Worldcrunch
Gstaad is home to one of the largest ski areas in the Alps. The breathtaking mountainous views — not to mention Switzerland“s advantageous fiscal regime — draw in the rich and famous from around the world.
BEIJING — News of North Korea’s most recent atomic test, which Pyongyang is claiming was its first detonation of a hydrogen bomb, has sparked new fears about the future. But there is a more immediate concern: Neighboring South Korea and China are increasingly worried that the underground nuclear tests could set off the dormant volcano […]
LIBYA POLICE SCHOOL BOMBED At least 65 people were killed this morning after a truck bomb exploded at a police training center in Zliten, Libya, the BBC reports. Reuters reports that hundreds of recruits were gathered at the center when the explosion occurred. Martin Kobler, the UN’s special representative to Libya, characterized the blast as […]
It was so hot on the shores of the Baltic sea that August that we had to look for shade everywhere we could, just like this street piper in Riga, Latvia.
L’Humanité, Jan. 7, 2016 “Always Charlie!” reads the Thursday front page of far-left French daily L’Humanité, as France marks the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Paris offices of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left 12 dead. Eight staff members were killed by two gunmen who’d pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda’s branch […]
NORTH KOREA CLAIMS FIRST H-BOMB TEST Photo: Yonhap News/ImageCollect/Newscom/ZUMA North Korea claimed Wednesday it had successfully conducted its first hydrogen-bomb test, with the regime’s official television network hailing the move as “a world-startling event to be specially recorded in the national history.” VERBATIM “We know we can’t stop every act of violence, every act of […]
Die Tageszeitung, Jan. 6 “The Outcry” is the front-page headline for German daily Die Tageszeitung on Wednesday, alongside a blurry picture of a group of men next to the Cologne Cathedral on New Year’s Eve, as a spate of alleged sexual assaults and robberies is fueling renewed debate over immigration in Germany. Hundreds of people, […]
The only thing missing from this picture of a Buddhist temple on the island city-state of Singapore is the intense scent of incense these worshippers were burning.
The National Rifle Association has worked itself up into such a bilious froth over modest gun control proposals that it has issued what looks like a death threat against New York lawmakers who support them. And New York’s Daily News called out the gun lobby on Tuesday’s cover, calling the threat an “Act of Terror.” […]
SAUDI ALLIES CUT TIES WITH IRAN Photo: Ahmad Halabisaz/Xinhua/ZUMA After Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait has also broken its diplomatic ties with Iran, recalling its ambassador from Tehran today, the BBC reports. The Mideast diplomatic crisis began after Saudi Arabia executed Shia Muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other […]
I took this photo from the window of the classroom in the early days of my career as a high school philosophy teacher in my hometown in eastern France. Back then, before traffic lights arrived in town, policemen with their white staffs were still in charge of keeping the traffic flowing.
MARCA, Jan. 5, 2015 “The soluZZion,” reads the front page of Madrid-based sports daily MARCA Tuesday, a day after Real Madrid announced that former French soccer star Zinedine Zidane would replace the unpopular Rafael Benítez as team coach. Zidane, 43, is new to the coaching game. A 1998 World Cup winner with France and a […]
SAUDI ARABIA CUTS DIPLOMACY WITH IRAN In a development that global leaders warn is particularly troublesome for the future of the Mideast, Saudi Arabia has cut diplomatic ties with Iran after its embassy in Tehran was attacked yesterday by Iranian protesters upset by the Saudi execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Iran is accusing […]
“One year later, the assassin is still on the run,” this week’s special edition of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo reads, as it depicts a fugitive, bloodstained God figure carrying a Kalashnikov. The special edition marks the Jan. 7 anniversary of the deadly terror attack on Charlie Hebdo“s newsroom in Paris. Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen […]
BašÄaršija square is one of the landmarks of Sarajevo’s old town, where everybody comes to sit around and talk and drink. But we tourists know it as “the Pigeon Square”.
I bet this city worker wished his “office” faced the other way, so he could gaze upon the citadel of Victoria, on Gozo, Malta“s second-largest island.
Dunrobin Castle in the Highlands of Scotland is one of the oldest inhabited houses in the country. This stately French Renaissance castle was used as a boarding school but opened to the public in 1973, just five years before we visited it.
NOV. 13 ATTACKS COORDINATED IN REAL TIME The three terrorist commandos that carried out the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, killing 130 people, were being coordinated in real time by at least one unknown man in Belgium, Le Monde reports. The three groups were in contact with the coordinator throughout the night using cell phones […]
In the northwest corner of the Portuguese island of Madeira, the contrast between the serene, warm lava pools and the ocean waves crashing in when the wind rises is simply stunning.
In Brazil, where you’re born not only affects how you live, but can also have an enormous impact on how long you’ll live. The results of the latest report from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, published in Folha de S. Paulo, show that life expectancy in the country of samba varies from what […]
BELGIUM ARRESTS TWO TERROR SUSPECTS Belgian police have arrested two suspected terrorists who were reportedly planning New Year’s Eve attacks on “symbolic targets” in Brussels, newspaper Le Soir reports. The arrests came Sunday and Monday after police raids in the provinces of Brabant and Liège. Police said they hadn’t found any weapons or explosives during […]
The geese in southwestern France would produce what may be the country’s most controversial, yet scrumptious, delicacy: foie gras.
IRAQI FORCES RECLAIM CENTRAL RAMADI An Iraqi military official said this morning that government forces had “fully liberated” Ramadi, which fell to ISIS last May in an embarrassing defeat. Government forces have been trying to retake the city, the capital of the Anbar province, for weeks. But another official was quick to say that while […]
This is Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow“s Red Square, where the communist leader’s embalmed body is on public display. I preferred taking pictures of the marble and granite tomb from the outside.
In 1969, nine years before I went there, Caernafon Castle in northwestern Wales was used for the investiture of Charles, Prince of Wales. It raised the profile of the medieval fortress, but its beauty was well worth visiting in its own right.