In our distracted, over-connected society, diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been the rage for more than a decade. The case for a hard rethink.
Month: February 2013
Categories
It’s Toddlers And Tiaras, European-Style
A casting call for kids in the Swiss Alps offers a somewhat softer image than the all-or-nothing American children’s paegants.
PARIS – For the past eight years, the Western world has loved to hate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Propelled onto the front of the political scene by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian president declared, before being elected in 2005, that the Iranian people hadn’t participated in the revolution for democracy. Since then, Ahmadinejad hasn’t missed an opportunity […]
Worldcrunch The Venezuelan government has posted the first photographs of President Hugo Chavez since his cancer surgery more than two months ago in Cuba. In the images you can see Chavez lying down, surrounded by his two daughters, with signs of a tracheal breathing tube. (source: Venezuelan government) There has been much speculation about the […]
SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – “Disgusting,” “inhuman,” “unbelievable” – that was the tenor of thousands of comments that have been left in recent hours on Amazon Germany’s Facebook page. The outrage followed an incendiary documentary about the e-commerce giant aired on German Television ARD on Thursday night. Customers also passed on info to other […]
ANKARA – Huda lived in Mezza, a rich neighborhood of Damascus. Her husband, Sami, used to monitor the resistance movement for the regime from the Syrian capital. His daily reports weren’t supposed to harm anyone. His cooperation with the military and the police put food on the table. One day about a year ago, he […]
From Latin America, an early eye toward the coming Conclave, and the future of the Catholic Church after decades of fiercely conservative leadership.
MUNICH – It’s all so simple in the 1998 Disney movie Mulan. The heroine disguised as a boy joins the Chinese military to fight the enemy – armies of shadowy, faceless Huns that darken the horizon. Classic good versus evil. Martin Münch says he knows who the bad guys are, and that he’s one of […]
CBS NEWS, USA TODAY, REUTERS (USA) Worldcrunch MOBILE – Ill-fated Carnival cruise ship Triumph finally docked in Mobile, Alabama late Thursday, after being stranded for five days in the Gulf of Mexico without any power supply. Four hours later, the last remaining passengers had disembarked and been taken to hotels in New Orleans and Texas, […]
RIA Novosti, RT (Russia), BBC (UK) Worldcrunch CHELYABINSK – A large meteorite shower has injured at least 550 people and wreaked havoc across three Russian regions and Kazakhstan. “The Russian Urals region has been stricken by a sudden cosmic attack. Unidentified flying objects exploded over several major cities, including Chelyabinsk, where the blast waves blew […]
BEELD, MAIL & GUARDIAN (Africa), THE GUARDIAN (UK), REUTERS, NEW YORK TIMES (US) Worldcrunch PRETORIA – A sobbing Oscar Pistorius appeared in court Friday, as the South African double-amputee Olympic runner was formally charged with the murder of his model girlfriend. Appearing in front of the central magistrate’s court this morning, Pistorius broke down in […]
BERLIN – In my local video store, they’ve just created a new section for TV series. The very great majority of the series are American: The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Girls, Modern Family, Lost, 24, various CSIs, and so on and so forth. The dominant culture in Europe […]
Up close with Syrian smugglers and Western NGOs. Turkish troops turn blind eye to arms trafficking, but worries grow about who is getting their hands on the weapons.
-OpEd- TURIN – Perhaps we deserve Berlusconi and his lies. Not the Italians, maybe, given as a single citizen is largely powerless in the face of a political system. But the media, especially the television, definitely does deserve him. A brief explanation is required: For the last three weeks, every time I turn on the […]
EGYPT INDEPENDENT (Egypt), SAUDI GAZETTE (Saudi Arabia) Worldcrunch Egypt and Saudi Arabia moved one big step closer to connecting two of the Arab world’s most pivotal countries — and biggest economies — in a very real way. The Saudi Binladin Group, the world’s largest construction company, has given its final approval to a project to […]
AMSTERDAM – We all know that families today are no longer only made up of Mom and Dad and the kids. This has led the Netherlands to work on legislation that would make it possible to have more than two people as parents. Take Susanne Supheert, 25 – she has four parents. It was more […]
LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, 20 MINUTES (France) Worldcrunch PARIS –Eight members of the feminist Ukrainian group FEMEN celebrated Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announcement this week by disrobing inside Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The bare-breasted activists rang the cathedral’s new bells — currently exposed in the middle of the nave — with sticks, before getting […]
BEIJING – On the night of Aug 8, 1975, a line of people frantically piled sandbags atop the Banqiao Dam, in the central Henan Province, while being battered by the worst storm ever recorded in the region. They raced against the rapidly rising Ru River to save the dam and the millions of people that […]
AFP, EYE WITNESS NEWS, NEWS24 (South Africa), REUTERS Worldcrunch PRETORIA– Oscar Pistorius, the South African double amputee who broke barriers for the disabled by competing in the London Olympics, has been charged on suspicion of killing his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his home early Thursday. South African police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Katlego Mogale said: […]
DIE WELT (Germany) AL ARABIYA (U.A.E) Worldcrunch BERLIN – Call it the, “high-five heard “round the world.” The simple sporty gesture, exchanged between German Parliament Member Claudia Roth and Alireza Sheikhattar, the Iranian Ambassador to Germany, has set off a wave of controversy. Through a spokeswoman, Roth, co-chair of Germany’s Green Party, said she reacted […]
OVER 70 PEOPLE EXECUTED IN CONGOArmed groups executed more than 70 men and women in villages in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo between late January and early February, AFP quotes the UN mission MONUSCO as saying. According to the organization, most of the people were killed with machetes in a bid “to spread […]
Worldcrunch 1. ARGENTINA – The twin sister of a murdered model is set to wed her dead sister’s killer, much to the dismay of her parents, according to Buenos Aires daily Clarín. The wedding has been in the works for months, but these two lovebirds hold back nothing when it comes to romance: the ceremony […]
MOSCOW – Russia’s Surgeon General, Gennadi Onishenko, is a well-known teetotaler who recommends not drinking for everyone, even on New Year’s Eve. So it came as a surprise last week when he spoke out enthusiastically about wines from neighboring Georgia. “How long has it been since Georgian wine has been sold here?” Onishenko complained to […]
PRISTINA – Before General Xavier Bout de Marnhac can walk up to the second floor of the Gagi restaurant in the center of Kosovo’s capital, his security escort must inspect the premises. This is standard procedure. The French general, whom we were meeting only a few hours before he was leaving Kosovo, is the outgoing […]
SÃO PAOLO – Brazilian mining giant Vale has halted work on its $6 billion Rio Colorado project in Argentina’s Mendoza province, until its demands for special breaks in tax and exchange rates are met by the government in Buenos Aires. The Argentinian government had given Vale a Feb. 4 deadline to submit a new timeline […]
More than an Israeli or American air strike, or the economic effects of sanctions, the powers-that-be in Tehran face a deeper risk rising from within Iranian society.
HAARETZ, YNET (Israel), ABC (Australia), NYT (USA) Worldcrunch TEL-AVIV – Australian TV network ABC has uncovered evidence that strongly suggests that Israel“s mysterious “Prisoner X” was, in fact, an Australian citizen with ties to the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. The Prisoner X case is considered as one of the most sensitive secrets of Israel’s […]
MARKTL AM INN – Not a lot of folks out on the streets on this day after the news arrived. But not because of the wind that slices right through you, or the icy temperature. The 2,700 residents of Marktl am Inn in the German region of Bavaria are holed up inside to avoid the […]
Worldcrunch ROME – Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday made his first public appearance since stunning the world and his Catholic flock with the announcement of his decision to become the first pontiff in nearly 600 years to resign. Telling a crowd in the Vatican auditorium that the historic resignation was “for the good of the […]
DEADLY CLASHES IN VENEZUELAAt least three people were shot dead and more than 25 were injured in mass youth protests in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas yesterday, during which demonstrators denounced the government’s economic measures and the crackdown on the country’s media, newspaper El Universal reports. AFGHANISTAN RELEASES 65 ‘DANGEROUS’ PRISONERSAfghanistan released 65 prisoners accused […]
WASHINGTON POST, POLITICO (USA), REUTERS Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama’s fourth State of the Union address — the first of his second term — is history. Politics aside, Obama was generally commended for his delivery of the hour-long discourse Tuesday night, which was described as both more “loose” than previous editions of the […]
EL TIEMPO, EL UNIVERSAL, UNIVISION, EL COMBIANO, EL TIEMPO (Colombia), XINHUA (China) Worldcrunch BOGOTA – As peace talks continue in Cuba between FARC rebels and the Colombian government, and even though the rebels agreed to release three hostages, the past few days in Colombia have been anything but peaceful. This week a FARC bomb killed […]
LOS ANGELES TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, CNN, AP (USA) Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – After a seven-day manhunt that ended in a shootout and a forest standoff, renegade ex-LAPD officer Christopher J. Dorner was apparently killed in a cabin as it burned down around him. San Bernadino County sheriff’s spokeswoman told the AP that charred human […]
THE AUSTRALIAN, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, ABC NEWS (Australia) Worldcrunch CANBERRA – Australia’s lower house of Parliament unanimously passed a historic bill on Wednesday recognizing Aboriginals as the first inhabitants of Australia. Parliament voted in favor of an act of recognition which commits Australia to changing its Constitution to acknowledge indigenous Australians, reports the Australian. Prime […]
XINHUA, CHINA.ORG.CN (China), Worldcrunch BEIJING – There’s a new study in China aimed at finding out more about the lives of the corrupt. Among the findings of the study, dubbed the “Officials’ Image Crisis Report,” was that 95% of Chinese officials being investigated for corruption also kept mistresses, according to Xinhua. The link between political […]
MAKASSAR – The nostalgic traveler who goes to Indonesia with the idea of walking in the footsteps of Joseph Conrad and living out their own Spice Route literary adventures will be stunned by the sheer luxury of Makassar’s airport. A symbol of Indonesia’s rapid modernization and economic growth, this city of 1.5 million inhabitants does […]
Turns out Benedict XVI had been reflecting on resignation since falling last March. After finally telling the world, the Pope returned to his private quarters where he was overcome by emotion.
OSLO – Before we even begin, it’s not pronounced “munch,” “mench” or even “manch” – it’s “moonk!” It’s a question of politeness, and also the locals are more likely to understand us if we pronounce his name correctly. In Olso, the artist is everywhere, just like his iconic masterpiece. Just like a spoiled child, Skrik, […]
-OpEd- CAIRO – I believe the presence of armed gangs and the incidents of rape during Tahrir Square protests represent a serious problem. I do not just sympathize with the victims: women and revolutionaries who were, and still are, subjected to wide-scale suppression or abuse. I am concerned about two issues; the first of them […]
With his historic resignation, Benedict offers a more modern vision of the Catholic Church. Otherwise, says a commentator from his native Germany, he was a man stuck in the last millennium.