Worldcrunch
Welcome to Monday, where China ends its two-child policy, Netanyahu risks losing his job, and Darth Vader’s house is up for sale. We’ve also zoomed in on a single photo to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre in our This Happened video. • China bumps two-child policy up to three: China announces […]
HONG KONG — The Beijing authorities have finally decided to set aside the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government and its Legislative Council and instead craft themselves a national security law for the former British colony. According to Wang Chen, deputy chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the Chinese government’s rubber stamp agency, […]
MILAN — In March, the first coronavirus outbreak in the West put Italy’s hospitals under unprecedented strain, with health authorities facing what they described as a “tsunami” of new patients. As intensive care units filled with COVID-19 patients, hospitals scrambled to convert other wards, freeing up corridors and operating theaters for patients of the potentially […]
By now, our regular readers know that Worldcrunch works hard at being of and for and about no one particular place or people or subject matter. Our beat and our audience are written in our name, and we work with journalists and newspapers everywhere to tell the stories (no matter how big or small) that […]
Life was difficult enough for refugees even before the coronavirus outbreak. But with the lockdown depriving them of even meager earnings, the situation has beyond dire.
The pandemic will stress existing trends toward digitalization and wealth concentration — others will pay the price.
Skeptical. Overwhelmed. Disappointed. Exhausted. Helpless. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, healthcare workers have felt it all. But in recent weeks, doctors and nurses around the world have added one adjective to their list of feelings: angry. In Europe, the mood has indeed shifted from the images of people applauding their medical heroes every night, from […]
We must remember the many lives lost to coronavirus. But we should also not forget the fate of many new lives that have been left up in the air as travel bans and strained health care systems have disrupted plans for surrogacy, adoption and in vitro fertilization around the world. Surrogacy: Some 100 surrogacy babies […]
Today, the European Commission will unveil plans for an unprecedented EU economy recovery package in the face of the coronavirus crisis. The proposed EU rescue fund comes on the heels of last week’s surprise announcement that French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had agreed to a 500-billion-euro recovery package set out to […]
Welcome to Thursday, where Joe Biden calls for a deeper investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, France recognizes its responsibility in the Rwandan genocide and six famous friends are reunited after 17 years. Persian-language magazine Kayhan-London also reports on how the pandemic, combined with dire economic conditions and government repression, has had a […]
-Analysis- PRAGUE — From a geopolitical perspective, the Czech Republic is a case apart. After four decades of being “abducted” to the East (as writer Milan Kundera, for one, described the era of Soviet communism), it has spent 30 years as part of the West, first as part of Czechoslovakia, with its Velvet Revolution, and […]
To mitigate the high economic costs of the pandemic, it’s time to demand greater contributions from those who can afford to pay.
Before COVID-19, when we heard the word “virus,” most of us thought about our computers. Cyber-security terminology has borrowed from the biological world because of the similar ways that viruses spread and can be combated. Both rely on hosts for transmission and can be prevented by immunity, which for a computer comes in the form […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where Assad is all set for reelection, WhatsApp takes on India’s Modi, and a drug dealer’s love of blue cheese leads to his demise. Meanwhile, we turn to German daily Die Welt for an in-depth analysis of Angela Merkel’s relationship with China (Spoiler alert: It’s complicated). • Syrian presidential elections: Polling stations […]
For a number of French people, the two-month confinement period offered time to reflect and reassess priorities.
Around the world, creative minds are coming up with bright (or at least, new) ideas to help people stay germ-free while returning to work, school or travel.
After months of quiet amid the COVID-19 crisis, Hong Kong demonstrators attended an unauthorized rally this weekend to protest Beijing’s proposed security law that would tighten China’s control over the island territory. Police repeatedly fired tear gas,
U.S. President Donald Trump has failed spectacularly in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But he’s not the only world leader coming up short.
Welcome to Monday, where Belarus agents hijack a Ryanair flight, a freak storm in China kills 21 marathoners and Bob Dylan gets sung in 11 languages for this 80th birthday. We also feature a Le Monde reportage from Siberia on Nikita Ouvarov, the Russian teenager busted for hanging anti-government posters, who was jailed without a […]
As countries around the world scramble to conduct sufficient COVID-19 testing, there is now an urgent need for the design of rapid diagnostics of early symptoms to identify potential carriers to test, and eventually, isolate them. Researchers and the so-called “health tech” and “wearables’ sector are racing to release new devices, and adapt existing ones, […]
The pandemic, and especially the fears whipped up by states and the media, may be pushing society toward greater submission to the world’s powers.
Across the globe, the coronavirus crisis has forced people to change not only the ways they work and interact with each other, but also how they travel. And in several countries, one of the unexpected consequences of all this has been a renewed interest in transportation of the pedal-powered, two-wheeled variety. In some places — […]
PARIS — There’s a price to be paid, in euros and other things, when you choose to live in a city like Paris. But there’s a reason people pay: There’s only one Louvre, one Opera Garnier and exactly 114 Michelin-star restaurants. And even if you don’t have tickets, or the euros, to make it through […]
Advertising has us convinced that cheap meat is something we can’t live without. But the meat industry is based on exploiting both people and animals.
A mix of love and hate mirrors their own feelings about Beijing.
When we think of modern urban planning, it tends to be focused on improving efficiency in where we live and work, and how we move from place to place. But it should also be about keeping us healthy. The concept is neither a knee-jerk reaction to COVID-19 nor some nod to corporate social responsibility and […]
Welcome to Friday, where an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire is holding, we find out what Obama really thinks of Trump and cows help Thailand’s vaccination drive. Also, Les Echos takes an inside visit to the remote “mines’ turning out bitcoin cryptocurrency in China. • Israel-Gaza ceasefire holding: An Egyptian-mediated truce between Israel and Hamas began late Friday […]
After Italy, Spain was one of the first countries in Europe to feel the full, crushing weight of the coronavirus pandemic, and is currently approaching 30,000 deaths. Now, as governments around the continent lift their lockdown restrictions, Spain has also become a reference point for its stringent policy on the use of face masks: starting […]
A reflection from Egypt, where a culture of warmth and feeling is suddenly shut down.
With people returning to work, there’s the question of how to get there. Many cities around the world are encouraging biking, walking and other private transportation methods to avoid clogging public transit systems that could be cesspools for the coronavirus as lockdowns ease. But for those without other options, taking trains, subways and buses will […]
To call it a “side effect” of the pandemic would miss the point entirely. Beyond the devastating health impacts of coronavirus on those infected is the impact the crisis is having on research and treatment for other diseases. Nobody can argue with the massive public attention and funds focused on coronavirus, considered the worst worldwide […]
Welcome to Thursday, where fighting continues in Gaza despite Hamas’s moves toward a ceasefire, there’s good news on Alexei Navalny’s health, and a young French driver sets a new kind of speed record. Clarin also looks at the Brazilian Left’s refusal to recognize its own failures and how that might allow Bolsonaro to win a […]
President López Obrador has failed spectacularly to manage the pandemic and its economic repercussions.
When Lesotho recently discovered its first coronavirus case, it marked the arrival of the pandemic in every country in Africa. Already, 70,000 people have been infected across the continent and the World Health Organisation warns of upwards of 190,000 deaths in Africa this year from COVID-19. The economic impacts are also forecast to be devastating: […]
There’s a whole lot of money and prestige at stake as researchers across the globe scramble to develop a vaccine. Does this help or hurt the cause?
PARIS — The surprise announcement of a massive pact between France and Germany to lead Europe’s response to the COVID-19 crisis marks a historic agreement, writes of Paris-based daily Les Echos. Germany’s decision to accept the principle of a common debt for European countries, signals the birth of a new union of solidarity, which is […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where the fighting in Gaza intensifies despite international calls for ceasefire, COVID deaths hit a new record in India and a flooded Italian village resurfaces. Le Monde“s correspondent Louis Imbert reports from the West Bank where more and more young supporters of the ruling Fatah party are joining the clashes with Israeli […]
Large cities like Buenos Aires are prepping for life after the lockdown and anticipating changes, among other things, in the ways people commute.
Taiwan’s success in containing the coronavirus is certainly cause for celebration, and to really emphasize the point, farmers in one agricultural region decided this week that it’s high time to break out the… watermelons? After a string of six straight days with no new confirmed coronavirus cases, a group of farmers in Changhua, in central […]
Preventing an epidemic like the coronavirus doesn’t just require a robust human healthcare system, it also demands a full rethinking of our relationship with the animal kingdom. Just a few examples of what we need: a crackdown on the illicit “wet markets“” trade of exotic animals, where the virus may have originated; veterinary medicine needs […]