Worldcrunch
“We Are Danish” — Libération, Feb. 16, 2015 One month after the shootings in Paris that killed 17 people, a similar terror attack left two dead and five wounded in the Danish capital Copenhagen over the weekend. In the same way the world honored the victims and the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with the “Je […]
(March 21 to April 19) Venus and Mars arrive triumphantly in your sign for what is going to be one of the most intense and interesting periods of this year. At work there are still highs and lows, but now is the time to get involved without ifs and buts. In love, it’s impossible to […]
Though it’s closer to the Italian Peninsula, the island of Corsica belongs to France. But the words that come to my mind when I look at this panorama are in Italian: Che pace! (“Such peace!”)
A group calling itself “Defenders of Jerusalem” is throwing its lot in with ISIS, making the battle between Cairo and Islamists ever more since the army ousted the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the fifth grade, a 10-year-old Noh Blaghen discovered graphic Japanese comics, otherwise known as mangas. It was in the early 2000s in Benin, Nigeria, and they were rare there. A friend’s parents, who had been traveling in France and in Belgium, returned home with stacks of them, which Noh devoured with his friends. In […]
Greeks are used to making history, and they’re at it again. What will last month’s election victory of Alexis Tsipras and his anti-austerity Syriza party mean for the future beyond Greece? And more specifically, could it mark a turning point for the urgent global issue of environmental change? A not-so-subtle fil rouge exists between economic […]
TEL AVIV — Israel’s diplomatic campaign against the Palestinian Authority and last summer’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza are no doubt among the factors contributing to Israel’s current economic slowdown. A study by economists Joseph Zeira and Tal Wolfson from the Israeli-Palestinian think tank Aix Group offers some data illustrating the differences between the recession […]
What should be done with the house where Adolf Hitler was born? It’s a difficult question facing the Austrian city of Braunau as the 500-year-old building slowly falls apart.
The Ukraine ceasefire reached in Minsk represents a major diplomatic success for Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel, hopefully the first of many.
Last week in Albuquerque, New Mexico, several people formed a heart to raise awareness on heart diseases — Photo: Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal/ZUMA Our staff playlist this weekend is love-themed, obviously. Because this Saturday, like every Feb. 14 since the year 842, the world will remember the Oaths of Strasbourg, in which Louis the German, ruler […]
PESHAWAR MOSQUE ATTACKEDAt least 22 worshipers were killed and 60 injured after gunmen attacked a Shia mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, during Friday prayers. Three gunmen reportedly opened fire on worshipers after three explosions were heard inside the building. The BBC quotes officials as saying that one militant blew himself up, one was arrested and another […]
Latin American countries have used a decade-long revenue boom to boost prosperity and stabilize their economies. But there is a *productivity problem*.
The owners of these bicycles were having a picnic nearby, enjoying the view of the famous 19 windmills at Kinderdijk. The place was still pretty quiet in 1964, some 33 years before it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Scientists are increasingly revising the idea of human nature as inherently competitive and violent. A documentary explores the possibility of a prehistoric “utopia,” when people lived without cruelty or war.
Those killing in the name of the Muslim prophet are following derivative ancient texts, second-hand accounts, not the Koran.
Two very different tragedy-at-sea stories occupied the front page of Thursday’s Rome-based daily La Repubblica. The Italian island of Lampedusa was once again witness to the horror of would-be immigrants dying after setting out from North Africa in an attempt to reach European shores. As many as 300 people were feared dead after taking a […]
Musical education, not only at a young age but also into adulthood, could have a significant and lasting impact on the development of the brain as well as on speech awareness, a study published in the The Journal of Neuroscience reveals. According to the researchers from Canada’s Rotman Institute, practicing music before the age of […]
Local planners in Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are clearing out homes and businesses that encroached over the years along the city’s main avenues.
Western medicine had abandoned the use of viruses with the advent of antibiotics. But now promising, non-chemical options are emerging in the fight against bacterial infections and some types of cancer.
LEADERS AGREE ON UKRAINE CEASEFIREAfter hours-long negotiations in Minsk, leaders Petro Poroshenko, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel and François Hollande (Photo: Henadzi/Xinhua/ZUMA) have reached what the French president described as a “comprehensive deal” for a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine to begin at midnight Saturday. Putin was the first one to speak after the meeting adjourned, saying […]
Four previously unreleased Spice Girls songs recorded in the late 90s have “leaked” online this week. Three of them were soon deleted but one ballad, “A Day In Your Life”, is still there.
“Le Ventre de Paris,” as French writer Émile Zola called it, has changed considerably during the past century. The Halles de Paris, this gigantic cast iron and glass food market right in the middle of the capital, was demolished in the early 1970s and replaced with the questionable Forum des Halles shopping mall. Today it […]
From Greece and Spain, to Brazil and beyond, people are no longer convinced that politics is working for the greater good.
PESHAWAR — Schools in Peshawar now look like police stations, equipped with barbed wire, surveillance cameras and snipers after the Taliban’s December assault on a school that killed 132 students. Officials told schools to be prepared for other attacks, and in an extraordinary measure, the Khyber Pakhtunkua government is allowing teachers to keep guns at school. The local police are also now training female teachers in how to use guns. Ashraf Khan teaches in a primary school not far from the army public school that the Taliban attacked in December. The first thing he does in the morning when he […]
The Smiths’ second and most commercially successfull studio album Meat Is Murder was released exactly 30 years ago, on Feb. 11, 1985.
An interview with the 43-year-old Latino singer reveals a more serene relationship with fame, fatherhood and a growing thirst for tango.
UKRAINE, ALL EYES ON MINSKAngela Merkel, François Hollande, Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin meet in a crucial peace summit on the Ukrainian conflict Wednesday in Belarus’ capital Minsk. The leaders of Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia will attempt to find a compromise and broker a durable ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, where clashes between government forces […]
A record 53 French police officers committed suicide last year. The Courbat, a health facility, treats officers suffering from burnout, depression and alcoholism with a very specific therapy.
Lake Titicaca is located on the border of Peru and Bolivia. I’ve already shown you what the Peruvian side looks like, so this is me standing on the Bolivian shore of the lake — for once in front of the camera and not behind it.
Some Nigerians have lost hope that the state military can stem the Islamist insurgency. This group of vigilantes has stepped in, relying on ‘speical powers’ to help see the enemy.
Moscow sees huge new business opportunity in northern shipping routes. But figuring out the best ways to travel via the Arctic is a massive, and chilly, undertaking.
Demonizing the rich, a pastime of Colombia’s political Left, doesn’t help social progress. Yes, the rich must pay a high share of taxes, but capital and opportunity cross borders like never before.
UKRAINE LAUNCHES OFFENSIVEUkrainian government forces launched an offensive against pro-Russian rebels near the port city of Mariupol today, Reuters reports. Leaders from Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia are set to gather tomorrow in Minsk, Belarus, to discuss a possible ceasefire. After meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged […]
Right behind Madonna in the top of the Russian charts, the Ukrainian singer Elka is enjoying commercial success with her single “Body Ofigel.”
The risk is real of armed conflict between the West and Moscow on European soil. Searching for a way out means learning the lessons of Finland, and counting on leadership from France.
A federal ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in Alabama took effect Monday. But in up to 52 of the state’s 67 counties, most judges refused to go through with processing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, the International New York Times reports in its issue Tuesday. Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Alabama Supreme […]
The way ISIS shocks us with its evil prompts fantasies of retaliation. How can we make these thoughts subside? What does it take not to lose our own civilization? Confessions of a monster.
This footbridge between two of the Thousand Islands in the Saint Lawrence River is often hailed as being the “shortest international bridge in the world.” The border that separates Canada from the U.S. is said to pass exactly between Zavikon Island and Little Zavikon Island, making for a great anecdote told by many tour guides. […]
The more time technology saves us, the less we feel we have. Three researchers explore this modern ‘double paradox.’
(March 21 to April 19) Passions are more ardent this week, as well as a desire for someone you cannot have or who resists you. Love that does arise shudders with uncertainties, but it is all-encompassing; let it go, you have no choice. Longtime couples may take big strides in their relationships. In terms of […]