Worldcrunch
COP21 WRAPS UP, TALKS CONTINUE The COP21 climate change conference in Paris will close later today without a deal, though French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said negotiations would continue into the weekend and that a final agreement would probably be adopted tomorrow, Le Monde reports. After almost two weeks of intense talks, a few roadblocks […]
La Capital, Dec. 11, 2015 “I want to be the president of a united Argentina,” Argentina’s oldest daily La Capital quotes the country’s new leader Mauricio Macri as saying on its front page Friday, a day after he was sworn in as president. Predecessor Cristina Fernández de Kirchner boycotted Macri’s inauguration after a bitter dispute […]
Looks can be deceiving: These Hindu women in northern India’s Rajasthan region were not carrying flowers on their head (the flowers were actually in the background) but rather heavy concrete blocks for construction.
Government transparency is considered something of a Scandinavian specialty. And Taiwan? After having ranked 36th in 2013 and 11th last year, the Asian island nation has shot to the top of this year’s Global Open Data Index, the China Times reports. It is the first time a non-European country has topped the annual ranking from […]
TALIBAN AIRPORT SIEGE FINALLY ENDS Afghan forces have broken the Taliban siege on the Kandahar airport more than 24 hours after the attack began, AP quotes the country’s Defense Ministry as saying. The assailants killed at least 50 people, among them 38 civilians, 10 Afghan soldiers and two police officers. The 11 gunmen who carried […]
As Canada is getting ready to receive the first charter flight of the 25,000 Syrian refugees it has pledged to resettle by the end of February, Canadian daily the Toronto Star has chosen to greet them with a warm “Welcome to Canada” — subtitled in Arabic — on the front page of its Thursday edition. […]
The elk-antler sculpture that arches across Highway 89 in Afton, Wyoming is the largest in the world. Are there others? An impressive 15-ton agglomeration of more than 3,000 antlers, it looked quite solid to me. My wife, however, decided it was safer to stand under the little arch next to it.
PARIS — With 20 to 25 burials a day on average, the iconic Père Lachaise Cemetery is used to a steady pace of funerals — but these ceremonies are different. On Monday, the largest cemetery in Paris was partially closed for two hours to allow 19 employees to meet with a psychologist about the trauma […]
FINAL BATACLAN ATTACKER IDENTIFIED The last of the three suicide attackers at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, where 90 people were killed on Nov. 13, has been identified as Foued Mohamed-Aggad, a 23-year-old man from Strasbourg, in eastern France, Le Parisien quotes French authorities as revealing Wednesday. TALIBAN KILL 22 IN AFGHAN AIRPORT, HOLD […]
The mural on the northern wall of Mexico City’s Central Library, on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico — the largest university in Latin America — is a sight to behold. The central section depicts the mythical founding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the former capital of the Mexican Empire, with an eagle eating a […]
La Tercera, Dec. 9, 2015 “Environmentalist entrepreneur Douglas Tompkins dies,” writes Santiago-based daily La Tercera on its front page Wednesday, after U.S. conservationist and North Face Inc. founder Douglas Tompkins died in a kayaking accident, in his adopted country of Chile. Tompkins, 72, was kayaking with five others on General Carrera Lake in far southern […]
SYRIA’S OPPOSITION GROUPS MEET IN RIYADH Syrian armed and political opposition groups are set to meet in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh today as part of a three-day conference aimed at finding a common position ahead of potential peace talks with President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Al Jazeera reports. VERBATIM “I am hereby barring Donald Trump […]
Tuesday’s cover of U.S. daily the Philadelphia Daily News shows a file photograph of Republican front-runner Donald Trump gesticulating with his hand in what happens to look that moment like a Nazi-like salute, together with the headline “The New Furor” — a pun with Führer, the German word for “leader” and Adolf Hitler’s infamous title. […]
In the fairy tale, the evil queen disguises herself as an old woman and tries to kill Snow White with a poisoned apple. What the story left out is that she then moved to Cyprus to sell jars of marmalade.
TAIPEI — The latest piece of ISIS propaganda is a four-minute Chinese-language song released over the weekend on the Islamic terror group’s official website Jihadology. Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) is reporting that the song, which first appeared Sunday, is entitled “We Are Mujahid” and features a vocal chorus in Chinese urging would-be jihadists to […]
El Universal, Dec. 7, 2015 CARACAS — Venezuelans congratulated themselves for what several officials described as an “exemplary” election, without violence or widespread accusations of fraud. The ballot Sunday saw the liberal opposition to President Nicolas Maduro took 99 of 167 parliamentary seats in a provisional vote count, with the ruling, socialist PSUV party winning […]
Libération, Dec. 7, 2015 “It’s getting closer,” warns French leftist daily Libération on its front page Monday, alongside a blurry picture of France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen, one day after her far-right party topped the vote in the first round of the country’s regional elections. France’s National Front became the country’s “first party,” […]
FRENCH FAR RIGHT SWEEP REGIONAL VOTE France’s National Front became the country’s “first party” Sunday, winning nearly 30% of the vote in the first round of regional elections held just three weeks after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks. The nationalist party finished first in six of France’s 13 regions, with party leader Marine Le Pen […]
We all know that the black-and-white coats of zebras act as camouflage. But it’s only after you’ve spent time on safari squinting to try and spot them that you really understand it.
Decades of governmental policies and societal mores have created a staggering gender imbalance in China. Thirty million restless males with no romantic prospects is a recipe for disaster.
CALIFORNIA SHOOTING MAY BE TERRORISM FBI officials investigating the Wednesday San Bernardino shooting that left 14 people dead and 21 wounded are probing a potential terrorist motive, though that connection has yet to be substantiated, the Los Angeles Times reports. Police officers told reporters that the level of planning and the arsenal used by killers […]
HONG KONG — Couples planning to walk down the aisle in Hong Kong better have some deep pockets. Even as consumer prices generally have dropped on the Chinese island, the average cost for a wedding is up to 314,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $40,000), according to the China Daily News. Retail sales in Hong Kong […]
“Justice at last” writes Johannesburg-based daily The Citizen, one day after Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was found guilty of murder as a South African appeals court overturned an earlier manslaughter verdict. Pistorius could now face a 15-year prison term, after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) overturned his earlier conviction of culpable homicide to murder […]
This Orthodox bishop in the Greek city of Patras was on his way to St Andrew’s Cathedral, the largest church in the country.
This picture of the 14th-century Valentré stone arch bridge in southwestern France (one of the oldest in the country) is one of the very first photographs I took with my Exakta Varex camera. Though the German Ihagee brand is now defunct, the slides held pretty well — and are now digitized for all eternity with […]
Police have identified a couple as the two shooters in the latest mass killing in the United States that left at least 14 people dead and 17 injured Wednesday, in the southern Californian city of San Bernardino. Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, who relatives later confirmed were married and were the parents […]
CALIFORNIA SHOOTING: 14 DEAD, COUPLE SUSPECTED Photo: David Bauman/Press-Enterprise/ZUMA Police have identified a couple in their late 20s as the two shooters in the latest mass killing in the United States that left at least 14 people dead and 17 injured Wednesday in the southern Californian city of San Bernardino. UK BEGINS SYRIA STRIKES Britain’s […]
The speaker of Brazil’s lowest house of Parliament, Eduardo Cunha, has initiated impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff. The political showdown between two leaders described as “arch enemies” was put in stark terms on the Thursday edition of Portuguese-language Brazilian daily Correio, which used the English word “Impeachment” on the front page. Rousseff is facing […]
UK TO VOTE ON SYRIA AIRSTRIKES Photo: Andrew Parsons/i-Images/ZUMA British Members of Parliament are set to vote on whether the United Kingdom will join the United States, France and Russia and several other countries in carrying out airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. The vote is expected late Wednesday after a long debate in the House […]
Clarin, Dec. 2, 2015 “Father, millionaire* and caring,” Argentine daily Clarin joins some North American dailies in giving ample space on the front page Wednesday to news that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced, in the form of an open letter to their newborn daughter Max, that they will donate 99% […]
For world leaders in Paris trying to reach a historic deal to protect the environment, it is worth looking at the Iranian city of Ahwaz. For at least three years, this city of 1.4 million has been hit each autumn with spells of polluted rain that have caused breathing difficulties for thousands of residents. Even […]