Worldcrunch
Christmas is a global holiday, which sort of makes Christmas World Music a musical genre. See below for some holiday hits from across the planet. Worldcrunch Pick: Yes indeed, every December, the world celebrates the birth of an eternal figure who has inspired multiple generations of men, women and children around the world. For some, […]
The Sochi Olympics are to Putin what Saint Petersburg was to Peter The Great. Freeing rivals, such as Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot, are one more step toward sealing his place in history.
BANGUI – Bibiane had a dreadful night. As torrents of rain came beating down on the capital of the Central African Republic, this 28-year-old mother, her two children, her parents and her seven brothers and sisters tried in vain to gather under a single canvas sheet, pocked with holes. Still, compared to the 35,000 to […]
Odd and cruel episodes from police blotters around the world…
From Melbourne to Moscow to Machu Picchu, we are all counting down the hours on an eventful 2013. News was made across the globe: deadly attacks at the Boston marathon and a Nairobi mall, national farewells in Venezuela and South Africa, revelations from Edward Snowden and Pope Francis, natural disasters, gay marriage debates and horsemeat […]
BRASILIA — The Brazilian government doesn’t like to talk about it publicly, but top officials are worried about the impact that Uruguay’s decision to legalize the production and sale of marijuana — the first nation to do so — will have on its larger neighbor to the north. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff talked about it […]
December 19, 2014 KURDS BEAT ISIS ON MOUNT SINJARKurdish forces have broken a months-long ISIS siege on Mount Sinjar after a two-day offensive backed by U.S. airstrikes. The BBC describes it as the Kurds’ “biggest victory yet” against the terrorist group. Thousands of displaced people had been trapped on the mountain in northwestern Iraq since […]
What would Niccolo Machiavelli, the author of “The Prince” (published exactly 500 years ago), have thought about modern China? What would he have done with the Internet?
A senior judge in Yunnan province writes an open plea for such advances as live-streaming trials and online coverage of courts to help make Chinese justice more open, free and fair.
HO CHI MINH CITY — Vietnam’s latest economic experiment has both significant government funding — $110 million — and an ambitious moniker: Silicon Valley Vietnam. Though it could take years before the country sees the same kind of success as the California tech companies it hopes to emulate, Vietnam’s GDP growth is at its slowest since 1999 and it is in dire need of an economic boost. So it’s now betting on start-up companies to tap into a domestic market of over 90 million people and a burgeoning young population in particular. One popular meeting place for start-ups in Ho […]
BAKU — Amid the crashing and banging of dumpster trucks loaded with ballast, Fazil Gazi is a prime witness to one of the most famous oil hills in the world as it enters a new era. In all the books dedicated to the black gold of the Caspian sea, this maze of small streets with […]
Listen closelyAn Iranian parliamentarian reminded his colleagues — if they needed reminding — that all their mobile telephones were very likely bugged, Radio Free Europe’s Radio Farda website reported, citing several Iranian newspapers. Tehran Member of Parliament Ali Mottahari told a Dec. 9 student gathering in Tehran that his own office was bugged, with listening […]
MOSCOW – As they met in the Green Room at the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Yanukovych were sitting comfortably in armchairs, sharing each other’s worries about the drop in trade between their countries. Now, the Russian and Ukranian presidents told each other, is the time for decisive action, time to open up a new […]
TEL AVIV — Three months after my friend Tamy’s husband died from melonoma at age 45, she donated her long hair so that a young cancer patient could wear it in a new wig. I decided to do the same. The Zichron Menachem foundation, a cancer charity for children and their families, agreed to my […]
VILLANOVA MONDOVI — Aldo Bongiovanni, a 30-year-old beanpole, laughs timidly. Where others in a crisis-stricken Italy see no hope, he sees opportunity — in a mill in the countryside of the Cuneo province, in northwest Italy, near where he played as a child. “In Italy, complaining is in fashion,” he says. “I can’t stand it […]
BEIJING — After months of public debate, China’s Education Ministry has finally decided that the college entrance exam will no longer include the subject of English. Instead, students will take several English tests spread over the course of the school year. This recurring topic is once again heated, bitterly dividing those with starkly divergent viewpoints. […]
TEHRAN — The charm and media savvy of Iran Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have made him Tehran’s new wonder weapon. And over the last few days, he has put his arsenal to use in visits to four of the six Gulf States on a trust-building tour designed to cement links between the countries. […]
Wednesday, December 17, 2014 PAKISTAN MOURNS DEAD CHILDRENA three-day period of mourning began today in Pakistan, with vigils held in the country’s major cities and funerals in Peshawar, after Tuesday’s Taliban attack on a school in the northwest city that killed 141 people, including 132 children. The army began a series of massive air strikes […]
PARIS — For the last few years, cheese has been at the center of a debate that is as gastronomic as it is economic and sociocultural. Facing increasingly strict regulations, many producers are concerned about the future of cheese made with ancestral methods, and the anxiety is particularly high in France and Italy, which each […]
Part of Moscow’s new striving urban class has taken its ideas and energy to the farm. A different kind of Russian revolution.
CAIRO — After being unemployed for three years, 26-year-old Emad Hassan was offered a job at a local bank on the condition that he take a blood test. It was then that he discovered he had been infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), which can cause liver disease and eventually hepatocellular carcinoma — better […]
France defends “human dignity”, Spanish director slams Spain, the Mandela memorial fake sign-language interpreter speaks up … and other notable quotes from around the world.
With Sunday’s election of Michelle Bachelet in Chile, three of Latin America’s most pivotal countries are now led by women. There is symbolic unity, but very different types of leaders.
One of the heartbreaking side-effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014 TALIBAN MASSACRES DOZENS IN SCHOOL ATTACKAt least 126 people, including at least 84 children, were killed and another 122 wounded when Taliban gunmen attacked an army-run school in Peshawar, in northern Pakistan, this morning, Dawn reports on its live blog. A rescue operation is still ongoing with more children believed to […]
BUTEMBO — On the eve of the 2013-2014 academic year, the city of Butembo saw 22 new universities opening here, more than doubling the number of higher education institutions in a city of only 600,000 people. But they’re only universities by (pompous) name: “Superior Institute of Trade and Business,” “Doctoral School of Petrochemistry,” “Faculty of […]
MEXICO CITY — Roberto Servitje, co-founder and former president of the Mexican bread and pastry giant Bimbo, is upright and elegant at 85 years old. He has plenty to stand tall about, having started a company with his brother 68 years ago that remains successful and in the family. At a time when Mexican producers […]
In a rare sit-down with a reporter, Argentine pontiff responds to a wide range of questions from La Stampa’s Vatican correspondent about Marxism, divorce and the meaning of suffering.
GENEVA — Have you heard the story of the white supremacist who found out on live television that he’s part-Sub-Saharan African? It happened on NBC last month when Craig Cobbs, who wanted to turn a small North Dakota town into an all-white enclave, agreed to take a DNA test. Broadcaster Trisha Goddard, a British woman […]
The last of the past century’s ‘counter-history’ leaders, Mandela represented the ultimate triumph over the destructive powers of the notion of racial superiority.
Nelson Mandela is mourned in South Africa, authorities are challenged with music in Ukraine and more images capturing the news..
Cover Photo: Kainet Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: Belgian singer-songriter Martijn Teerlinck, a.k.a. Cole Williams, a.k.a. The Child of Lov died on Tuesday at the age of 26, following complications after undergoing surgery. He had worked with Damon Albarn on his self-titled […]
As France embarks on its third military intervention in Africa in the past three years, in the Central African Republic, a search for the sources of a continent’s perennial instability.
‘Filial Piety,’ in which children were responsible for caring for the aged, was China’s ancient and efficient retirement system. Modern forces have slowly dismantled it over the past half-century.
-Editorial- SAO PAULO — It’s the image that became the symbol of Nelson Mandela’s memorial in Soweto: the handshake between U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro. And it’s only fitting that this is the image that remains. The United States and Cuba have been living in open animosity since the Cold War. […]
A writer in Damascus says Assad’s regime is trying every tactic to reduce its adversaries to something subhuman. “Kneel,” his soldiers laugh, “or you will go hungry …”
Because of outdated tradition and economics, 14% of Yemeni girls are married off before their 15th birthday. But since the Arab spring, a movement is growing to stop this.
What does Mandela’s example mean for Colombia as it seeks to end decades of bloody conflict with leftist guerrillas?
Your weekly shot of what the Arab world is saying, hearing and sharing.