Worldcrunch
LONG SINGU — Lost in the Malaysian forest, the village of Long Singu — on the Island of Borneo — is engaging in righteous resistence. Between 200 and 300 Penan people are refusing to leave their land to make way for the Murum dam. “We want to keep our village and our forest,” is the […]
BOGOTA — Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian politician held hostage by FARC guerrillas for six years in the jungle, may return from self-imposed exile and become a candidate in the 2014 presidential election, Colombia’s El Pais newspaper reported. The country’s Green Alliance began to gauge her interest in returning to Colombian politics in recent weeks, and […]
Putin is doing everything to not be remembered by history as the one who “lost” Ukraine. Mother Russia’s imperial face is on the line.
A Miss Italia contestant arrested, French newspaper shooting, child porn ring and other news around the world this week…
A quick shot of what’s brewing in the Arab world …
OLBIA — Twelve hours notice. Forty-four centimeters of rain in 90 minutes. Sixteen dead, including four children. And, now, a fax alert. The blame game has begun in Sardinia after the tragic Cyclone Cleopatra hit the island earlier this week. Antonio Sanò, head of the weather website ilmeteo.it, said that Monday’s storm had been forecast […]
Exclusive: inside a special German intelligence program that questions asylum seekers about their home countries. Berlin denies that asylum requests are contingent on cooperation.
-Commentary- In the southern province of Guangxi, a pregnant woman was recently shot dead by a drunken policeman. After the incident, the local government proposed to compensate the victim’s family with 700,000 RMB ($115,000), which included damages for the deceased and child support for the victim’s two children. This was done on the grounds that […]
TEL AVIV — Every army needs its boots. In Israel, where the military has always played a central role in society, footwear for the troops has proudly been supplied locally since the country’s founding in 1948. But that may be about to change. Shimon Horowitz, head of the military division for Brill Company, which manufactures […]
In southeastern Congo, where a malaria outbreak is killing young children, some believe the disease has mystical origins and turn to higher powers rather than doctors.
One full year has past since peace talks opened between the Colombian government and the rebel forces after decades of war. But behind the slow pace, there are real reasons for hope.
The disaffected youth and religious radicals in the Muslim world are obsessed with Europe’s top football leagues. Testimony of an Italian reporter, who was held hostage earlier this year in Syria.
KHODORKOVSKY FREE Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was freed from prison this morning, after Thursday’s surprise announcement by Vladimir Putin that he would sign a decree pardoning him of his convictions for fraud, tax evasion and embezzlement, Ria Novosti reports. The international cause célèbre spent a total of 3,709 days in prison. ROOF COLLAPSE AT […]
Thursday, November 20, 2014 IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS STALL As talks on Iran’s nuclear program continue in Vienna ahead of a Nov. 24 deadline to reach an agreement, Iran’s nuclear chief told reporters that his delegation saw “no more room for further negotiations” on the design of its controversial Arak nuclear reactor, AFP reports. This reactor, […]
People escaping the Communist bloc used to try to cross from Bulgaria into Turkey. Now, immigrants, including many refugees from the war in Syria, cross the other way.
Using the power of light to combat the dark ideology of the Taliban. It sounds like the start of a bad movie, but that is exactly what Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of the Pakistani province of Punjab, intends to do. “More jobs will mean fewer extremists because we can give people a better chance in […]
BEIJING — It took just three days after its recent third plenum meeting for the Chinese Communist Party to issue its blueprint for major reforms in the country. The fact that the content of the resolution it had agreed upon was released so quickly demonstrates both the importance of major economic reforms here and the […]
CAIRO — “Have you seen this? The streets are so filthy, it’s disgusting!” Suzie Greiss doesn’t even live in one of Cairo’s notoriously poor corners, but rather in the middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, where the head of Egypt’s Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) says she can no longer stand the filth that […]
Wednesday, November 19, 2014 NORTH KOREA COULD FACE HUMAN RIGHTS PROBE The United Nations’ human rights committee has called on the Security Council to refer North Korean leaders to the International Criminal Court over allegations of crimes against humanity, the BBC reports. The resolution approved late Tuesday was based on a report published earlier this […]
BEIJING — Both the Internet and China’s mighty role as manufactured goods exporter have given new prominence to the Chinese language around the world. Here are 5 expressions from China already on the road to being exported themselves. 1.) The Beijing Youth Daily recently reported that a new Chinese buzzword, tu-hao, could be be included […]
Rising religious objections to the practice come 93 years after the Soviet Union became the first country to legalize abortions. Today, they are still legal – and free.
RAWALPINDI — When 40-year-old government employee Danial Ahmed has problems with his teeth, he goes to a quack on the streets of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. “The price of dental treatment is expensive,” he says. “I cannot afford it. These quacks offer cheap treatment. For just a few hundred rupees, we can get relief from toothache and other oral infections.” These cheap alternatives to real doctors can easily be found on virtually any roadside in Pakistan. They sit along the streets or in a small kiosks, where patients are treated on the spot. According to the government, there are more than 600,000 […]
Some 100 million people have emerged from poverty since the 1980s. Is that enough?
-Op-Ed- SAO PAULO — Globalization is an inescapable process. It’s even affecting the new forms of protest against different governments and in different social contexts on our vast, beautiful planet. The problem is that this copycat trend is happening out of context. The Brazilian “black blocs” and Mídia Ninja (a group of independent journalists) are […]
WASHINGTON — Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has arrived for a two-day visit to Washington at a moment in U.S.-Turkish relations that can largely be gauged by decisions related to other countries. Davutoglu will meet top U.S. officials, including his American counterpart Secretary of State John Kerry, who will have high on the list of […]
Look up in the sky. No wait, don’t!
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 FINAL IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS BEGIN The last round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program began this morning in Vienna with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif confident that a deal could be reached before next Monday’s deadline if the other six world powers don’t make “excessive demands,” AFP reports. The BBC […]
There are many victims in the civil war in Syria. One woman in the capital, whose husband and children have managed to flee to Egpyt, suffers a particular kind of fear and solitude.
Different views on ecology, religion and the human body help explain a stunning boom in modern men and women choosing to be cremated instead of a traditional burial.
Words that made news this past week.
Monday, November 17, 2014 ISIS EXECUTES U.S. AID WORKER U.S. President Barack Obama confirmed yesterday the killing of American aid worker Peter Kassig, who was executed by ISIS, and described it as an act of “pure evil,” The New York Times reports. A video released by the terrorist organization shows Kassig’s beheaded body as well […]
SHANGHAI — Recently, two Shanghai hospitals have held special training courses for their doctors. One invited a Taekwondo coach to teach the physicians self-defense skills, while the other featured a local police expert in crisis negotiation to brief them about violence prevention. The Chinese public of course understands what this is all about. Just two […]
For thousands of years, traditional boxing has been one of Burma“s primary national sports. But when the Southeast Asian Games are held in December, it will be conspicuously missing, as no other country fights in that style. The more internationally recognized Thai boxing, also known as Muay Thai, will be featured instead. “I was very keen on boxing, so I had sacrificed a lot. Finally, I earned a gold belt,” says Saw Ohn Myint, a former gold belt national champion in Burmese boxing. He says he would have loved to represent his country — officially known as Myanmar —before a […]
With the United States no longer able to impose its position on Internet security and governance in the wake of the NSA spying scandal, Moscow is stepping into the void.
After Typhoon Haiyan, the scale of misery in the Philippines is hard to measure. For one mother and father in the hardest hit city, it is infinite.
Photo: Conner Jay – Santa Rosa Press/ZUMA Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: November 18th will mark the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged” performance in New York. Because you also might have worn long greasy hair and cardigans at one point in […]
Pleyel pianos, founded in 1809, built pianos for Chopin and other masters. In the end, it couldn’t find a new business strategy to survive against Asian competition.
If the once popular Socialist become President a second time, as polls predict, Chile may be in for some major changes. What will it mean for the so-called ‘Chilean Model’?