Worldcrunch
RWANDA – Severe weather kills and natural disasters can be particularly deadly in Rwanda, like elsewhere in Africa. The most deadly storm last year killed at least 72 people and injured more than 120. According to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs (MIDIMAR), in 2012 alone, 3000 homes were destroyed. Justin Kayira, Director […]
ADNKRONOS, LA STAMPA (Italy), THE TELEGRAPH (UK) Worldcrunch ROME– With a surprising twist of flexibility, a key Italian bishop and doctrinal expert has given his green light to integrating yoga and meditation into Roman Catholic spiritual practices. Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli, the bishop of the city of Frascati, near Rome, said that he is “open” to […]
The Greek tragedy featured man-made wings melting under the sun. In South Africa, the bladerunner may have gotten too close to the gods as well.
LA NACION, CLARIN (Argentina) Worldcrunch VIÑA DEL MAR – The Chilean government has called an investigation to identify and sanction marines caught on tape chanting “Argentines I will kill, Bolivians I will shoot, Peruvians I will cut their throats.” About 30 marine cadets from the Naval Polytechnic Academy were filmed chanting their offensive song as […]
BEIJING – After it was recently revealed that the entire family of a top housing administration official in the northern Chinese city of Zhengzhou had two sets of identity papers (or hukou), people have taken to joking online that China doesn’t really have 1.3 billion people, as many people have a “dual hukou.” The hukou […]
Signs of decline began to appear two years ago, leading the Pope’s doctor to insist on limited air travel. Portrait of an old and weak man, who may have had little choice but resignation.
HAARETZ (Israel), TWITTER Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – Palestinian filmmaker and Oscar nominee Emad Burnat was detained and questioned for several hours by US immigration officials at Los Angeles Airport, Israeli daily Haaretz reports. After being threatened to be sent straight back home, Burnat was released early Wednesday from LAX airport after the intervention of US […]
FRANCE 24, LE PARISIEN (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – A day after armed men pulled off a spectacular 50 million euro diamond heist at Brussels Airport, two men made off with 3 million euros worth of diamonds after holding up a popular department store in central Paris on Tuesday night. The heist happened in broad daylight […]
CLASHES RESUME IN KIEV DESPITE TRUCEDeadly fights between the police and people occupying Kiev’s Independence Square resumed this morning despite the truce announced last night by the government and opposition leaders, who were supposed to meet this morning to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis. Reports about the number of new deaths vary from […]
FRANCE 24 (France), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), REUTERS Worldcrunch TUNIS – Tunisia’s political turmoil continued on Wednesday following Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali’s resignation, after he failed to appoint a non-partisan cabinet of technocrats. Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki is meeting Wednesday with Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the country’s leading party Ennahda to ask him to nominate a […]
Horsemeat in our pure processed delights! Are we innocent victims or willing suckers of the consumer marketing machine?
In Egypt’s capital, “D.capuccino” is the latest sign of piety since Mubarak fell. In separate sections for men, women and families, it serves up Italian coffee and “pure, Islamic values.”
SATKHIRA – In the district of Padmapukur, a few dozen kilometers from the Bay of Bengal, tin shacks balance delicately on scraps of land coming out of the sea, like makeshift boats lost in the middle of the ocean. Only children, women, old people and the severly handicapped still live in the homes scattered along […]
MOSCOW – After the meteorite shower and the damage it caused last Friday, Russian scientists say the threat from the sky is serious — and something must be done. Scientists recommended that the threat could be minimized by creating a network of modern telescopes, at a cost of around two billion dollars. These experts suggested […]
AYUTLA – In the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero, residents of about 15 municipalities have decided to form a “community police” to confront the drug cartels. “The state,” says one farmer matter-of-factly, “has abandoned us.” A commander of the group, who goes by the moniker G1, is talking in the parking lot of the Aurrera […]
ECOBLOG, LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch ROME– More than 40 dead dolphins have been found washed ashore along the western coast of Italy since January 5. La Stampa reports that the locations where the dolphins have been found span more than half the western coastline, from Tuscany to Calabria, as well as the island of Sicily, […]
BUSINESS DAY LIVE, MAIL & GUARDIAN, NEWS 24 (South Africa), THE GUARDIAN (UK) REUTERS Worldcrunch PRETORIA – Oscar Pistorius released a statement to a packed courtroom Tuesday denying he murdered his girlfriend, saying he was “desperately trying to protect Reeva” from what he thought was an intruder in his home when he fatally shot her […]
AFP (France), BBC (Uk), LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch Nestlé, the world” biggest food company, is now riding straight into the center of the growing horsemeat scandal. A spokesman has confirmed 1% presence of horse DNA in two of its beef products sold in Europe, Buitoni Beef Ravioli and Beef Tortellini, reports BBC. The Swiss-based food […]
AFP, AP, THE INDEPENDENT (UK) Worldcrunch BRUSSELS – Belgium police on Tuesday were looking for eight armed robbers who pulled off a spectacular heist at Brussels airport, making off with tens of millions of euros worth of diamonds. The men cut a whole in a perimeter security fence, drove onto the tarmac and attacked a […]
MANDIANT, NEW YORK TIMES, CNN (USA) Worldcrunch An American cybersecurity firm has linked more than 100 cyber attacks on U.S. companies to to the Chinese government. In a 60-page long document entitled APT1: Exposing One of China’s Cyber Espionage Units,, the Virginia-based firm Mandiant traced 147 cases of corporate cyber espionage over a six-year period […]
Italians teach locals in Burkina Faso both the recipe for pizza, and the formula for a successful small business. Is this how foreign aid is transformed into sustainable development?
MUNICH – Horsemeat passed off as beef – across Europe, the food scandal continues to make headlines. On the food circuit in Munich, at Kaspar Wörle’s horsemeat butcher shop, it hasn’t caused much of a stir – except for the fact that the phone has been ringing uninterruptedly since the scandal broke. “People want information,” […]
-OpEd- BEIJING – During and after the 18th Communist Party Congress, party and state leaders re-stated that the country should be ruled by law and governed according to the Constitution. They also said that the supervision of power should be tightened, including oversight through public opinion by news media. The 17th Party Congress report of […]
AL-MASRY AL-YOUM (Egypt), AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT, AL-QUDS AL-ARABI, AL-ELAPH (UK), AL-MUSTAQBAL (Lebanon), AL-RAI (Jordan), GULFNEWS.COM (UAE) Worldcrunch Pope Benedict XVI shocked his Church with the announcement last week that he would resign from the papacy at the end of the month. The reaction in the Western press was, not surprisingly, enormous: newspapers, television and Internet sources […]
ISTANBUL – The treasure of Troy is back. The collection of golden jewelry from the ancient city, which had been stolen during the 19th century, was handed back to Turkey by the University of Pennsylvania last September. The precious jewelry – known as the “Troy gold” – had been looted after the first excavations of […]
LATEST ON UKRAINE BEIRUT HIT BY DEADLY BLAST At least six people have died and over 100 were left injured after twin explosions hit South Beirut, near the Kuwaiti embassy and the Iranian Cultural Chancellery, Al Arabiya reports. The southern part of the Lebanese capital, a Hezbollah stronghold, has been the target of many attacks […]
DIE WELT (Germany), TIMES OF ISRAEL (Israel) Worldcrunch BERLIN – What does a German tourist do in Bali when his wallet gets stolen? He goes right away for help to the German consulate in Denpasar, the capital of the Indonesian island. But an Israeli in the same bind has a problem: Indonesia does not recognize […]
EL UNIVERSO, EL COMERCIO, LA HORA (Ecuador) Worldcrunch QUITO – Incumbent Rafael Correa has been reelected to a second term as President of Ecuador, handily defeating his opponents with more than 56% of the vote to avoid the need for a runoff. By early Monday, with more than 11 million ballots cast, the National Electoral […]
THAILAND PM TO BE CHARGEDThailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra will be charged with neglect of duty, which could see her lose her post if found guilty, AFP quotes an anti-graft panel as saying. The country’s Anti-Corruption Commission accuses the PM of having ignored its warnings concerning a rice farm subsidy scheme that guaranteed farmers above-market […]
LA PRENSA, NEWS24 (Venezuela) Worldcrunch CARACAS– President Hugo Chavez tweeted early Monday that he is now back in Venezuela as Vice President Nicolas Maduro confirmed it to a local TV station at 2:30am local time, says News24. Chavez profusely thanked Raul and Fidel Castro, and all Cubans, for “so much love” during his time there. […]
BERLIN – Europeans are in a virtual state of paralysis about the future, frozen by a fear that – were they to turn away from Brussels – the result would be a rise of reactionary nationalism. Not surprisingly, these new chauvinisms are perfectly suited for some political agendas – on all sides of the ideological […]
FEZ – It had served over the years as a prison, a carpet factory and a boxing gym. But last week, the building in this ancient Moroccan city’s central medina was officially returned to its original incarnation: the Slat-al-Fassiyine synagogue was inaugurated by King Mohammed VI after a long-anticipated restoration. Rare in the Arab world […]
CLARIN (Argentina), EL PAIS (Spain) Worldcrunch BARCELONA – This so-called Robin-Hood pursuit, which appeared to come to a head in March 2009, is back on again. It was four years ago that the then 32-year-old Catalan man, Enric Durán Giralt, was sentenced to prison by a Barcelona judge for stealing from banks — and giving […]
The resignation of Benedict XVI is historic for the Catholic Church, but it also shows the difficulty of growing old in a society of constant demands and real-time technology.
SANTIAGO – The recent decision of the U.S. Justice department to block the acquisition of Mexican beer giant Grupo Modelo by the Belgian Anheuser-Busch InBev came as a surprise. The $20 billion acquisition was announced last June, and what’s surprising is that neither company involved is technically an American company. Belgium-based multinational AB InBev is […]
ISLAMIST GROUP KILLS 106 IN NIGERIA Fighters with the Islamist group Boko Haram killed 106 people over the weekend in a small Christian village in northeastern Nigeria, bringing the death toll over the last few weeks close to 300, newspaper Punch reports. According to witnesses, the gunmen gathered a group of men and shot them […]
Once mercenaries for Ivan the Terrible, the Cossacks were known as great fighters before being wiped out by the Bolsheviks. Now, they are on the frontline of a nationalistic revival.
The popular President is leading ahead of Sunday’s vote. But in the long-term, economists say Ecuador must diversify — and dump the dollar as official currency.
KOMMSERSANT (Russia)

 Worldcrunch MOSCOW – The doctor is in the house! At least, that is what Moscow’s city government is hoping. Under a new program called “The doctor is next door,” the city will be renting space to private medical practices on the first floor of residential buildings for 1 ruble ($0.03) per square meter […]