Worldcrunch
The lunar landscapes of the Tabernas Desert, near Almeria in southern Spain, were used as filming locations for some of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns in the 1960s. When my wife and I went there in the 1980s it was pretty much abandoned, but it has since become a major tourist attraction.
Average age: 65. The one immigrant family in town had a baby girl, the first birth in a decade — and they’re already making plans to leave.
The Caribbean island says its financial system is all aboveboard, yet it remains a gateway to less scrupulous offshore havens like the Cayman Islands.
TEHRAN — Both at home and abroad, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has become the public face of his country’s willingness to sign a deal with the West to limit its nuclear program. The Vienna accord, inked in July, has also made Zarif the main target of Iran’s religious hardliners, whom he confirmed Wednesday […]
Activists on the small Pacific island, with their legendary statues, are taking concrete actions to obtain more autonomy from Chile. But does full independence make sense?
SYRIAN ARMY TAKES BACK KEY AIR BASE FROM ISIS The Syrian army has regained control of the Kwairis military airbase, near the northern city of Aleppo, ending a siege that started in April 2013 and was reinforced by ISIS in the spring of 2014, the Syrian Arab News Agency reports. According to experts quoted by […]
BEIJING — Over the past month President Xi Jinping made a state visit to the United States and to the United Kingdom. In the U.S. he was welcomed with a 21-gun salute on the south lawn of the White House followed by a state banquet. In Britain he was greeted by the Queen, and rode […]
Our dog, whom we had gotten soon after the end of World War II and named “Jeep,” was keeping a benevolent eye on our cat.
Startups are shaking up the dry cleaning industry by offering more convenient options for customers. The industry, which has shrunk by half in the last few decades, is also coping with gradual limits placed on using a common cleaning substance.
PARIS — Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has refused a dinner invitation at the French presidential palace with his counterpart François Hollande, because wine was on the menu, French broadcaster RTL reports. A formal dinner was planned at the Elysée to mark the end of Rouhani’s November 16-17 visit to Paris, as part of the first […]
Thousands of Chinese are moving to Laos to benefit from an expatriation bonus. But their mass use of pesticides on banana plantations has created a serious health issue, and displacement of locals has fomented anti-Chinese sentiment.
BRAZZAVILLE — It was only when she realized she’d handed her husband a letter written by his mistress that Alphonsine decided to act. Facing such heartbreak and humiliation, this 54-year-old housewife and mother of seven, decided to join a basic literacy class in the Congolese capital of Brazzaville. Like Alphonsine, many illiterate women have started […]
MYANMAR ACCUSED OF DELAYING RESULTS The National League for Democracy (NLD), the Burmese opposition party headed for a sweeping victory after Sunday’s general elections, has accused the government of Myanmar of deliberately delaying release of the results, The Irrawaddy reports. The NLD is expected to win at least 75% of contested seats, according to party […]
The good news, according to this German study? Actual psychopaths rarely make it to the top …
This stork decided to keep company with these Romanian haymakers near Covasna, a scene reminiscent of my childhood in the French countryside.
LISBON — Portugal is relearning one of the basic tenets of democracy: Majority rules. The country’s four left-leaning parties are expected to bring down the minority center-right government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho with a vote of no-confidence on Tuesday, newspaper Diário de Notícias reports. The center-right coalition that has been governing since 2011 […]
Alternate-side parking, illogical signage, unspoken rules, clueless New Jersey visitors. Everything in New York has its own rules and language. Even parking your car.
PARIS — Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former head of the International Monetary Fund whose sexual exploits cost him a shot at the French presidency, has been working as a lobbyist in France for cigarette maker Philip Morris, Le Journal du Dimanche reports. The French weekly cites anonymous sources linked to the U.S. tobacco giant who […]
Bathroom breaks and oxygen tanks mix with kilos of cocaine and money laundering: The “papy connection” trial of aging ex-cons unfolded in a Marseille courtroom.
The pontiff’s visit to Tuscany brings him to the historic textile town of Prato, where Chinese workers have flocked to toil in what are often very inhuman circumstances. These are the faithful Francis wishes to see.
OPPOSITION LOOKS TO WIN BIG IN MYANMAR Photo: Jack Kurtz/ZUMA The National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi is on the verge of a sweeping victory in Myanmar, where party officials say they expect to win at least 70% of parliamentary seats, The Myanmar Times reports. Yesterday’s historic election […]
Orthorexia is to eating right what anorexia is to eating less. It’s the condition of imposing such stringent control over one’s diet, insisting on eating only healthy or organic food, and it is becoming a health concern in developed nation
“Uncertain to the end,” Croatian-language daily Poslovni dvevnik writes on its Monday front page, a day after Croatia’s conservative opposition claimed a narrow victory in the country’s first election since it joined the European Union in 2013. The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) has declared victory after Sunday’s parliamentary elections, but the leading opposition party failed […]
Oysters are my péché mignon — literally my “cute sin,” or guilty pleasure. I’ll have a shovelful or two, thank you very much.
A century from now, the global population will finally begin to decline. But before that, the world must deal with the waste created by an exploding overpopulation: How do we hold on until then?
Because of overscreening and the diagnosis of contrived or harmless ills, the so-called nocebo effect is wreaking havoc on otherwise healthy people.
The U.S. was once vulnerable to the geopolitics of energy reserves. Now American shale gas exploration offers foreign policy muscle in the face of the Saudis, Russians and Iranians.
The strongest armed group in Douma, Syria, paraded caged detainees, including Syrian army officers and women and children, for several hours to try to deter future government attacks. Syria Deeply spoke with residents to get their reactions.
Where the Russian leader lacks any real strategy, his American counterpart is short on nerve. They’re playing two different games and following very different rules.
TEHRAN — Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli has warned the Sunni Islamist terror group ISIS not to approach Iranian territory or the Shia shrines in Iraq. Speaking at a gathering Friday in Tabas, in eastern Iran, Fazli said that ISIS should not get closer than 40 kilometers (25 miles) to Iran’s border nor attack […]
BEIJING — The setting is Singapore, where the two sides had a semi-official contact in 1992, giving the news a pleasant whiff of nostalgia. The summit on Saturday between Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan and Xi Jinping of China is historic indeed: It is the first meeting between leaders of both sides of the Taiwan Strait […]
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EGYPT RESTRICTS UK RESCUE FLIGHTS Egyptian authorities are restricting flights sent to rescue British tourists, who were stranded at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport after Saturday’s crash of a Russian plane, the BBC reports. Some 20 flights were planned to take British tourists back home today, but it appears that only about eight will depart. According […]
Muslim guests at celebrations will no longer have to stand around with a Coke in their hands. For Munich’s Four Seasons Hotel, a local company has produced the first-ever non-alcoholic sparkling wine made in accordance with Islamic law.
Hopefully this bakery in central Turkey didn’t get its flour delivered the way it did its coal.
In our dreams, it’s a world of joyful sharing. In reality, Internet commenters often offer little more than cheap shots and manipulation. Researcher Joseph Reagle explores the history and degeneration of online invective.
Unlike Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa manages to keep his political crackdowns below the international radar.
DELHI — On November 4, 2000, Irom Sharmila, an Indian civil rights activist, began what would become the longest recorded hunger strike ever, protesting against India’s military following the killing of 10 civilians in her northeastern state of Manipur. Fifteen years later, the now 43-year-old has never broken her fast, as The Indian Express reports […]
Among the puzzles researchers hope to solve is whether Tutankhamun’s tomb has hidden openings to the burial site of Queen Nefertiti, whose remains have never been found.
ISIS MAY HAVE CAUSED SINAI CRASH AFTER ALL There is significant evidence that an ISIS affiliate in Egypt was behind a suspected bomb attack on a Russian passenger plane that killed 224 people over the Sinai Peninsula Saturday, UK, U.S. and European officials told The Guardian. But Egypt and Russia still urge caution on making […]