AP, XINHUA (China) Worldcrunch ZHENXIONG – Chinese authorities have offered a rare apology after cremating the remains of 46 victims of last Friday’s deadly landslide, before even consulting with their families. The AP reports that Hu Jianpu, deputy dead of Zhenxiong county in China’s Yunnan province, told state broadcaster CCTV “We did that because we […]
Month: January 2013
BBC (UK), DAWN (Pakistan) Worldcrunch ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on corruption allegations. Ashraf has been accused of accepting bribes during his term as minister for water and power in 2010. Authorities have 24 hours to take him into custody, along with 15 others included […]
BENI – Gisèle Masika, a young divorced woman from this Congolese city, says she wants nothing of her aunt’s life as a housewife. “My aunt can’t do anything, her husband takes care of everything, and he has no consideration for her,” she says. Like other women in Beni, in northeastern Congo, Masika decided to learn […]
France’s just launched military intervention in Mali has earned the old colonial power praise from those fearing Islamist extremists. The fight, however, has only just begun.
From its founding, the Muslim Brotherhood has been hostile, yet not completely rigid, toward the Jewish State. Now, will President Morsi invite Egyptian Jews to return home?
SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch GROSS RIDSENOW – The recent theft of a 600-kilogram, 500-year-old chapel bell (estimated value 20,000 euros) from a cemetery in Gross Ridsenow in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is one of an increasing number of bell thefts in Germany. What attracts thieves to the bells is quick money, according to the Suddeutsche […]
CHITTAGONG – In the port of Chittagong, containers pile up like colorful cubes of sugar. Dozens of ships scurry down the estuary of the Karnaphuli, the river that winds around the economic capital of Bangladesh to finally stream down into the Bay of Bengal. The port is bustling. The newly built mooring container terminal (NCT) […]
Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – The 70th Golden Globes ceremony took place Sunday night in Los Angeles, bringing together Television and Cinema… surprise and predictability. Here’s what happened: 1. After being snubbed at the Oscar nominations, Ben Affleck’s drama “Argo” about the hostage crisis in Iran, won Best Picture, Drama, (and Director) beating tough competition from […]
SANTIAGO – In early November, a group of delegates from Latin America and Britain, all part of the British American Tobacco multinational, gathered in Rio de Janeiro. The company said it was a routine meeting, and offered few details. The one thing we can know for sure is that if any of them smoked, they […]
OVER 200 DROWN IN SOUTH SUDAN FERRY ACCIDENT Between 200 and 300 people are believed to have drowned in a ferry accident on the White Nile river, AFP reports an army spokesman as saying. The civilians were trying to flee from the town of Malakal where there is intense fighting, but the boat was overcrowded. […]
CNN (USA), LE FIGARO (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch U.S. troops lent “limited technical support” in France’s bloody and failed bid in Somalia to rescue Dennis Allex, a French intelligence agent who’d been held hostage by al-Qaeda linked terrorists since 2009. President Barack Obama detailed the U.S. military involvement in the Friday night mission in a letter […]
FRANCE 24, LIBERATION (France) Worldcrunch BAMAKO – On the third day of the French-led “Operation Serval” to drive the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group MUJAO out of northern Mali, air strikes have been carried out Monday on Timbuktu and Gao, two key rebel strongholds. Four Rafales fighter jets pounded rebel training camps, logistic depots and infrastructure […]
EFE, GRANMA, PRENSA LATINA (Cuba) Worldcrunch HAVANA- Effective from midnight local time on January 14, thanks to a new reform by the Cuban government, Cuban citizens are now allowed to apply for passports, without having to apply for special exit visas. Photo: Rindo75 via Wikipedia First announced in October, these new regulations include an extended […]
KAISERSLAUTERN – It’s been more than two years since 21 people were killed and more than 500 injured in the Duisburg Love Parade, a tragedy that shocked Germany and reopened wider questions about how to control large crowds. In an article published in the EPJ Data Science journal, physicist Dirk Helbing of the Swiss Federal […]
Located near the Berlin zoo, the address is the first in Germany for the famed US luxury hotel brand.
The target year is 2020, and the subject on the minds of many world economists: the Chinese consumer. In a report published last month, “Consuming China: How to get ready for the next stage,” McKinsey & Company predict that consumption will replace investment as the driving force of China’s GDP growth. Meanwhile, Dong Tao, Asia […]
BANGKOK “SHUTDOWN”Anti-government demonstrators in Bangkok are blocking the main access points to Thailand’s capital as they try to shut down the city to increase pressure on the government and on Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to resign. It comes just a few weeks ahead of a general election, The Bangkok Post reports. According to Reuters, 10,000 […]
Too many travelers ignore some pretty basic American laws that can seem foreign to them. Here’s how it looks to the Italian go-to lawyer in New York for just such cases.
LAMINGAN – It’s late November, patches of a green mountainous landscape are piercing through the morning fog. They follow a regular pattern, typical of palm oil plantations. The trees’ bases are surrounded by burned vegetation – a sign that pesticides were used. The palm oil plantation, started in 2005 by Nakeen, a subsidiary of the […]
BUENOS AIRES – The organization of the 1934 World Cup in Italy by Mussolini and the 1936 Olympics in Germany by Hitler helped those governments legitimize their regimes around the globe. Sport in general – and soccer in particular – is a phenomenon that integrates society, promotes values and arouses a large interest amongst very […]
LE MONDE, LIBERATION, FRANCE 24 (France) Worldcrunch BAMAKO – France has launched a military intervention in Mali, with President François Hollande declaring that the “terrorist groups, drug traffickers and extremists” in the northern part of the country “show a brutality that threatens us all.” In the declaration late Friday, Hollande added that the operation would […]
Thanks to Android boom and strategic mistakes at Microsoft, Bing search is even further behind Google on mobile devices.
GURGAON – Shoes are not allowed on the foam mat. We are surrounded by the noise of fists hitting the leather of the punching bags, the high-paced breathing of two fighters training one-on-one. We are in Gurgao, in the suburbs southwest of New Delhi, a snapshot of the fast-developing India with its shiny new buildings. […]
The killing of three Kurdish activists in Paris shines new light on a longstanding fact of a millions of people spread across large swaths of terrritory, but with no nation of their own.
Some provocative studies are cited as the debate heats up in France over a law to legalize gay marriage.
FRANCE INFO, SLATE AFRIQUE (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – A French woman of Guadeloupian origins, Rosita Destival, has filed suit against the French state for not having emancipated one of her ancestors after the legal abolition of slavery. The woman’s lawyer cites the 2001 bill stating that slavery was now considered to be a crime against […]
Behind codes of encryption, the so-called “Deep Web” hosts a vast network of people trading in illegal sales of all sorts, most notably any drug imaginable.
-Editorial- BEIJING – The ambulance was stuck behind a sea of cars. Even though its blue lights were flashing and its siren was blaring, no cars gave way. Instead they squeezed by skillfully, one after the other. The video, which captures perfectly how difficult it is for an ambulance to drive through the streets of […]
AL JAZEERA, BBC, LAHORE TIMES (Pakistan) Worldcrunch KARACHI/QUETTA/SWAT– Pakistan has declared three days of mourning after a string of bombings killed more than 100 people, while nine others died in separate shootings. Photo: CIA via Wikipedia In the northwest city of Quetta, a suicide bomber entered a snooker club on Thursday that was close to […]
DAILY YOMUIRI, KYODO (Japan), DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, AFP Worldcrunch TOKYO – The Japanese government has formally approved a massive 20.2 trillion yen ($227 billion) stimulus package during a cabinet meeting on Friday morning, reports the Daily Yomuiri. The national government will spend 10.3 trillion yen ($116 billion), with nearly the same amount kicked in by […]
XINHUA (China), BBC (UK) Worldcrunch KUNMING – At least 40 people were believed to be buried in a massive landslide Friday morning in the Yunnan capital city, with 18 confirmed dead. The rescuers are still digging for survivors. Ten residential homes were crushed under tons of rubble and mud in this region of southwest China […]
MUNICH – To many, “i” was just a letter of the alphabet – until it was used by a then unknown computer company to skyrocket to the global position Apple holds today. And now BMW is hoping to go far on “i” too, investing billions in the i3 electric car due to come onto the […]
BEIJING – After a five-year hiatus, Shinzo Abe is back as Japan’s Prime Minister. What will this mean for China-Japan relations, which are at a historic 40-year low because of the Senkaku Islands dispute? According to observers, Chinese officials had been expecting the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to step down from power, so they […]
ISTANBUL – Early-term abortions are still legal in Turkey, though Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his own opposition clear last year, calling abortion “murder.” There was also at least one case of a woman who had an abortion after the 10th week facing three years in jail, in a country with an increasingly pious […]
Just before the first anniversary of the deadly sinking of the Italian cruise ship, La Repubblica daily’s website posts a never-before-seen video of the final desperate moments.
THE GUARDIAN (UK), CBS NEWS (US) Worldcrunch After wrapping up an unusual and notably tight-lipped visit to North Korea, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt urged the Pyongyang regime on Thursday to open up to the Internet or risk the further economic consequences of isolation. “As the world is becoming increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually […]
Worldcrunch CARACAS – Thursday was supposed to be the day Hugo Chavez was inaugurated for a fourth term as Venezuela’s president. But the ceremony has been postponed as he is recovering from a reported “severe” lung infection after his latest cancer surgery in Havana, Cuba. Though Chavez has not been seen in public for more […]
PARIS – To infinity … and beyond! Within the next decade, if all goes according to plan, we Earthlings will have two crucial instruments at our disposal to probe the outer reaches of the universe. Doing so, will allow us to go back in time to the very birth of the universe, 13.7 billion years […]
LE PARISIEN, EUROPE 1, FRANCE INFO (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Three Kurdish women activists, including a founding member of the militant group PKK, have been found dead inside a Kurdish cultural center in Paris, each with gunshot wounds. The bodies of the women were found early on Thursday inside the information center of the Kurdish […]
JERUSALEM POST, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL (Israel) Worldcrunch JERUSALEM- With Israel’s largest storm in 20 years bringing snow and freezing temperatures to Jerusalem and the mountains in the north and center of Israel on Wednesday night, authorities closed part of the main highway connecting Tel Aviv and the capital for a short time due to […]