Worldcrunch
An unofficial market of “seat saving” is reportedly making waves in Saudi Arabia: female faithful are paying good money to women who can save them spots for prayer at the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca. The “seat savers” technique is to use clothing, purses, and even their own children to save seats […]
BEIRUT — Iran’s ambassador in Lebanon said he was confident the Islamic Republic would soon improve ties with longtime regional rival Saudi Arabia. Speaking at a Beirut conference to mark the 35th anniversary of Iran’s 1979 revolution, Ambassador Ghazanfar Roknabadi acknowledged that Iran’s calls for better ties had yet to receive “echoes” from Riyadh, but […]
The tiny estacion in Aguas Calientes was the closest you could get to the famous Machu Picchu site when you didn’t feel like walking the 80 kilometers from Cusco on the Camino Inca (the Inca Trail). With just a few trains per day, merchants would set up shop on the tracks, moving their wares temporarily […]
In Suo-Oshima, nearly half the residents are over the age of 65. Increasingly, the city’s destiny looks to be a sign of what’s to come across a Japan that is aging far too fast.
What’s that? Something happening over there? Welcome to Zoo’d – Worldcrunch’s brand new international blog about all things animal. Arf! Photo by amyfarrar via Instagram
Iran’s top atomic official says the country would not “retreat” over its nuclear technology and could reverse its commitments to suspend high-level uranium enrichment “within hours” if the West violated its own pledges, the official IRNA agency reported. Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, was speaking Monday to a gathering of Iranian […]
Pure happiness was radiating from this old man, whom we met during a trip in southern China. I don’t remember why he was so cheerful — but we learned a Chinese proverb somewhere in our travels: “If you are not a fish, how can you know if the fish are happy?”
CAIRO – From the popular upheaval of the Arab Spring to bloody wars to expanding global trade relations, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu faced no shortage of challenges in his 10 years at the helm of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that ended last month. On the most basic bureaucratic level, Ihsanoglu can point to the rebranding of […]
Nostalgia, illness and the pain of missing loved ones pushes some to try to ‘re-defect’ back to North Korea. But Seoul won’t allow it, and the risk of punishment upon their return is huge.
RIYADH – Amna Bawazeer, a student at an all-women’s university campus in Saudi Arabia, had lived and studied for years with a heart condition. But activists say that her death from a heart attack on campus Thursday was the fault of Saudi Arabia’s strict gender segregation laws. After Bawazeer collapsed suddenly while attending school, female […]
A popular street food in the mountainous regions of Ecuador is hornado — a slice of roasted pig usually served with potatoes. If that doesn’t make your mouth water, you can still settle for a bottle of Coke. We’ve found the ubiquitous brand even in the most remote corners of the world.
BIZERTE — Tunisia’s youth are posting videos on social networks of themselves dancing to Pharrell William’s song “Happy” as a kind of gleeful response to post-Arab spring tensions that the country still faces. The first video appeared in early January, and was approaching 200,000 views on YouTube. “We’re happy in spite of everything,” said Fairouz, […]
While northern Iran has been hit by record snowfall in recent days, snow has also covered for the first time in living memory, the district of Shahdad in southeastern Iran, which typically has desert conditions and scorching temperatures. The head of the Shahdad district, Mohammad Mo’meni, told Iran’s Mehr news agency snow began to fall […]
The Moroccan sun was strong on the market place in Larache, a small harbor on the Atlantic coast between Tangier and Rabat. Unfazed by the heat, this vendor was selling herbs, spices and … a giant turtle shell, whose scales he also used to make trinkets and jewels.
For those in the gay, lesbian and transgender community rejected by their own loved ones, a shelter in the Colombian capital offers comfort, but also practical support to build a new life.
A chic nightclub in the glittering, moneyed Gulf city of Dubai, has found itself in very hot water for allowing a monkey onto its premises. The concern? Animal abuse. Photos showed the monkey attached to a leash and wearing a t-shirt. One image showed the monkey being force-fed vodka. Dubai nightclub’s pet monkey causes major […]
With his rapprochement policy and chummy tweets in English, Iran’s Hassan Rouhani has carved out a rather pleasant public image since being elected president last year. But don’t tell that to his conservative critics in the Iranian parliament. Rouhani lashed out this week at critics of the Geneva accords as being “semiliterate,” the Farsi-language Prague-based […]
I took this picture during the first of our 11 trips to Greece. We had driven our Simca Aronde down through Italy, then onto the ferry that had just been inaugurated between the southern Italian port city of Brindisi and Igoumenitsa in Greece’s northwestern Epirus region. Then up to the mountains we drove: on narrow, […]
DELHI — The weather is cold and damp in Delhi, but the city’s chief minister has spent the night sleeping on the streets. Arvind Kejriwal’s head is wrapped in a grey scarf when he steps up to the microphone in the square behind the parliament building. He is surrounded by ministers and leading members of […]
The Yemeni television channel Azal has posted a bizarre video online of a young girl crying small, dark stones. With her condition labeled a medical mystery, 12-year-old Saadiya Saleh has been a source of unease for her village, where some wonder if she is possessed by the devil or ill with an unknown contagious disease.
Looking at the heirs of Latin America’s major business families, it is the best and worst of times – but it’s just about time for them to take charge.
The former presidential candidate Mehdi Karrubi, detained since backing anti-regime protests in 2009, has reportedly been released from detention and given house arrest, following months of speculation over whether or not Iran would free certain dissidents or political prisoners. The politician’s son Hossein Karrubi told the semi-official ISNA agency that “in security terms conditions have […]
When we went to Sri Lanka in 1992, conflict was raging between the country’s central government and the separatist Tamil Tigers, based in the north of the island. All our hotels were guarded by army soldiers, and there were tanks deployed in the parks of the capital Colombo. This monk looked to be prepared for […]
A few months back, it would have made front-page headlines around the world. Now, the encounter between Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, is largely being presented as “routine” diplomacy in Persian newspapers. Monday’s edition of reformist Aftab-e Yazd […]
Ten years had passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when we took a river cruise on the Volga … but in some places, there was no way of telling. This church, which had been abandoned under the Communist regime, remained unrepaired. The landscape of open pasture and haystacks brought back childhood memories of […]
A couple of hours after I took this picture, I shared a beer with an American G.I. stationed in Naples, not far from this narrow street in the old city center where laundry was drying in the summer heat. How do I remember that beer so clearly? The date was July 21, 1969 — and […]
In the Netherlands, a growing movement to lease clothing rather than piling up ever more cheaply-made, environmentally damaging jeans, shirts and sweaters.
The Rua Conde de Bobadella in the center of Ouro Preto, in Brazil’s southeastern Minas Gerais state, hasn’t changed much since we went there 20 years ago — as this photo, taken at almost the exact same angle, shows on Wikipedia … Can’t say the same about the cars!
Two revolutions, two months apart, that launched the Arab Spring. Three years later, the respective quests for democracy in Tunisia and Egypt are in very different places.
The building in the background is Copenhagen’s 17th century Borsen, the oldest stock exchange in Denmark. With its intriguing spire made of four dragon tails twined together, I wondered if Danish bankers appreciated the architect’s twisted sense of humor…
There seemed to be confusion among Iranian politicians about the Supreme Leader’s “real” position on Iran’s negotiations with the West on its nuclear program, the Persian language edition of Radio France Internationale is reporting, citing several Iranian press reports. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on Iran’s key domestic and […]
This is the greatest danger we faced when we drove from Ouargla to El Oued in southern Algeria: bumping into a wild camel…! By 1970, the anti-French sentiment left over from the Algerian War a decade earlier had largely faded away. But we were lucky to enjoy the calm then; as three years later, the […]
The unlikely story of a Bosnian refugee who stumbled into winning best actor honors at the Berlin Film Festival, yet still can’t feed his family.
It was just one snippet on the sidelines of the Davos summit, but President Hassan Rouhani’s comments to CNN last week are making news back home. Several Iranian news outlets have reported on Rouhani’s statement that “nobody remains in jail forever,” responding to a question about when several dissidents and political prisoners jailed in recent […]
In India’s sumptuous Mehrangarh Fort, in the western Rajasthan region, we watched two guards’ traditional turban-tying demonstration. Different styles and colors of head-gear used to be associated with specific Indian villages and communities — a custom that we could see was already beginning to fade two decades ago in many of the places we visited.
As talks between the Syrian regime and rebels continue in Switzerland, the “Iranian Question” isn’t going away. Though Tehran, which is a key supporter of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, was barred from attending the Geneva 2 talks for refusing several pre-conditions, it has made its voice heard from back home. Ali Akbar Velayati, a former […]
Change is afoot again in Tunisia, with a new constitution, a new technocratic government, and a Parliament in full celebration mode. Three years after triggering a wave of popular upheaval across North Africa and the Middle East, marked by decidely mixed results, Tunisia is again offering a snapshot of democratic hope. “Nothing can describe my […]
-OpEd- BOGOTA – Permit me to be direct and frank, but also practical. What do we see from the outside when we look at Europe? We see a Europe that is languishing, despondent, self-absorbed and self-satisfied, and to some extent both tired and apathetic. I know these are words that are both harsh and ugly, […]
Venice … Dove la terra gira intorno al mare, as they say there — “where the earth revolves around the sea.” En route to Greece, we drove from France in our Peugeot 404, which we had to leave outside the Venetian lagoon before taking a vaporetto, the local waterbus. It’s cheaper than renting a gondola […]
MUNICH – After soccer star Robert Enke took his own life in November 2009, public dismay at the news was considerable. At a memorial service in the Marktkirche church the next day, followed by a funeral march in Hannover attended by some 35,000 people, fans were out in force for the German national soccer team’s […]