that the true triumph in Venezuela’s election yesterday lay elsewhere: in the support for the young Henrique Capriles Radonski, the […]
Cruise lovers come in all shapes, sizes and inclinations. Some climb aboard for the pleasure of getting decked out in their sharpest evening wear. Others like to keep it as casual as they can. Dress codes, indeed, vary from ship to ship. UK-owned Cunard Cruises may still require tuxedos and evening gowns on its ocean […]
SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, DPA, DAPD, HGN, WOJA (Germany) Worldcrunch ATHENS – Some 7,000 police, including reinforcements brought in from across Greece, will be ensuring extra-tight security during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first visit to Athens since the breakout of the financial crisis. The government fears the visit on Tuesday could unleash hostility from citizens who hold […]
AKRUN – Far beyond the brown plain and the shimmering blue waters of Qatinnah Lake, the outlines of a city can just barely be made out. “That’s Homs, that’s where there’s war,” says a refugee turning away from the empty window opening. Then there’s the sound of an explosion at some distance behind him. “And […]
NEW DELHI – Who will be able to decontaminate Bhopal? During the night of December 3, 1984, a Union Carbide pesticide plant exploded in the north Indian city of Bhopal, releasing toxic gases that killed between 15,000 and 30,000 people. Nearly 28 years after one of the worst industrial catastrophes in history, toxic chemicals abandoned […]
THE WORLD BANK, REUTERS Worldcrunch SINGAPORE – The World Bank cut its 2012 growth forecast for East Asia and the Pacific region on Monday, with China’s GDP growth outlook down from 9.3% in 2011 to 7.7% this year. Markets reacted quickly to the news: Oil and gold prices push sharply lower as World Bank cuts […]
GUARDIAN (UK), NOBEL COMMITTEE (Sweden) Worldcrunch STOCKHOLM – The 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to British and Japanese researchers who, decades apart, helped show that mature cells can be pluripotent, the Nobel committee announced Monday. “John B. Gurdon discovered in 1962 that the specialization of cells is reversible,” noted the press release announcing […]
-Analysis- In the financial press, Africa is now hailed as the “go-to” continent. It seems to be at the cusp of a golden age: its growth and direct foreign investment rates recall those of China at the beginning of the 2000s; South Africa has become one of the booming BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa). The continent also […]
-Op-Ed- MOSCOW – The reality of our lives in Russia is that the beginning of the 21st century is being dominated by the political leadership of Vladimir Putin. But it is perfectly obvious that the next couple of years will be the most difficult, and for Russian society these years will be the most important. […]
THE GLOBAL TIMES (China), CHINA TIMES (Taiwan) Worldcrunch BEIJING – What do the Chinese people appreciate most from Japan? Adult videos and their actresses, answered the Chinese according to a large-scale online survey conducted last week by the Global Times, a state-owned Beijing daily. Just as China and Japan have marked the 40th anniversary of […]
A Tel Aviv Tale Of Manners
CARACAS – After the tunnel that bores through one of the rocky hills that surround Caracas, the road bends, lined on either side with colorfully-painted homes, ending in one of the plazas of the 23 de Enero neighborhood. This corner of the capital is a bastion of support for incumbent Hugo Chavez, and one of […]
VOICE OF RUSSIA, KOMMERSANT (Russia) HOUSTON PRESS, (US) MOSCOW – Russian authorities are staying mostly mum since the United States accused 11 people this week, all from countries in the former Soviet Union, of illegal export of high-tech military equipment and money laundering. Moscow-based daily Kommersant reports that seven of the 11 accused were arrested […]
RIO DE JANEIRO – The area surrounding the house of Eomar Freitas, 36, looks like a war zone after air strikes. The shopkeeper’s home neighborhood is Rio’s Favela do Metrô, a slum tucked between Radio Oeste Avenue and the metro, next to the Maracanã station. Located just 500 meters from the Maracanã stadium, where the […]