From the four corners of the planet, the 7 most-read articles that Worldcrunch published over the past year.
Month: December 2013
Latvia becomes the 18th member of the European single currency zone, adopting the euro just as the small Baltic nation starts to enjoy economic growth. Will Latvians come to regret it?
Eyewitnesses tell of the scenes of horror, while authorities still try to confirm if the second attack in two days was a suicide bombing.
– Editorial – BOGOTA — Voters in Colombia recently rejected multinational gold mining near Piedras, and now people in Tauramena, near Bogotá, have said no to oil prospecting. The people have spoken, but will the state listen? Specifically, residents in seven rural localities voted against seismic testing as part of the oil firm Ecopetrol’s Odisea […]
The unfolding scandal of alleged bribery by people close to the ruling AKP party looked set to reach Bilal Erdogan, but the investigating magistrate was removed from the case.
December 30, 2014 AIRASIA BODIES, DEBRIS FOUNDThe Indonesian navy has located debris from the AirAsia plane that disappeared early Sunday, retrieving more than 40 bodies from the Java Sea, AFP reports. The news came as a shock to the families of the 162 passengers, who reportedly “began crying hysterically and fainting” after Indonesian television showed […]
Dubbed the new ‘cave dwellers’ of Beijing, these people were recently found living in the city’s underground water system. Society’s lowest rung raises hard questions about modern China.
Russia and China risk setting off global conflicts for the sake of national pride. A century later, the lessons of Otto von Bismarck are being ignored again.
Monday, December 29, 2014 AIRASIA PLANE LIKELY AT “BOTTOM OF THE SEA”The head of Indonesia’s search-and-rescue agency has said that AirAsia flight QZ8501, which disappeared yesterday with 162 people on board, is likely “at the bottom of the sea,” CNN reports. Search operations have so far failed to locate the aircraft, which was flying from […]
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” turned 50 in late 2013. The Fab Four’s best selling single of all time was released on Nov. 29, 1963 in the UK, and marked the start of the […]
ROME — Lo Chiameranno Andrea (“We’ll Call Him Andrea“) is the name of a famous film by Vittorio De Sica, where two elementary school teachers who yearn for but are unable to have a child, compensate by giving him this hypothetical name. It was 1972 and the male name Andrea represented the essence of Italy, […]
Categories
Verbatim: Khodorkovsky, Abe, Erdogan
A quick roundup of who has been saying what around the world…
MATADI — It’s one of the Internet revolution’s more twisted novelties. Men ready to do anything to get back at the girlfriend who left them or whom they suspect of cheating on them post naked photos or sex videos on social networks. And now, so-called “revenge porn” has also arrived in the Democratic Republic of […]
Faced with Colombia’s military strength and apparent resolve not to hand over a disputed swathe of the Caribbean, Nicaragua is inviting friendly Russia into the area.
TOKYO — Since the beginning of 2013, as many as 3,500 people have died on Japanese roads. Some 52% of these victims were aged over 65, representing a high mortality rate of 6 per 100,000 in an age category that is progressively becoming the dominant generation — in the aging archipelago, 1 out of 4 […]
Seven decades after Winston Churchill’s secret coterie of female spies were sent undercover during World War II, the United Kingdom is honoring their service and sacrifice.
While Pope Benedict XVI sought to consolidate Catholic doctrine in a secular world, Pope Francis is devoting more of his papacy to bringing peace to the world’s conflict zones.
A member of the Italian Parliament goes undercover to protest for the rights of undocumented immigrants after images emerged of mistreatment at the rescue center in Lampedusa.
Photographs of world events from Chile to the Philippines to Paris and Brazil…
BEIJING — That the profitability of a single U.S.-to-China airline route is equivalent to that of three domestic routes and seven times that of transatlantic flights is an open secret within the airline industry. And until recently, U.S. airlines executives could more or less count on this lucrative segment of the business. But for the […]
A Rafsanjani return?The former diplomat and Tehran-based commentator Sabah Zanganeh wrote in an item published Dec. 22 in the reformist daily Aftab-e Yazd that the former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, considered Iran’s great “pragmatist” politician, could help engineer a rapprochement with regional rival Saudi Arabia, for the “trust” he inspired among Iranian and Saudi officialdom. Zanganeh […]
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The Disney Princess Polemic
Social pressure is on to create genuine heroine characters not animated models with impossible body images. But Disney continues its pursuit of pure fantasy.
Women farmers in Lower Congo have been the first to notice the effects of desertification, and the first to react.
A widening corruption probe has been consuming Turkey in recent days. Figures close to the leading Justice and Development Party (AKP), including sons of cabinet members, are facing serious allegations of bribery and money laundering. The government is denying all accusations and claims the charges are part of a conspiracy with roots both foreign and […]
The Colombian city hosts the most citizens displaced from rural areas by the country’s ongoing civil conflict. A special program allows these domestic refugees to farm in the city.
(Fa la la la la, la la la la….)
Dec. 24, 2014 MISSOURI POLICE KILL ANOTHER BLACK TEENA crowd of about 300 angry protesters gathered near Ferguson, Missouri, in the early hours this morning after St. Louis police shot and killed a teenager in the nearby town of Berkeley, NBC News reports. Local media reported that the victim, who police say was threatening an […]
HAMBURG — It’s good to have a clear conscience about breakfast, so when the yogurt container or milk bottle pictures happy animals, it’s reassuring. Consumers frequently imagine happy cows in lush pastures and roomy stalls where everything is good. But that’s only part of the truth. To meet organic and animal rights standards, farmers are […]
Much has changed in the past 10 years. Oligarchs have been replaced by networks as the real challenge to Vladimir Putin’s power.
ALEPPO — The toll in what was once Syria’s thriving capital of commerce is also being measured by low temperatures and record snowfall. Activists say the people of Aleppo risk dying every day in unheated homes. The Syrian Network for Human Rights said that no fewer than 22 people died in Syria last week, including nine children, from sub-zero temperatures as lengthy power shortages were recorded. In Aleppo, once the country’s economic capital, electricity has been scarce since continued shelling took out power lines. The exorbitant prices of oil and diesel fuel, and even wood, prevented many from being able […]
Tuesday, December 23, 2014 U.S. SUSPECTED IN N. KOREA WEB OUTAGEInternet access has been partly restored in North Korea after the country found itself without any service for more than nine hours. It’s unclear whether it was the result of a coincidental glitch or of a cyber attack, though it comes just days after President […]
SHENYANG — Zhang, who runs a wedding planning service, was doing her best to convince me over the phone to come in to visit what she describes as a “giant reception showroom.” It has been a week since my future mother-in-law put down the deposit for our wedding venue, a newly opened five-star hotel in […]
-Commentary- BERLIN — When two soldiers fell in the first hours of the French military operation that began last week in the Central African Republic, President Francois Hollande declared, “Morts pour la France.” Yes, killed for their country. But the young soldiers also lost their lives fighting for Europe, even if Europe has hardly shown […]
Monday, December 22, 2014 SOUTH KOREA NUCLEAR PLANTS THREATENEDSouth Korea’s nuclear plant operator has launched a two-day drill to check the safety of the country’s four power plants after a hacker leaked non-critical data and threatened further leaks yesterday, news agency Yonhap reports. It’s unclear whether it was connected to North Korea and the Sony […]
Though physical money will still be around for a while, the spread of digital money is inevitable for four basic reasons: efficiency, hygiene, durability – and anonymity.
SAINT-LOUIS — In front of the houses in Pilote Barre, tires inexorably creep up on a shoreline that is gradually disappearing. The tide easily swallows these futile rubber fortifications along the Senegal coast. Only the large stones seem to be able to withstand the assaults of the ocean, but for how long? For several years, […]
Like generations before who’d set off for North America, Asia and Western Europe, emigrants from the Philippines have arrived over the past decade in a growing Poland to find work.
The migration of rural population into Chinese cities is seen by some as the way to ensure a new burst of economic growth. But urbanization-by-state-planning is not the right road.
Morsi accused of “espionage”Mohamed Morsi, the former Egyptian president deposed in a military-backed coup this past summer, is facing charges alongside 35 other defendants. The charges? Espionage and aiding terrorism. Morsi was specifically accused of collaborating with the Palestinian political organization Hamas, in an alleged attempt to orchestrate what prosecutors characterize as an Islamist takeover. […]