ITAR-TASS (Russia), CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Worldcrunch MOSCOW – The Kremlin has authorized scientists to finally reveal what they say are “trillions of carats” of diamonds located in a field in eastern Siberia that could forever change the market of the precious gem. The Russians have know since the 1970s of this 35-million-year-old and 62-mile wide […]
Month: January 2013
Barack Obama’s longtime campaign guru David Axelrod has a new client: Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. Axelrod slipped into Rome to meet privately with Monti, 69, a political centrist and longtime university professor and European Union Commissioner, who served one year as caretaker Prime Minister. Monti is now in his first campaign for higher office, […]
-Editorial- BUENOS AIRES – There is much to criticize the Cuban government about, but its decision to allow its citizens to travel abroad without the infamous “white card” exit visa, deserves applause. Since January 14, Cubans are allowed travel abroad, just like citizens of any other democratic country – with a valid passport and a […]
Sounds a bit like Mark Zuckerberg?
GENEVA TALKS CONTINUE OVER SYRIA’S FUTURELakhdar Brahimi, the UN mediator for peace in Syria, will hold separate meetings with representatives of the Syrian government and of the opposition in a bid to bring them to the negotiating table ahead of tomorrow’s talks in Geneva. According to the BBC, it’s still not clear whether the two […]
JERUSALEM POST, HAARETZ (Israel), BBC NEWS (UK), CNN, NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu“s narrow victory for a third term as Israel’s prime minister will force him to reach out to the surprise centrist challenger as he now faces the complex task of forming a new coalition. Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu right-wing […]
BANGKOK POST, THE NATION (Thailand), HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (USA) Worldcrunch BANGKOK – A Thailand criminal court convicted Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, the editor of the now-defunct Voice of Taksin magazine to 11 years in jail on Wednesday. Somyot, who is also a prominent Thai labor rights activist, was on trial for two counts of lese majeste for […]
Sources tell Le Monde that the Syria regime fired rockets with a non-lethal chemical agent during a deadly Dec. 23 attack in Homs. So why didn’t Western leaders follow through on their threats?
BBC, THE GUARDIAN, THE TELEGRAPH (UK), THE NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch LONDON – UK Prime Minister David Cameron has opened the door to a national referendum to allow voters to decide whether to pull Britain out of the European Union. During a much anticipated speech Wednesday in London, Cameron said that if he is […]
SANTA RITA – “Don’t let nostalgia screw you…” Alfredo tells the young Totò in the 1988 Italian movie Cinema Paradiso, urging him not to look back, to forget his native Sicily: the “evil earth.” Maurizio Spinello, instead, kneads that very nostalgia into his bread every day, having chosen to stay in his village of 11 […]
A Chinese reporter crosses the border to take the pulse of the closed-off nation, where young North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may have begun to loosen things up ever so slightly.
CLARIN, EL DIARIO (ARGENTINA) Worldcrunch CORDOBA – In some places, the cops are busy cracking down with tough new laws on drinking and driving; elsewhere, the focus is on texting and driving. But in Argentina“s second-largest city, the newest threat to highway safety is the cigarette. Beginning next Monday, police in Cordoba will begin handing […]
-Editorial- SANTIAGO – In the morning on Jan. 4 in Araucania, a region in southern Chile where the Mapuche people live, a group of masked men attacked and set fire to the house of a local landowner and farmer who had spent years litigating with indigenous groups. The landowner, Werner Luchsinger and his wife were […]
DER SPIEGEL (Germany), NEWS.COM.AU (Australia) Worldcrunch BOSTON – George Church, a Harvard School of Medicine genetics professor, believes that he can create a Neanderthal baby. All he needs is an “adventurous female.” George Church at TED 2010. Photo: Life, Synthetic Life! He told German magazine Der Spiegel: “I have already managed to attract enough DNA […]
Algerian-born, French-bred Haim Amsalem is a member of the Knesset, and now the sworn enemy of the ultra-orthodox Shas party that he helped found.
GENEVA 2 PEACE CONFERENCE OPENS UKRAINE PROTESTS TURN DEADLY Officials say at least two protesters have died in Kiev, as the violent fights with the police continue to escalate. According to The Kyiv Post, there may have been a third victim, after two were killed by gunfire, with one apparently shot four times. The reported […]
NICOSIA – The moment you arrive in Cyprus you sense something about the little eastern Mediterranean island that sets it apart from its European neighbors. There are an unusual number of men in suits carrying briefcases. And the bright billboards on the streets leading from the airport have Cyrillic writing on them. Some of the […]
PARIS MATCH (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS – The Islamist militant group behind the deadly hostage crisis at an Algerian gas plant that killed dozens of foreigners last week has threatened to carry out new attacks, especially against France. In a phone call to French weekly magazine Paris Match, a spokesman for Mokhtar Belmokhtar – the […]
SBS (Australia), WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – Barack Obama spoke for 19 minutes after taking the oath for his second term as President of the United States. The first African-American President was sworn in on Monday, which coincided with the day the nation celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King — […]
AFP, WALL STREET JOURNAL, JAPAN TIMES (Japan) Worldcrunch TOKYO – Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said during a meeting that elderly people should “hurry up and die.” Taro Aso. Photo Sebastian Derungs “Heaven forbid if you are forced to live on when you want to die. You cannot sleep well when you think it’s all […]
BERLIN – Asir’s life was preprogrammed. The North African Muslim was to be trained to be a jihadist in a Palestinian terrorist camp. There he would learn how to build bombs and kill non-believers. But just before he was due to leave, he started to have doubts. “I realized that there were several versions of […]
Many across the Arab region believed Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt was the path to a new unity to defy Israel and the U.S. in the region. A different reality is setting in.
TOULOUSE – Will we be forced to eat spiders, larvae, crickets and other creepy-crawlers in the near future? In the face of mounting demographic pressures, we may be faced with this question sooner rather than later. “With 20 billion cattle, twice the number of the 1980s, the earth has reached its maximum number of ruminants. […]
EL ESPECTADOR, EL MUNDO, EL TIEMPO (Colombia) Worldcrunch BOGOTA- Colombia’s FARC rebels have announced the end of a two-month unilateral ceasefire after the Colombian government refused to join the truce. Photo: FARC flag via Wikipedia The FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, declared the ceasefire when peace talks with the government began on Nov. […]
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Germany’s New Green War On Cow Farts
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch It’s a different kind of toxic emission, but scientists have indeed measured the environmental impact of the methane gases let out by flatulent livestock. And now the President of Germany’s Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Jochen Flasbarth, wants farmers to shoulder more responsibility for climate protection. “In the medium term we could […]
In his native Germany, Mr “Dotcom” is called by his real name, Kim Schmitz; but Germans joined with the rest of the world to see the roll-out of his new outsized Internet file-sharing site.
PRESSURE MOUNTING ON ASSAD AHEAD OF GENEVA 2 CLASHES CONTINUE IN KIEV Violent clashes continued in Kiev for the second night in a row, with pro-EU protesters torching vehicles and throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police, who replied with plastic bullets and stones, Ria Novosti reports. The protest movement, which started in November, was recently […]
BBC, SKY NEWS (UK), SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), FRANCE 24, EURONEWS Worldcrunch ALGIERS – Foreign governments and news outlets were working Monday to verify the number of hostages killed during a bloody four-day Islamist terrorist seige of a gas treatment plant in southeastern Algeria. The Algerian government, which has been criticized by some for both […]
MADRID – Spanish has become the most spoken language in the world after English – in real life as well as on social networking sites. It is the second most used language on Twitter, after English, ahead of Portuguese and Japanese. These findings were presented in Madrid last week by the head of the Cervantes […]
REUTERS, TELEGRAPH (UK), CNN, SENATE.GOV (USA) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON, D.C. – Barack Obama will be sworn in Monday as the President of The United States for a second time. A swearing-in ceremony, parade and an inaugural ball will mark the event. A private ceremony took place on Sunday because the U.S. Constitution mandates that the president […]
BLOOMBERG (USA), LES ECHOS (France) Worldcrunch The U.S.-based businesses of the iconic video-game-maker Atari have filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. An Atari 2600 console – Wikimedia Late Sunday, Atari said it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an effort to free the company from its French parent […]
WASHINGTON – It’s called the “curse of the second term.” American political commentators can go through each of the past two-term presidents and point to an unexpected phenomenon, a political error or some other trip wire set off in the second four-year stint in office. All the occupants of the White House have experienced it, […]
Facebook rolled out a new feature for the Messenger app on iPhone that lets you make free phone calls to your friends using a WiFi or cellular data connection. There are, of course, a few caveats: But the calling feature in Messenger hints at the grander plans Facebook has for you phone. Just like Facebook […]
In the nation of Burundi, serious efforts are being made to make businesses more attractive to outside investors. Still, it ranks near the very bottom of global transparency rankings.
XINHUA (China), LIANHE ZAOBAO (Singapore), CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY (Taiwan) BEIJING – China’s new leaders have adopted new measures to cut back on government perks and outright corruption, but there’s at least one sector of society that is not pleased: the catering industry. On Dec 4, the newly elected Politburo Standing Committee adopted eight measures to […]
UN INVITES IRAN TO GENEVA 2, SYRIAN OPPOSITION THREATENS BOYCOTT SERIES OF BAGHDAD EXPLOSIONS KILL DOZENS At least 24 people died and another 58 were injured in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad after it was hit by half a dozen explosions, Reuters reports. YANUKOVYCH TO NEGOTIATE WITH PRO-EU OPPOSITIONUkraine President Viktor Yanukovych has agreed to […]
A reporter travels to the Thai-Burmese border to find the rebel army of the Mons, an ethnic minority for whom little has changed despite the opening up of the Myanmar regime.
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Letter from Worldcrunch Editor Jeff Israely
How we see the world, and how you can help
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My Pen Pal Was A Japanese Cannibal
In 1981, Issei Sagawa, a Japanese student in Paris killed and ate a fellow students. A French classmate stayed in touch with Sagawa, and now tries to make sense of the macabre.
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – Whether it is its solidly high price per ounce or maybe even the end-of-year visit of Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, to view British gold reserves at the Bank of England, conspiracy theories are proliferating around gold – particularly as (or so rumor has it) some kilo bars appeared in […]