Worldcrunch
SÃO PAULO — In the nearly two years since it was formed, Unicorns FC, an amateur soccer team in São Paulo made up exclusively of LGBT players, only recorded one crisis: when a player, disappointed with a teammate’s performance, said “soccer is a man’s sport.” For the club, it isn’t — it’s a sport for […]
-Op-Ed- PARIS — Several decades of weakness and/or blindness have brought France to where it is today. A deeply divided country, where two camps are facing off with an animosity rarely seen in its recent past. An unhappy France vs. a happy France, a France of privilege vs. a France of exclusion, France from on […]
PARIS — The hour is nigh. On Sunday, French voters, as well as abstainers, (expected to rise in numbers since the first-round ballot on April 23) will decide who, between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, will lead the country for the next five years. One way or another, their choice and its consequences will […]
Germany’s jet set loves this island and yet we have it almost all to ourselves. What makes Sylt so special?
-Analysis- Donald Trump makes a lot of noise. In the past week alone, he made headlines for saying he thought being president of the United States “would be easier” and for calling North Korea’s Kim Jong-un “a tough cookie.” But friends and foes alike have advised us to pay attention to what he does more […]
In France’s presidential campaign, like last year’s race in the United States, protectionism is being used to woo the struggling working class. But workers would be its first victims.
Around the world, local water shortages are a very real sign of the effects of climate change. Drought conditions in certain areas of India have recently left some cities reeling, leading to new political tensions. Meanwhile, last weekend, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Washington, D.C. and around the United States to demand […]
CHIBA — Researchers are collecting 3D data of Buddhist statues and other cultural assets at a university here on the eastern outskirts of Tokyo in order to store the stereoscopic information in case of the objects’ deterioration or theft. The graduate school research laboratory at Chiba University is recording the 3D data, which is also […]
Climbing 400 or so stairs is all it took my wife Claudine and I to get to mingle with the gargoyles at the top of the Notre Dame cathedral, and enjoy an breathtaking view of Paris — including Montmartre and the Sacré-Coeur basilica. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
More and more people in Muslim-majority countries are opting out of their marriages. And often it’s the woman who decides to end things.
COULOMMIERS — In the working-class outskirts of Paris, people are counting. They count the number of houses now occupied by people from an immigrant background. “There are four Arabs opposite my house, four others at the end of the street, on the right-hand side, and one Black guy to the left,” says 88-year-old Micheline, who […]
Leftists in France will not vote Le Pen on Sunday. But will they vote Macron?
WASHINGTON, D.C. — During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump boasted that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” On the 100th day of his presidency, Trump invited Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has said that he used to roam the streets on a motorcycle looking for criminals to kill, to the White House. A Duterte state visit to Washington or Mar-a-Lago would be a ghastly spectacle, given the way the Philippines have pursued a war on drugs even more literal than the one in the United […]
BEIJING — Authorities have carried out a series of raids on beauty salons in the Chinese capital in an effort to crack down on counterfeit Botox, The Beijing News reports. Botox is popular in China, where many young women aspire to have a thin V-shape face. But the high price of injections, which require regular […]
An Italian reporter gets a rare glimpse past the North Korean regime’s attempt to portray the country in a positive new light.
PARIS — Five days ahead of the showdown between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in France’s crucial presidential elections, Worldcrunch has asked Camille Langlade, a political reporter at the 24-hour French news channel BFMTV to share her experiences covering the non-stop action of national political campaigns, and more. This is the first installment in […]
Like much of the rest of the country, Syria’s fourth-largest city, Hama, has been left victim of the brutal civil war repeatedly over the past six years. Still, its most prized antiquities, these big Byzantine-era norias that keep water turning, are still standing. The same, sadly, cannot be said in Palmyra. See more slides from […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Here in France, one learns that the first step to flipping a crêpe is to ensure the batter is cooked all the way through. Only then can you shake the edges loose, and with a flick of the wrist, flip the crêpe high in the air. The kitchen of foreign diplomacy has […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — Late last summer, my wife and I took a ferry from Doolin, on the West coast of Ireland, to Inishmore, the smallest of the three Aran Islands. The tiny ferry, with perhaps no more than 30 or 40 people aboard, was filled with mostly European passengers.The ocean was rough; a short trip […]
A project in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second biggest city gives women from the rival Alawite and Sunni communities a chance to work together.
-Analysis- “This bull is a bull and this horse is a horse,” Spanish-born painter Pablo Picasso once said of his iconic 1937 painting Guernica. Eighty years later, the horrifying depiction of the Spanish Civil War bombing of a Basque town — history’s first attack from the air on a civilian population — stands as one […]