BANGLADESH NEWS 24 HOURS (Bangladesh), BBC NEWS (UK), AP Worldcrunch DHAKA – Police said Thursday that the owners of the eight-story building housing garment factories that collapsed in Bangladesh, killing at least 187, had ignored warnings not to allow their workers into the building. Search for survivors is continuing as hundreds are still unaccounted for, […]
Month: April 2013
EL PAIS (Spain), GUARDIAN (UK), REUTERS Worldcrunch MADRID – Good and bad news arrived Thursday as Europe continues its struggle to emerge from a five-year-long economic crisis. Bad news first: Spain has again marked record-high unemployment figures, with a 27.2% jobless rate for the first quarter of 2013, the seventh straight quarter of rising jobless […]
REYKJAVIK – Mid-February this year, British tabloids published the news that Iceland’s leftwing-green Minister of the Interior Ögmundur Jónasson wanted to limit access to online porn on the island. Ways of doing that, according to the minister, could be to block certain IP addresses, or to make it impossible to pay certain sites with an […]
GLZ.CO.IL , YNET (Israel) Worldcrunch TEL AVIV – Ten animal-rights activists have been arrested in connection with a bizarre form of shock protest in the name of protecting animals from slaughter: dumping bloodied heads of dead animals into city fountains, according to glz.co.il. Over the last few months, slaughtered cow, goat, fish and sheep heads […]
CULLY – He is majestic. The concert has just ended, and the audience is on fire. Opening his long thin arms, he takes a bow; in his checked shirt, he has the body of a Maasai warrior. The Cully Jazz Festival audience is shell-shocked by the performance they have just witnessed – totally under the […]
CLARÍN (Argentina) Worldcrunch CARACAS – Venezuelan politics continues to attract the world’s attention. After the death of Hugo Chavez and the recent election of his no-less outspoken successor, Nicolas Maduro, eyes have now turned to the newly anointed Sports Minister: Alejandra Benítez, the Olympic fencer best known for posing nude just before last year’s London […]
A mild-mannered centrist, Enrico Letta has a well-placed uncle.
MILAN – A few weeks ago, half a million people watched him brush his teeth. Two million people discovered that tears don’t run down his face. Four million watched him squeeze a soaking-wet dishtowel. Meet Colonel Chris Hadfield. He’s Canadian, 53, and very proud of his mustache. Yet something differentiates him from all other people […]
CAIRO – Rafah and other cities on the Sinai peninsula’s north coast have been suffering from pollution of the Mediterranean Sea and its underground water reservoir, which has caused serious environmental and health issues for the local population, experts argue. Some blame Israel for the pollution, while others attribute it to domestic sources. The National […]
SANTIAGO – Last year in London, engineers from Airbus presented their vision for the future: An airplane featuring a transparent roof that allows passengers to see the stars, with an air system that pumps antioxidants into the cabin air. If this audacious concept becomes reality in 2050 and the airline market remains more or less […]
KIEV LAUNCHES NEW ASSAULT IN EASTERN UKRAINE The Ukrainian military launched an offensive against pro-Russian militants just outside the eastern city of Sloviansk, sending armored vehicles and a helicopter, according to RTÉ, with Ukraine’s Interior Ministry reporting at least five dead on the pro-Russian side. According to AFP, civilians in the town hall have been […]
As France becomes the 14th country to allow same-sex marriage, Le Monde looks at one of the bleaker corners for gay rights in 2013.
XINJIANG.GOV, TIANSHAN.NET, XINHUA (China), BBC (UK) Worldcrunch BACHU – Twenty-one people, including police officers and community workers, were killed in violent clashes in the ethnically-divided Kashgar region in the western Chinese Xinjiang Province, reported local officials on Wednesday. The incident occured on Tuesday after three community workers found “suspicious individuals and knives in the home […]
BANGLADESH NEWS 24 HOURS (Bangladesh), THE HINDU (India), REUTERS Worldcrunch DHAKA – At least 70 people have died and many more are feared trapped after an eight-story building housing garment factories and a shopping center collapsed on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka. “We assume scores of people are still trapped inside and many of […]
ISTANBUL – Earlier this month, a Turkish court sentenced world-famous pianist Fazil Say to a ten-month suspended jail sentence for “insulting religious values.” Say, 43, had tweeted the following verse from 11th century poet Omar Khayyam: “You say that the rivers flow with wine, is Heaven a tavern? You say that you will give every […]
Will Catholic nuns and orthodox Jews be next to point to their religious headwear?
PIAUÍ – A scientific article by French and Brazilian researchers brings major new findings to the discussion on the date humans arrived to the American continent. It analyzed three archeological sites in Piauí, in northeastern Brazil, and shows evidence that the region was inhabited by humans 22,000 years ago. The researchers’ discoveries, published in the […]
LE PARISIEN, LE MONDE, LIBERATION, FIGARO, EUROPE 1 (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – The French National Assembly legalized gay marriage on Tuesday, after months of tumultuous debate both in Parliament and on the streets. The law was passed with 331 votes in favor, and 225 opposed. “It is a historic vote,” wrote Le Parisien newspaper, as […]
PARIS – In the last years of his life, French novelist Marcel Proust mostly fed himself with café au lait. Made by the two best roasters in Paris, Proust’s coffee came from freshly ground beans that were extracted drop by drop according to an unchangeable ritual. Sometimes the verdict would be without mercy: “Celeste, how […]
BEIJING – Last month, more than 16,000 dead pigs were found in tributaries of the Huangpu River, not far from Shanghai, in eastern China. At the same time, scores of diseased pig carcasses were also found miles away in Liuyang River, in the south-central Hunan Province. The massive number of dead pigs discovered nationwide caused […]
KERRY AND LAVROV EXCHANGE BLAME In a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Moscow to “tone down escalatory rhetoric,” criticizing Russia for failing “to de-escalate” the crisis, The Guardian reports. During the conversation, Lavrov replied that Ukrainian ultranationalists were responsible for the collapse of the deal […]
TOULOUSE – In France alone, there are 500,000 deaf people, and that doesn’t even include those who are partially deaf or have hearing problems. About half of deaf people in France are unemployed. Launched in 2001, French start-up Websourd is a cooperative that publishes videos in sign language on the Internet, which can also help […]
ARUTZ SHEVA, HAARETZ, JERUSALEM POST (Israel); REUTERS Worldcrunch TEL AVIV – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons against civilians, an Israeli Intelligence official stated on Tuesday. Haaretz reports that the head of the Research Division at Military Intelligence, Brig. Gen. Itai Brun said: “To the best of our professional understanding, the regime has […]
20 MINUTES, LE MONDE, LE FIGARO (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS – French President François Hollande has condemned a car bomb attack that hit France’s embassy in Libya’s capital Tripoli early Tuesday, injuring two French guards. “France expects the Libyan authorities to shed light on this unacceptable act so that the perpetrators are identified and brought […]
SHANGHAI – For years, the People’s Republic of China has been carrying the German car industry through tough times. In 2012, German manufacturers sold a whopping 15.5 million motor vehicles in China, and no end to that record is in sight. In March 2013 alone they sold 1.4 million cars, a rise of 20%. The […]
Categories
First Photo Of Gerard Depardieu As DSK
LE PARISIEN (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – No, Gérard Depardieu has not just been arrested in New York for nothing of the kind.. Instead, this is reportedly the first photo of the new DSK movie, directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Depardieu as the disgraced IMF boss accused and later cleared of raping a maid at […]
LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch VATICAN CITY – The canonization of Pope John Paul II could be celebrated as soon as October, writes La Stampa, as Vatican sources say a presumed miracle has been approved by Church doctors. The beloved Polish pontiff, who died in April 2005, is on his way to sainthood in record time. […]
PARIS – Should the 500 euros bill be taken out of circulation? A study by Merrill Lynch raised the question, and it is not a small question, as those bills comprise one-third of the total monetary value of bills currently in circulation, that is to say some 300 billion euros. Still, the bills are very […]
Families of the Turkish citizens killed three years ago in the raid of the Mavi Marmara say that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology means nothing to them.
Even as it continues to report record earnings, certain trends remind us that even the smartest, most dominant tech companies eventually are brought down to size.
LA NACION, ULTIMA HORA, MERCOPRESS (Paraguay) Worldcrunch ASUNCION – Self-made millionaire Horacio Cartes won Paraguay’s election on Sunday with 46% of the vote, returning the conservative Colorado Party to power. Cartes, 58, is a political novice, who had never voted before joining the Colorado Party (ANR) four years ago, reports MercoPress. He owns dozens of […]
SICHUAN RIBAO, CHINADAILY, XINHUA, GLOBAL TIMES (China) Worldcrunch LU SHAN – The death toll from this weekend’s earthquake in central China climbed to 188 on Monday, with thousands injured and forced from their homes, reports Xinhua. The quake’s epicenter was registered in Lushan County in the southwest of Sichuan Province at around 8 a.m. local […]
ABC NEWS, BOSTON HERALD, NBC NEWS, REUTERS (U.S.A.) Worldcrunch BOSTON – As the United States prepares Monday to mark one week since the bombing at the Boston Marathon, the lone surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is reported now to be conscious and responding sporadically in writing to questions. Investigators are asking the Chechen suspect about other […]
CIUDAD JUAREZ – A maquiladora, or maquila, is an offshoring factory or manufacturing plant operated under U.S.-Mexico free trade agreements to encourage the development of industry in Mexico. Mexico allows materials used in maquilas to enter duty-free, provided the finished product is then immediately exported out of Mexico. The U.S. in turn charges these products […]
THE IRRAWADDY (Burma), HRW (USA), RADIO AUSTRALIA Worldcrunch RANGOON – A new report by NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) published on Monday says there is evidence of government complicity in crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing against Burma’s Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority. Since June 2012, more than 220 people have died in sectarian fighting between […]
BIDEN VISITS KIEV IN SHOW OF SUPPORT U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met with Ukrainian leaders Tuesday in a show of support for the new government. Speaking in the capital’s Parliament building, Biden said the U.S. stood with Ukraine in the face of “humiliating threats,” the BBC reports. Earlier, a phone conversation between Biden and […]
ECONOMIC OBSERVER (China) Worldcrunch BEIJING – With air pollution continuing to plague Beijing, there are increasing signs that it is pushing foreigners, often well-to-do expats, to leave the city. “It’s supposed to take up to a decade to solve the smog problem, but who knows what problems the pollution might have caused our bodies by […]
MOSCOW – There’s a novelty for the spring in two of the capital’s parks that has the air of democracy: Muscovites can now submit applications to hold public events on the official websites of Gorky Park and Sokolniki Park without having to get authorization from the authorities. This is part of a new program instituted […]
ALEXANDRIA — Misr Station in downtown Alexandria is not much to look at by the standards of the fading, crumbling glories that prevail in Egypt’s second-largest city. On any given weekday, thousands of commuters flock to the disheveled station, passing through on their way to and from work. Much of the time, their faces are […]
SHANGHAI – Times are tough for billionaires. In Italy, their tax returns are being tracked down. In France, their overseas accounts are being scrutinized. Brussels wants to ban bankers’ bonuses. Switzerland voted to outlaw golden handshakes. Even in the United States, billionaires – unless they are also philanthropists – have become suspicious characters. Fortunately, there […]