Worldcrunch
INVESTIGATORS SAY ALPS CRASH WAS DELIBERATEThe co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed into the French Alps Monday, killing all 150 people on board, took sole control of plane and intentionally started the descent, officials say. He has been identified as 28-year-old German national Andreas Lubitz. The New York Times reports that voice recordings from […]
That shade of blue you often find on the Greek island of Santorini was also perfect for this donkey’s saddle. “The Donkey That Wanted To Be A Chameleon” would make a great fable by Jean de La Fontaine, wouldn’t it?
El Mercurio De Antofagasta, March 26, 2015 Northern Chile was plunged into chaos yesterday as the worst rains in 24 years hit the regions of Antofagsta, Coquimbo and Atacama, typically one of the world’s driest areas. The Antofagasta edition of Chilean newspaper group El Mercurio reports that thousands of people have been affected by the […]
BLACK BOX EXAMINED AFTER GERMANWINGS CRASH Photo: Maxppp/ZUMAA search and recovery operation continues in the French Alps, as investigators have started examining the black box of the Germanwings flight travelling from Barcelona to Düsseldorf that crashed yesterday with 150 people on board. French officials told reporters that the first findings from the recording devices would […]
“Nothing but debris and bodies” reads French daily Libération“s front page, conveying the state of shock and disbelief around Europe the day after an Airbus A320 carrying 150 people crashed in the southern French Alps. According to Alain Vidalies, France’s junior minister of transport, there were no survivors from the crash of flight 4U9525. Search […]
These Dutch klompen in Volendam bring back a precise chidhood memory: In 1940, when I was about the age of the boy on the left of the picture, I fled from my hometown in zone occupée to the village of Lacrost in the region of Bourgogne — then in zone libre … and I had […]
BOGOTA — Researchers at Colombia’s Universidad del Valle recently discovered a new species of orchid as part of their investigation into how global warming affects the plant. But unfortunately, their research across the country also revealed that at least three species of local orchids registered during the 19th century are now extinct. The new orchid […]
“NO SURVIVORS” EXPECTED IN ALPS PLANE CRASHPhoto: A Germanwings Airbus A320 — Xinhua/ZUMAAn Airbus A320 carrying 150 people crashed in the southern French Alps near the town of Digne this morning, and French President François Hollande has said officials expect no survivors in what represents the first crash of a low-budget airline in Europe. VERBATIM“It […]
I Kathimerini, March 24, 2015 Alexis Tsipras and Angela Merkel look like they were having a hard time understanding each other on Tuesday’s front page of Greek daily I Kathimerini. The German chancellor was welcoming the Greek prime minister in Berlin — his first visit to Germany since taking office in January — as Tsipras […]
The mighty Danube divides Buda and Pest, the two cities that were unified in 1873 to form the Hungarian capital. The 19th century Széchenyi chain suspension bridge was the first permanent bridge across the river, becoming a national symbol of this linkage between East and West.
Today Worldcrunch celebrates his Hit It! curator and nonchalant rock star Patrick making yet another successful trip around the sun. Surely, this calls for an Italian new wave/gothic rock/post-punk band, right?
MERKEL MEETS TSIPRAS IN BERLINGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel is meeting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Berlin today, starting a week that Bloomberg characterizes as “decisive for Greece’s future in the euro area.” According to the Financial Times, Tsipras told Merkel in a letter last week that without the European Union’s continued support, it would […]
The cover of this week’s issue of the German weekly Der Spiegel shows a smiling Angela Merkel spliced into a photograph of Nazi officers standing by Athens’ Parthenon during the German World War II occupation of Greece. Along with the headline, “How Europeans see Germans — the German Supremacy,” the controversial cover was published two […]
I could have run into famous French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in the steep streets of Bonifacio. In 1969, the same year I went there for the first time, the master took a series of black-and-white pictures of Corsica.
Searching for new emotional and professional stability continues to be your mission. This week will be decisive for some to lay the foundations for a future project. It’s about choices, but also amazing opportunities that confirm a positive trend. A resolution to a dispute is just around the corner, especially one that concerns family, money […]
Blur have made another track of their upcoming album available. “There Are Too Many of Us” will feature on The Magic Whip, set to be released on April 27 and their first album since Think Tank, in 2003.
YEMEN MOSQUES ATTACKEDTwo suicide bombers attacked two separate mosques in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa during Friday prayers, killing at least 35 worshipers and wounding dozens more, according to early reports from Al-Arabiya. This story is developing. U.S. “RETHINKS” ISRAELI APPROACHU.S. President Barack Obama called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday to congratulate him on Tuesday’s […]
Not much to do in Kathmandu? On the doorstep of a Hindu temple, these Nepalese men seemed on the verge of following the dog’s example.
As the video below puts it perfectly, “Jackson 5 and Bach were funky way before Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk”,” we’d say even funkier, by far.
In New Orleans, we were granted access to a warehouse where they keep the papier-mâché heads of the famous figures destined for the Mardi Gras floats. Granted, Reagan is pretty well done. We were stumped on the one in the middle; as for the one on the right, if we had been in France, I […]
TUNISIA DECLARES WAR ON TERRORISMPhoto: Adel/Xinhua/ZUMATunisia is in a state of shock today after the terror attack on the National Bardo Museum in the capital yesterday left 19 people dead and 44 wounded, most of them foreign tourists. In Paris-based Libération, Algerian writer Kamel Daoud says that yesterday’s “sniper attack” targeted the “true heart of […]
The Sidobre mountainous forest in central France, studded with massive, weirdly shaped rocks, is unique in Europe. And though, contrary to Stonehenge’s standing stones or Brittany’s menhirs, man had nothing to do with these geological formations, the place has also inspired many legends and tales — and allowed my daughter Cécile to pretend she was […]
NETANYAHU WINSExit polls had them neck-and-neck yesterday evening but in the end, Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party secured a solid victory ahead of the centrist Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog. Likud came in with an expected 30 Knesset seats ahead of 24 for the Zionist Union. With pre-voting polls suggesting a defeat of the […]
Like most Israeli dailies, the Wednesday edition of Haaretz went to print too early to call Tuesday’s election results, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was declaring victory. The 65-year-old is indeed heading to a fourth term as his Likud party defied final polls that had showed him trailing the centrist Zionist Union party led […]
Our Song du Jour is these goats giving it all they’ve got to Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer.”
ISRAEL VOTESPhoto: Omer Messinger/ZUMAMillions of Israelis are voting today to elect a new parliament and potentially a new prime minister in a tightly fought election that has become a referendum on incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu, who is running for a fourth term. Late polls show center-left opponent Isaac Herzog, leader of the Zionist Union, with a […]
Die Tageszeitung, March 17, 2015 Things are heating up between Germany and Greece, again. The news Monday that Germany’s DAX index reached an all-time high — even as cash-strapped Athens is trying to scrape enough money to make a $2 billion debt payment on Friday — prompted the Berlin-based daily Tageszeitung to give Greece’s radical-left […]
The valleys of south Ecuador are lush, and the Andean foothills impressive. But 22 years ago, it was better to look up, not down because the amount of plastic waste along the roads was simply astonishing.
The New York jazz singer Robyn Adele Anderson gives us an idea of what Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” might have sounded like if he had written it in the 1920s.
CYCLONE LEAVES 150,000 HOMELESS Photo: Luo Xiangfeng/Xinhua/ZUMAA tearful Vanuatu President Baldwin Lonsdale urged the world to send humanitarian help immediately to the South Pacific archipelago after cyclone Pam devastated the country over the weekend. “The humanitarian need is immediate,,” he said. According to aid agencies, up to 150,000 people could be left homeless in the […]
Those who have gone along with the flow of change, as suggested by the stars in recent weeks, have nothing to fear. For those who still don’t see reality for what it is better put their armor on. The need to make a correction is increasingly evident. Security of a new job and affections are […]
A nationwide protest against left-wing Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff drew at least 1.5 million people across 147 cities in the country Sunday. Shouting “Fora, Dilma!” (“Dilma out!”) and dressed in the national flag’s colors of blue, green and yellow, the protestors marched against the deteriorating state of Brazil’s economy, inflation and corruption, the daily Folha […]
When we first visited Tunisia, the tourism industry was just starting to take off in the country, although most of the economy still relied on farming. Here in the oasis of Tozeur, it was the harvest of dates.
The French great-nephew of the Hungarian-born inventor of the ballpoint pen is writing his own chapter in innovation with a design of a super-light electric car that is turning heads.
“I am just like Stalin,” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said. Today’s Mexican daily La Razon featured the shockingly proud comparison to the Soviet dictator, which the Venezuelan president made during a visit to the Caracas Book Fair on Thursday. “And here they have a copy of Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend,” Maduro […]
The American MC KRS-One gathered 14 rappers from 14 different countries (South Korea, Italy, Bosnia, Singapore, India, Portugal, Wales, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Japan, Egypt, Taiwan, Finland and the U.S.) to record this amazing track. The goal is to unite the world under the love for hip hop, as “We are the World” aimed to 30 years […]
In the barren Hungarian puszta, livestock dehorning is out of the question — unlike in my native France, for instance. That’s lucky for the Hungarian Grey cattle, with their long slender horns.
TIKRIT SIEGE TIGHTENS Iraqi armed forces and Shia militias were surrounding ISIS fighters inside the city of Tikrit yesterday with Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi confident that victory over the terrorist group was only a matter of time. “Time is on our side. We have the initiative,” AFP quoted him as saying. Since the operation started […]
Three years after Lonerism, the Australian psychedelic band are seemingly set to release their third album this year. They revealed a first new track this week, “Let It Happen.”
U.S. SENDS WEAPONS TO UKRAINEThe United States will send more “non-lethal” military equipment to Ukrainian forces, including Humvees, drones and night-vision goggles, $75 million worth, a senior administration official said yesterday. Washington also extended its sanctions on Russia by adding a bank and eight Ukrainian rebels to the list of targets, Reuters reports. The decisions […]