Worldcrunch
CONSTANTINE — Algeria’s third-largest city has been shaken after May 1 worker demonstrations, included one man setting himself on fire in front of the Constantine governor’s office to protest rampant unemployment. The Algiers-based daily El Watan reports that the man, indentified as Hamza, was participating in a demonstration organized by the National Committee for the […]
WHAT A MUSLIM MAYOR COULD MEAN FOR LONDON It’s Super Thursday in the UK, with voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland choosing their next parliaments. But it’s the British capital, which is set to replace maverick Boris Johnson as mayor, that has eyeballs from around the world. Frontrunner Sadiq Khan, if elected, would be […]
Milliyet, May 5, 2016 Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu looks set to be replaced, after months of growing tension with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Davutoglu, who is head of the governing AKP, met Erdogan on Wednesday night, in a move that fueled reports that the power struggle between the two men had reached its apex. […]
In Tunisia’s capital, colorful Bardo guards kept a watchful eye on the Lion Staircase, one of the entrances leading to the parliament building inside the Bardo Palace.
TRUMP TRIUMPHS, CRUZ QUITS The improbable and, in the view of some prominent Republicans, unacceptable, has come to pass: It will be Trump. The Washington Post reports that short of some unforeseen twist, the controversial real estate tycoon Donald Trump will become the GOP’s presidential nominee after a landslide victory in Indiana yesterday pushed his […]
The entire population of the western Canadian city of Fort McMurray has been ordered to leave because of massive wildfires sparked by record high heat. Abnormally warm and dry weather — with temperatures hitting 90.6 °F (32 °C) Tuesday — in Fort McMurray is fuelling the fire, whose origin is as of yet unknown. About […]
The Georgi Dimitrov mausoleum in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, was built in 1949 to contain the embalmed body of the country’s first communist leader. After the fall of the USSR, some members of the government started thinking the monument was an embarrassing nod to Bulgaria’s totalitarian past, and in 1999, they decided to blow […]
ENGLISH SOCCER FAIRYTALE COMES TRUE Photo: Tolga Akmen/London News Pictures/ZUMA They were a 5,000-1 longshot to win England’s Premier League at the start of the season, but the fairytale came true last night as Leicester City FC clinched the title when Chelsea and Tottenham drew, making it impossible for the latter to overtake Leicester, with […]
Leicester Mercury — May 3, 2016 They were a 5,000-1 longshot to win England’s Premier League at the start of the season, but the fairytale came true last night as Leicester City FC clinched the title when Chelsea and Tottenham drew, making it impossible for the latter to overtake Leicester with two games left. The […]
The Scottish island of Staffa, with its other-wordly basalt pillars similar to the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, unites two of my interests: German classical music composer Felix Mendelssohn composed an overture, inspired by the cathedral-like echoes of the island’s Fingal’s Cave; and the place is also mentioned in the adventure novels of French writer […]
MUMBAI — In the western state of Maharashtra, dozens of men, women and children surround a water tanker on the main road. They hold pitchers, buckets and other containers, and are trying to fill as many as they can. Renuka, 35, pushes her way to the top of the tanker and is able to fill her five pitchers. “I waited 15 days to get this much water. But how long will it last?” she says. “We haven’t had tap water for the last two years. Our ponds and wells have dried up. There’s no water at all.” Manohar was less […]
MAY DAY PROTESTS TURN VIOLENT Photo: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters/ZUMA While the United States reserves Labor Day for early September, the rest of the world marks International Workers’ Day on May 1, which was actually originally established in the U.S. to mark the 1886 Haymarket affair. Take it as a sign that the world is growing both […]
Granma, May 2, 2016 While violent clashes marred May Day celebrations across several countries, the official Cuban Communist Pary Granma instead praised “the strength of a people” on the front page of its Monday edition. The Havana-based daily described the International Workers’ Day marches, pictured on the front page, as the “unwavering support of our […]
Democracy flourishing in the tiniest hamlets deep in the Brazilian rainforest, as a city council campaign takes root in the northern state of Pará.
When in Rome, on a particularly hot day, do as the Romans do: Leave town, head for the nearby Villa d’Este and walk behind the water of the Fontana dell’Ovato.
CHINA AND RUSSIA TO U.S.: CAREFUL ON KOREA In a joint press brief today, China and Russia urged the U.S. not to put a new missile defense system on the Korean peninsula in response to recent North Korean muscle-flexing and weapons testing, Reuters reports. The U.S. and South Korea had opened talks on expanding defense […]
SYRIA SLIDING BACK TO OPEN WAR Few had dared to consider the five-year-long conflict in Syria over. Yet for the past two months a fragile truce among some, though not all, the warring sides had offered a bit of hope that peace might not be too far off. Casualties were down, diplomats were talking, life […]
Kathimerini, April 28, 2016 “Greece hands the Olympic torch to Rio,” writes Athens-based daily Kathimerini on its front page Thursday, featuring a picture of Wednesday’s handover ceremony in Athens. To mark 100 days before the start of the 2016 Olympic Games due to take place in Rio de Janeiro from Aug. 5 to 21, thousands […]
At the markets of Peć, in western Kosovo, there was no real way for me to tell whether I was in the 19th or 20th century.
ABDESLAM EXTRADITED TO FRANCE Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the terrorist group that carried out the Paris attacks last November in which 130 people were killed, was extradited this morning from Belgium to France. He will be tried by French courts for participation in terrorist murder and the activities of a terrorist organization, […]
Venezuelan public workers woke up Wednesday to newspaper headlines that told them to stay home. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced in a televised address Tuesday that the government is slashing additional working hours for the country’s 2.8 million public workers in a bid to save energy, reducing the working week from four to two days. […]
On our first trip to Norway (driving from France in our Peugeot 203), we stopped for a moment in Oslo before making our way to the country’s inland regions. You can see the capital’s new two-towered City Hall, which had been completed 10 years earlier. Three decades later, in 1990, it would become the site […]
Twenty young couples in southeastern Hangzhou recently decided to get hitched without a stitch, wearing only leaves and flowers in rejection of the materialistic concerns frequently associated with marriage in China, Hong-Kong-based Oriental Daily News reports. This was the second year that the Songcheng Anthomaniac Festival organized such a collective wedding ceremony in Hangzhou. Couples […]
REMEMBERING CHERNOBYL Photo: Celestino Arce/ZUMA Memorial services are scheduled across Ukraine today, as the country commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that killed dozens and shot deadly clouds of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. CANADIAN JOURNALIST BEHEADED IN THE PHILIPPINES Government officials have confirmed the death of kidnapped Canadian journalist John Ridsdel […]
On the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Kiev-based daily Den remembers “the red button that changed the world” on its front page, featuring a picture of Chernobyl’s “trumpeting angel” memorial. The Ukrainian-language newspaper tells the story of the April 26, 1986, nuclear catastrophe, one of the worst in history, and the fateful chain […]
It’s easy to be lulled into a sense of calm by the Canadian Rockies’ peaceful lakes and beautiful landscapes — and to forget that they’re also home to deadly grizzly and black bears. I was kindly reminded of their presence, in both English and French.
TEHRAN — The Iranian capital used to boast 1,400 public baths, which the daily Shargh observes were among its “main public spaces,” an integral part of Iran’s social culture and an efficient way of facilitating hygiene for the masses. Yet today, just 10% of the baths remain, in spite of the needs of thousands of […]