WorldcrunchUSA Today, May 20, 2015 USA Today dedicated most of its front page to David Letterman and the last episode of his Late Show slated for Wednesday night. Having hosted talk shows on NBC and CBS for more than 30 years, the affably sarcastic Indiana native has decided to retire. To honor Letterman, USA Today […]
With the choir of traditional folk singing I was part of, we went to many national — and international — gatherings of groups of singers and dancers who were trying to preserve their local cultural heritage. I took this picture of these two Cannettes with my very first camera, an Exacta Varex.
Spain’s contestant this year, 29-year-old Edurne, said that taking part in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest was the most important project of her career — and honestly, we don’t know whether that makes us happy or sad for her. The lyrics (in Spanish, bonus points) to her song “Amanecer” are about that emotional instant before […]
25,500 FLEE ISIS-OCCUPIED RAMADI At least 25,000 people have fled Ramadi, Iraq, after ISIS fighters captured it from government forces after fierce clashes Sunday that killed at least 500 people, the UN reports. EXTRA! “I won’t be Charlie Hebdo anymore, but I will still be Charlie,” the cover headline in today’s Libération reads, quoting Charlie […]
On the Saintes archipelago in the Lesser Antilles live the green iguana (which appears on the coat of arms of the Terre-de-Haut municipality) and the local Iguana delicatissima. Everything was going just fine until the two started to mingle, giving birth to a hybrid iguana threatening both species.
Libération, May 19, 2015 “I won’t be Charlie Hebdo anymore, but I will still be Charlie,” the cover headline in Tuesday’s Libération reads, quoting Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Luz, who has decided to leave the staff. Libération has hosted Charlie Hebdo since the January terror attacks that targeted the weekly, killing 12 of its employees. In […]
ISIS TAKES IRAQ TOWN OF RAMADI ISIS is gaining ground again in Iraq, capturing the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. It’s a heavy blow to the Iraqi government and any hopes of rooting out the terrorist group. Shia militias, who already played an important part in retaking the city of Tikrit two months ago, […]
The New Moon suggests that life could flow much better for you if you learn a new way of communicating and become more open to dialogue, as well as listen to others. Those born under your sign tend to be natural leaders, but right now it is essential for you to listen to advice from […]
“What’s with the headphones?” you might ask, as the video almost seems to be a Beats by Dre commercial. Apparently, Marjetka and Raay — known as Maraaya — chose this accessory as their trademark because, you know, they’re cool with the younger generation. Though the headphones have nothing to do with the song , “Here […]
With its somber beauty, the Scottish village of John o” Groats, is the end of the road when traveling to the extreme northeast of Great Britain. It is the start or finish of the UK’s longest “coast-to-coast,” with Land’s End in southwestern England exactly 876 miles (1,410 kilometers) away.
This monkey, which looks like it was scrawled on a cave wall, is actually a 300-foot-long geoglyph of unknown origin, seen from a plane in Peru’s Nazca Desert.
When it first participated in the Eurovision Song Contest as an independent country — and not part of Yugoslavia or with Montenegro as it used to — in 2007, Serbia actually won, for the first time. Fairly promising for the future. But since then, the country has unfortunately not managed to repeat the performance, finishing […]
MIGRANT CRISIS WORSENS IN SE ASIA “Out at sea with nowhere to go,” reads today’s front-page headline in Malaysian daily The Star, alongside a photo of Rohingya migrants, a persecuted minority, waiting on a boat adrift off the coast of Thailand. According to the UN, about 6,000 refugees fleeing Myanmar (also known as Burma) and […]
“Out at sea with nowhere to go,” reads the Friday front-page headline in Malaysian daily The Star, alongside a photo of Rohingya migrants waiting on a boat adrift off the coast of Thailand. According to the UN, about 6,000 refugees fleeing Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Bangladesh are stranded at sea, a budding humanitarian […]
The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, as its official name goes, is not exactly the most serene Eurovision contestant there is. Having failed to qualify in its first four attempts, the landlocked microstate reached the Eurovision final for the first time in 2014, where it finished 24th — out of 26 contestants. This year’s […]
CONFUSION AND FIGHTING IN BURUNDI Violent broke out this morning in the Burundi capital of Bujumbura between soldiers loyal to President Pierre Nkurunziza and forces who claimed to have staged a coup. The situation is very uncertain in the capital, as reports suggest the attempted coup is still ongoing, RFI reports. EXTRA! PRINCE CHARLES’ MEMOS […]
The Times, May 14, 2015 After a 10-year legal battle, the contents of 27 secret letters written by Prince Charles to British ministers were published Tuesday, revealing the extent of the prince’s attempts to influence the government. On the front page of its Thursday edition, The Times ran a picture of the Prince of Wales […]
I took maybe one my favorite series of photos in the villages of western India’s Rajasthan. The colors and contrasts of everyday life in this poor but lively area made for some strong human portraits.
Despite having a Facebook page against its participation in Eurovision, and also having been copiously booed during last year’s event, Russia still went on and decided to participate in this year’s edition. Our guess is the audience really didn’t like the song, we don’t see any other reason. But still, how impolite and mean, even […]
Certain buildings in Mariánské Lázne still retain some of their Bohemian grandeur, from when the spa town then known as Marienbad was a favorite destination among the European elite early in the 20th century. But by the time we got there at century’s end, a few years after the birth the Czech Republic, that golden […]
RESCUE OPS RESUME AFTER SECOND NEPAL QUAKE EPISODE Rescue teams have resumed their quest to find survivors in devastated Nepal, after yesterday’s 7.3-magnitude earthquake. It came less than three weeks after an even more violent one that destroyed part of the impoverished country and killed more than 8,000 people, AFP reports. Reports say at least […]
Libération, May 13, 2015 “Let the party begin!” The 68th Cannes Film Festival kicks off today and it looks like it’s going to be a hard one to choose from for jury co-presidents, American filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. In its cover story, French daily Libération notes with a splash of irony that there […]
Romania chose none other than its biggest pop-rock band, Voltaj, to represent the country at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The group has been one of the most popular acts in Romania for the past 20 years and their fans all across Europe will undoubtedly vote for them on the big night. Well played, Romania. […]
ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE HITS NEPAL A 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Nepal, near Mount Everest, today, two weeks after the devastating quake killed at least 8,000 in the Himalayan nation. EXTRA! French President François Hollande became the first top Western leader to visit Cuba since the island nation moved to reestablish relations with the United States late […]
Back in 1965, you could still leave your car in the holiest of all parking lots, next to Bernini’s fountain on St. Peter’s Square.
Granma, May 12, 2015 French President François Hollande became the first top Western leader to visit Cuba since the island nation moved to reestablish relations with the United States late last year. Hollande spent Monday in Cuba, conducting talks with President Raúl Castro, as well as meeting his older brother and leader of the revolution, […]
Portugal’s Eurovision history is a sad one. In 47 appearances since its debut in the contest in 1964 and only four absences (once for boycott, once for poor results, once for financial reasons and once because it just didn’t feel like it), the country has never won or even finished in the top 5. A […]
CONFLICT INTENSIFIES AHEAD OF YEMEN TRUCE The Saudi-led airstrike campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen intensified over the weekend, hours before the beginning of a negotiated five-day ceasefire that will allow humanitarian aid to reach civilians. The Houthis said this morning they had downed a Moroccan fighter jet taking part in the strikes campaign, website […]
Authorities in Macedonia have accused ethnic Albanians from Kosovo of planning violent unrest in the country after a Saturday police raid against an armed group early left 14 militants and eight police officers dead, the BBC reports. Officials said that the group had been “neutralized” and a massive weapons cache seized. Because of the region’s […]
There’s a place where children are as tall as houses, and where it takes about 10 steps to walk across an entire city, like Amsterdam … This place is Legoland, in Billund, Denmark.
The first half of this week will be spent in a bubble of reflection and waiting, with some possible economic concerns. The next steps at work may appear uncertain and cloudy, though everything starts again quickly from the middle of the week — at the urging of Mars, in favor again. In love, a spiteful […]
FORÉCARIAH — Assény Touré’s tightly drawn features bear testament to his harrowing ordeal. In December, after he was diagnosed with Ebola, this taciturn 30-year-old was chased out of the village where he was born, Béta, an hour-drive away from Forécariah, in western Guinea. The virus killed 19 members of his family. He survived. And yet […]
To this day, Poland has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 17 times, achieving its best result with a second place on the year it first participated, in 1994. About this year’s entry — the Bonnie-Tyleresque ballad “In The Name Of Love” — singer Monika Kuszynska said: “This year’s Eurovision Song Contest’s motto is Building […]
UK GIVES CAMERON FIVE MORE YEARS What all British pollsters foresaw as the tightest election in decades turned out to be a night of triumph for incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party and a stinging defeat for the Labour opposition. The BBC projections of 329 Conservative seats in the new House of […]
I have a pretty decent wine cellar back home. It’s underground, so there’s no light and the temperature is constant. It’s just a little bit too humid, meaning that I sometimes have a hard time deciphering the labels. So who knows, I may still have a bottle from that time I went to the town […]
This might be one of the weirdest entries of the Eurovision Song Contest this year. For the first minute or so, Morland and Debrah Scarlett’s “A Monster Like Me” sounds a lot like a murder confession. Actual lyrics: “Honey, I’m telling the truth / I did something terrible in my early youth.” Right. In the […]
THE UK VOTES Britons are voting today in what The Guardian describes as the United Kingdom’s most unpredictable general elections in decades, as Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party and opponent Ed Miliband’s Labour Party remained even in the latest opinion polls, which has been the case for months. Neither party is expected to win […]
La Tercera, May 7, 2015 Hoping to hit the reset button on her slumping presidency, Chile’s Michelle Bachelet has decided to dump not just one or two ministers, but her entire cabinet. Bachelet made the stunning announcement during a Wednesday evening television interview, saying she “requested the resignation of all the ministers” and will take […]
This is the church where El Greco was baptized. The Spanish Renaissance painter, whose real name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos, was actually born in Crete — hence his nickname, “The Greek.”
Nenad Knezevic Knez, a.k.a. Knez, is one of Montenegro’s most popular artists. He started his career in 1992 and has produced 10 successful albums. This year, the 47-year-old singer will represent his country at the Eurovision song contest with the song “Adio.” For those who don’t understand Montenegrin, this ballad is about a relationship that […]