Worldcrunch
MADRID — The political gridlock in Spain is getting just a bit silly: two general elections and endless soap-operatic negotiations since December 2015 have yet to produce a stable government among the bickering parties. No doubt, as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy searches in vain for a ruling majority, there are real-life ramifications across the country. […]
Kaciane do Nascimento’s love of reading led to her open a library in the backyard of her house, in a low-income housing development in São Paulo state. Now she’s working on a book of her own.
El Nuevo Dia — Sept. 23, 2016 “Complex recovery” reads the front page of Puerto Rican daily El Nuevo Dia“s Friday edition, as the Caribbean island is still struggling to restore power two days after a massive blackout left most of its 3.5 million inhabitants in the dark. Power was shut off Wednesday on the […]
This stone calvary in western France’s Brittany region depicts scenes from the life and death of Jesus with incredible attention to detail — and someone on Wikipedia was kind enough to explain it all exhaustively.
Hundreds of atomic bombs were detonated at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in eastern Kazakhstan during the Soviet regime. Scientists are now conducting research on the site, which was shuttered 25 years ago, to evaluate how radiation affected the reg
Swedish telecom network giant Ericsson plans to shut down all its remaining production plants in Sweden, Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) reports in a front-page exclusive Thursday. The Stockholm daily cites internal documents, which would confirm the end to the Swedish company’s more than 140-year-old tradition to keep at least part of its production at home, a […]
LA CRUZ — Yet another migrant crisis for the world: the tiny Central American nation of Costa Rica is now faced with the arrival of thousands of Haitians, many by way of crisis-hit Brazil. Over the past four months, some 8,500 Haitians have entered the tiny Central American nation, reports La Nación, based in the […]
Before this week, few outside of France knew his face. But no doubt, millions have been busy Google-Image-searching the name “Guillaume Canet.” Yup, bel homme. He is also an accomplished actor and director, and happens to be the husband of the already internationally known French actress, Marion Cotillard. And that, as you are disturbingly likely […]
British Prime Minister Theresa May is just the latest female world leader who’s not a mother. A hard look at a gender double standard that reaches all the way to the top.
Next to the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra lay several funerary towers known as the Valley of the Tombs. You can see them in the background of this photograph, as my wife Claudine walks among local ethnic Druze. Sadly, we know that the first-century necropolis was destroyed by ISIS terrorists last year. Some Druze villages, […]
It would not be surprising if a mural on government surveillance that went missing last month turned up for sale on the art market. The Spy Booth artwork in the town of Cheltenham in England, created by British artist Banksy, was removed from the wall it had lived on for two years. The mural, which […]
EZUZ — Ask a 1970s kid to imagine bringing his favorite video game to life, and you might hear some weird stuff involving Ms. Pac-Man. Or, he might dream about playing the legendary arcade video game Space Invaders — for real. Well, the latter is now (kind of) possible, thanks to drones and the work […]
Investigators assume that ISIS instructors are looking for new candidates for becoming potential terrorists on the Internet. Chat protocols reveal how they proceed.
In our globalized world, climate change, economic collapse and all sorts of warfare (nuclear, biological, cyber, etc.) are viewed as the most terrible and frightening danger threatening our planet. But scientists recently pointed to an imminent threat that could wipe out the human race — the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria or, simply, “superbugs.” Today, the […]
PARIS — Technology is changing the way people secure legal services, turning clients into “consumers” by allowing them to bypass traditional law firms. Need help drafting that shareholders agreement? There’s an app for that — at just a fraction of the normal cost! The past few years have seen a boom, in France, of “legal […]
Taking pictures of license plates allowed me to remember where I took this or that series of photographs without having to write it down. When you’re dealing with over 20,000 slides, it comes in handy.
Who knew what and when? Questions linger two months after the coup attempt was quickly stamped out.
In the scenic Loire Valley southwest of Paris, a town was designated to accommodate the first center of “deradicalization” of Islamic extremists in France. Since then, the community in Indre-et-Loire has been consumed by anger and fear.
Driverless cars used to seem like the stuff of sci-fi. But as the U.S. unveils a list of guidelines about self-driving vehicles today, it’s safe to say that these cars have zipped from the realm of a distant future to the regulatory thicket that’s an all too clear reminder that this is very much a […]
Brussels punishes Apple and the call from Washington follows promptly: Deutsche Bank owes them $14 billion. The race for the White House doesn’t help matters.
The famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant spent most of his life in Königsberg, in what was then known as Prussia. HIs mausoleum has seen borders and names change: The city is now a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania called Kaliningrad.
More and more coffee growers are going organic in Colombia. A boost for the environment, the trend is also improving lives, as producers in the coastal Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta can attest.
Since Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated two months ago, some 2,000 people have been killed across the country in the past two months in what experts say are extra-judicial vigilante murders. Fear and silence make it all possible.
New York is again testing the limits of its status as “the city that never sleeps.” A week after marking the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks at Ground Zero, an explosion a bit farther uptown Saturday injured 29 people. And now, even as the investigation continues into that attack in the Chelsea […]
Die Tageszeitung, Sept. 19 Another election, another humbling defeat for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In a Berlin state vote, Merkel’s CDU party polled 17.6% — its lowest showing since 1990, figures from public broadcaster ARD showed on Monday. It’s the second poll drubbing as CDU got crushed just two weeks before in an eastern German […]
MISRATA — This Libyan coastal city is bearing the brunt of the ongoing offensive to defeat the Islamic State in its nearby stronghold of Sirte. Flooded with hundreds of injured people streaming in from the fighting, its recently renovated central hospital is buckling under the pressure. With only 120 beds, two operating rooms, and a […]
Can you spot the little red riding hood playing in L’Aquila’s Fontana delle 99 cannelle (“The Fountain of the 99 Spouts”)? Luckily, the landmark fountain suffered only minor damage during the deadly 2009 earthquake.
Both city officials and business leaders take note of where artsy types, LGBT and creative young people move to live, as these are the new “influencers” who can give the decisive spark to cities.
-OpEd- PARIS — In the northern German state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) defeated Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in local elections. In the United States, the Republicans chose Donald Trump as their candidate for the White House. The British voted for Brexit. Italians elected as mayors of Rome and […]
BREMEN — Murat Kurnaz, a German native of Turkish origin, likes to joke around. And considering his story, the humor can sometimes turn rather dark. Today, he speaks about the journey from the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba to the Ramstein U.S. air base in Germany at the end of his five-year imprisonment in August […]
Slovenian-born Andrej Mrevlje has lived all around the world, sharing his stories and ideas. Now, after five years in the Big Apple, it’s time for life inside the beltway.
In towns and cities around the Nile delta, fishermen are selling their boats to a local mafia outfit, which controls a burgeoning human trafficking racket.
Beyond the Middle America stump speeches and coast-to-coast pancake breakfast stops, a U.S. presidential elections is also very much a global event. All the talk of the decline of the economic, political and cultural might of the American empire starts sounding a bit premature every four years, as November approaches. So this morning, it’s no […]
The weakening power of the “Mother of Europe” comes at a bad time for both Germany and the rest of the continent.