“Nothing but debris and bodies” reads French daily Libération“s front page, conveying the state of shock and disbelief around Europe the day after an Airbus A320 carrying 150 people crashed in the southern French Alps. According to Alain Vidalies, France’s junior minister of transport, there were no survivors from the crash of flight 4U9525. Search […]
Month: March 2015
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Turning Back The Clogs
These Dutch klompen in Volendam bring back a precise chidhood memory: In 1940, when I was about the age of the boy on the left of the picture, I fled from my hometown in zone occupée to the village of Lacrost in the region of Bourgogne — then in zone libre … and I had […]
As it faces an aging population, China has announced plans to raise its retirement age. But the better solution, and a clearly more urgent issue, is to encourage couples to have more children.
BOGOTA — Researchers at Colombia’s Universidad del Valle recently discovered a new species of orchid as part of their investigation into how global warming affects the plant. But unfortunately, their research across the country also revealed that at least three species of local orchids registered during the 19th century are now extinct. The new orchid […]
Bad urban planning, pollution, corruption, the Indian megapolis offers lessons on exactly how not to run your city.
“NO SURVIVORS” EXPECTED IN ALPS PLANE CRASHPhoto: A Germanwings Airbus A320 — Xinhua/ZUMAAn Airbus A320 carrying 150 people crashed in the southern French Alps near the town of Digne this morning, and French President François Hollande has said officials expect no survivors in what represents the first crash of a low-budget airline in Europe. VERBATIM“It […]
I Kathimerini, March 24, 2015 Alexis Tsipras and Angela Merkel look like they were having a hard time understanding each other on Tuesday’s front page of Greek daily I Kathimerini. The German chancellor was welcoming the Greek prime minister in Berlin — his first visit to Germany since taking office in January — as Tsipras […]
BEIJING — A military-style boot camp in Beijing’s suburbs is at the front line of China’s battle against Internet addiction, a disorder that the government claims is afflicting millions of its children. The camp run by an army colonel is where desperate parents are sending their children in the hopes of weaning them off online games, cybersex and chats. The China Young Mental Development Base in Daxing district uses a blend of therapy and military drills to treat children such as 18-year-old Wang Dewei, the son of middle-class officials in the Hebei province. He says they forced him to come […]
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Budapest’s Brooklyn Bridge
The mighty Danube divides Buda and Pest, the two cities that were unified in 1873 to form the Hungarian capital. The 19th century Széchenyi chain suspension bridge was the first permanent bridge across the river, becoming a national symbol of this linkage between East and West.
Details emerge of poisonous links between local politicians and organized crime networks in Sicily working together to siphon public funds and exploit migrants arriving via Lampedusa.
The architecture and interior design of a residential care home serving autistic people were specially designed to make the patients more comfortable. A look inside the award-winning facility.
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Song Du Jour #30, Death In Venice
Today Worldcrunch celebrates his Hit It! curator and nonchalant rock star Patrick making yet another successful trip around the sun. Surely, this calls for an Italian new wave/gothic rock/post-punk band, right?
The European Union was built atop the rubble of so much bad history, meant to build democracy and keep peace among neighbors. But something came undone, and the union itself is now in mortal peril.
MERKEL MEETS TSIPRAS IN BERLINGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel is meeting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Berlin today, starting a week that Bloomberg characterizes as “decisive for Greece’s future in the euro area.” According to the Financial Times, Tsipras told Merkel in a letter last week that without the European Union’s continued support, it would […]
The cover of this week’s issue of the German weekly Der Spiegel shows a smiling Angela Merkel spliced into a photograph of Nazi officers standing by Athens’ Parthenon during the German World War II occupation of Greece. Along with the headline, “How Europeans see Germans — the German Supremacy,” the controversial cover was published two […]
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Crossing Paths
I could have run into famous French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in the steep streets of Bonifacio. In 1969, the same year I went there for the first time, the master took a series of black-and-white pictures of Corsica.
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FIRST QUARTER MOON – March 23-29
Searching for new emotional and professional stability continues to be your mission. This week will be decisive for some to lay the foundations for a future project. It’s about choices, but also amazing opportunities that confirm a positive trend. A resolution to a dispute is just around the corner, especially one that concerns family, money […]
Separated families, refugees and a deeper sense of national loss for Ukrainians who saw an entire region of their country taken over by Russia last March.
BEIJING — At a Chinese New Year family celebration, one of Liang Bing’s aunts pulled her aside and cautioned her to be careful not to get pregnant before April. In fact, she continued telling her niece, it would be even better to put off a pregnancy until after May or June. “Giving birth to a […]
Lula da Silva spent liberally when the Brazilian economy was booming, leaving Dilma Rousseff to face the deferred impact of the global recession. His personal popularity aside, the country’s current woes are largely his fault.
To gauge the ways the civil war has affected all of Syria, a look at seven cities on the fourth anniversary of the first uprising against the regime. A chronicle of death and life going on.
FORT MACKAY — Figuring out which way the winds are blowing is a piece of cake in the hamlet of Fort MacKay, Canada. Just follow the direction of the fumes. On this cold February morning, with temperatures below -20 °C (-4 ºF) in the northern part of Alberta, the columns rising from the chimneys of […]
SIMFEROPOL — One year after Russia annexed Crimea, oyster farmer Sergey Koulik is exultant about both the future and the past. “Russian Crimea means new markets, more business and state funding,” he says. “Crimea’s return to the mother country is a good history lesson for all of Europe.” Koulik owns the only oyster farm in […]
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The moderate president symbolizes the hope of rapprochement with the West in nuclear talks, but he must also deal with the regime’s hardliners. Can he manage to strike a deal with the enemy?
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Song Du Jour #29, Blur
Blur have made another track of their upcoming album available. “There Are Too Many of Us” will feature on The Magic Whip, set to be released on April 27 and their first album since Think Tank, in 2003.
YEMEN MOSQUES ATTACKEDTwo suicide bombers attacked two separate mosques in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa during Friday prayers, killing at least 35 worshipers and wounding dozens more, according to early reports from Al-Arabiya. This story is developing. U.S. “RETHINKS” ISRAELI APPROACHU.S. President Barack Obama called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday to congratulate him on Tuesday’s […]
BEIJING — Relations between Myanmar and China remain tense after a bomb from a Burmese military plane fell in the Chinese border province of Yunnan last week. The bomb killed four people and injured another nine and also prompted a good number of Burmese to taking refuge on the Chinese side. China responded to the […]
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L’Ennui: Or, Eternal Boredom
Not much to do in Kathmandu? On the doorstep of a Hindu temple, these Nepalese men seemed on the verge of following the dog’s example.
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Why The Jihadists Fear Tunisia
The biggest threat to murderous Islamists are Muslims who believe in democracy.
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Song Du Jour #28, Bachson 5
As the video below puts it perfectly, “Jackson 5 and Bach were funky way before Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk”,” we’d say even funkier, by far.
The assassination of democratic reformer Boris Nemtsov prompts a look back over the past two decades of Russia flirting in vain with economic and political reforms.
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Uncanny Unlikeness
In New Orleans, we were granted access to a warehouse where they keep the papier-mâché heads of the famous figures destined for the Mardi Gras floats. Granted, Reagan is pretty well done. We were stumped on the one in the middle; as for the one on the right, if we had been in France, I […]
TUNISIA DECLARES WAR ON TERRORISMPhoto: Adel/Xinhua/ZUMATunisia is in a state of shock today after the terror attack on the National Bardo Museum in the capital yesterday left 19 people dead and 44 wounded, most of them foreign tourists. In Paris-based Libération, Algerian writer Kamel Daoud says that yesterday’s “sniper attack” targeted the “true heart of […]
Tunisia is in a state of shock Thursday after the terror attack on the National Bardo Museum in the capital, which left 19 people dead and 44 wounded, most of them foreign tourists. Wednesday’s attack in Tunis was a devastating reminder, both inside and outside the North African country where the Arab Spring started more […]
Leonardo Boff, a Catholic theologian and key figure of Liberation theology, was condemned for decades by the Vatican. Now, he says, the pope himself is going beyond Liberation teachings.
A brother and sister have set Lausanne alight for the past two years with a celebration of “positive sex” and “alternative porn.” The Swiss city has been surprisingly submissive. Austin, Texas might call it the XXX answer to their SXSW
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Not Quite Stonehenge
The Sidobre mountainous forest in central France, studded with massive, weirdly shaped rocks, is unique in Europe. And though, contrary to Stonehenge’s standing stones or Brittany’s menhirs, man had nothing to do with these geological formations, the place has also inspired many legends and tales — and allowed my daughter Cécile to pretend she was […]
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Netanyahu On His Way To Fourth Term
NETANYAHU WINSExit polls had them neck-and-neck yesterday evening but in the end, Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party secured a solid victory ahead of the centrist Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog. Likud came in with an expected 30 Knesset seats ahead of 24 for the Zionist Union. With pre-voting polls suggesting a defeat of the […]
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Extra! Netanyahu On His Way To Fourth Term
Like most Israeli dailies, the Wednesday edition of Haaretz went to print too early to call Tuesday’s election results, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was declaring victory. The 65-year-old is indeed heading to a fourth term as his Likud party defied final polls that had showed him trailing the centrist Zionist Union party led […]