BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch MONTEVIDEO – Members of Uruguay’s House of Representatives passed a bill to legalize marijuana on Wednesday night. If it goes on to be approved by the Senate, Uruguay will become the first country to regulate the production, distribution and sale of marijuana. The measure is backed by the government of President […]
Category: Society
Grades reveal very little about human ability. That’s why the German Railway’s new application process downplays past academic performance.
India’s working poor include more than 5,000 men and women at one facility who wash and iron clothes by hand 14 hours a day, seven days a week, earning barely enough to survive.
BYDGOSZCZ – Five-year-old Dobrusia has been in the Pediatric Oncology Division at Jurasz Hospital in this northern Polish city for a week now. “We are still waiting for the diagnosis, so we are not sure what to expect,” says her mother. As she and her family anxiously anticipate her exam results, Dobrusia spends much of […]
BURZACO – Carrot leaves are poking through the soil, the lettuces are green and leafy, and the spring onions are standing tall: these vegetables are being nurured at secondary school No. 56 in Burzaco, 25 kilometers south of Buenos Aires. And as the vegetables have put down roots, classroom violence has been on a sharp […]
Young Israelis and Palestinians alike are getting caught by the wave of Korean pop music, television and attitudes. For some, it’s just good fun — for others, a much-needed escape.
Seven months after a student was brutally gang-raped and killed on a public bus in New Delhi, India has new legislation and an established women’s movement — but is it enough?
When the well-meaning environmental concerns of city folk clash with the lives of the poor and indigenous who inhabit South America’s rain forests and mining territory.
CHANGSHA – Is it a stroke of genius or a gigantic bluff? The Chinese conglomerate Broad Group announced on July 20 that it had started preliminary work on the construction of the “Sky City” tower near the central Chinese city of Changsha. This is a project with exceptional dimensions: with its 838 meters (2,750 ft.) […]
Here are the songs topping the charts from some music hot spots around the world. But first, here is our pick of the week, in memory of the Zimbabwe singer and mbira player, Chiwoniso Maraire, who died this week at age 37:
It should be “Casual Monday-Through Friday” all summer long — and not just for women. It might change everything at the office, odors and energy bills included.
It’s her eyes that are so arresting. Big brown eyes looking at the camera. Nada Al-Ahdal holds that serious, penetrating, almost unwavering look the whole time – just under three minutes – she addresses viewers. Nada is 11 years old. If her parents had had their way, she would be married by now — married […]
Brazil is filled with young people wrapped in the flags of their different countries — but mostly South American. Pope Francis meets his flock at the World Youth Day event.
The American Human Ressources company Mercer has published a study of the world’s most expensive cities to live in for foreign workers in 2012. The study is based on the comparison between the prices of 200 products or services in 214 cities around the world. Here are the top ten, some might surprise you….
Li Tianyi, son of a famous Chinese general, is currently being tried in a case of alleged gang rape along with four of his friends. Referring to this ongoing case, Yi Yanyou, a law professor at Tsinghua University, declared on his microblog account last week: “Even if it was rape, the harm of raping a […]
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Popular Zimbabwe Singer Dies At 37
THE HERALD, NEW ZIMBABWE (Zimbabwe) Worldcrunch CHITUNGWIZA – Chiwoniso Maraire, one of Zimbabwe’s most famous singers, died late Wednesday at the age of 37. Born in Olympia, U.S., in 1976, Chiwoniso shot to fame in the 1990s thanks to her distinctive voice and her playing the mbira — also known as sanza, kalimba or “thumb […]
A niggling feeling of doubt came over me. Had the school trip been educational? Was it even a school trip, i.e. was the presence of two teachers and a class of students any guarantee of learning? We had worked hard all year, I can tell you that much. We knew everything there was to know […]
BERLIN – It wouldn’t have to be a real monarchy. But a little royal glamor, just a taste of that feeling that we too had a special family with grand historic traditions: that would be nice. And how great it would be if we had something like a due date that stirred commotion nationwide, and […]
Royal baby madness has gripped both Britain and the world, with the birth of the first child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, aka Will and Kate. The healthy boy, third in line to the throne, was born late Monday afternoon, weighing in at 8 lbs., 6 oz. With photos of the little prince […]
Young people sign up for higher education solely for scholarship money, while officials turn a blind eye to those permanently absent from class. Is this a twisted way to buy social peace?
MODENA – A place like this — where milk costs one point and olive oil four points instead of nine euros, where you can buy food even if you don’t have the money to do so — seems possible only here, between the Torre della Ghirlandina (the bell tower of the Cathedral of Modena) and […]
IL MESSAGGERO (Italy), BBC Worldcrunch RIO DE JANEIRO – Crowds of faithful gathered in this popular Brazilian city to welcome Pope Francis, who set off from Rome on Monday morning for his first official foreign trip and preside over the 28th edition of the Roman Catholic World Youth Day. Here are five things you need […]
BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch LONDON – The United Kingdom, its former empire and the rest of the world is following events at St. Mary’s Hospital in West London where Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge and wife of Prince William, was taken Monday morning in the early stages of labour. The royal baby, as the […]
–OpEd– BEIJING – China’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Zhou Qiang recently declared that any miscarriage of justice is an affront to social fairness. The Chief Justice also announced a preliminary plan for promoting independent and impartial trials, respecting and protecting the rights of lawyers, and establishing a sound mechanism for preventing and correcting wrongful convictions. […]
The Israeli Defense Forces’ one-of-a-kind Internet strategy aims to bypass an international media known for unfriendly fire.
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How The Swiss Army Knife Survived 9/11
It can get you out of a jam and open wine, but the iconic multi-use companion narrowly escaped collapse after the War on Terror made it suddenly hard to carry everywhere.
In some ways there’s been great progress in a woman’s ability to control her destiny in Russian society. But in other ways, it’s actually even worse than during the Soviet era.
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Magazines, Mapped Week of July 19-26
Covers from top magazines around the world…
PARIS – He first visited libraries as a researcher, before crossing on to “the other side of the mirror.” That’s how Philippe Galanopolous describes his life as a curator for the Inter-University Science Library of Paris (BIUS), one of the world’s best collection of science texts and documents. BIUS was created after the merger between […]
Whole families are forced to leave Rwanda’s struggling north. Boys look for work at an early age; the girls, instead, all too often are pushed to get married across the border in Uganda.
Here are the songs topping the charts from some music hot spots around the world. But first, let’s warm up with the Worldcrunch pick of the week: Belgian singer-songwriter Stromae“s latest single Papaoutai…
BUENOS AIRES – A wooden dance floor, that familiar tempo of the music, a gesture of invitation. And the dance begins, counter-clockwise… It does not matter whether it is the El Fulgor de Villa Crespo club or the Sunderland de Villa Urquiza or a dance hall in Moscow or Beijing. The tango has the same […]
That is one bold idea floated to prevent older voters from paralyzing the democracy and blocking necessary reforms for the future.
BERLIN – It’s an animal story with a happy ending, five years in the making. A Berlin woman who’d lost her tabby cat “Pauley” in 2008 had an almost unthinkable surprise waiting for her at the capital’s Tierheim animal shelter. “When I got the letter a few days ago from the shelter saying my cat […]
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The Chinese Pursuit Of The American Dream
–Essay– Whether a place can continue to attract immigrants relies fundamentally on institutional competition. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson concluded in their book Why Nations Fail that countries with “inclusive institutions” will attract a diverse citizenry and adequate resources, and that this is advantageous for sustained economic progress. Instead, they argued, countries with more isolated, […]
HALDEN – “Hello everybody! How are you today!?” On stage, behind his keyboard, the musician takes in the applause and boisterous chattering, as he presents the members of his band. They kick into a cover of a reggae version of a Jackson Brothers’ song, the lights blink, as the singers move confidently from English to […]
Plans include a modern art museum double the size of London’s Tate Modern, the world’s most visited museum.
They were sentenced to six-and-a-half and five-and-a-half years in prison in Germany, respectively. But their lawyer says that Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag are counting on a swift departure for Russia, as part of a spy exchange. The trial of this couple ultimagely convicted of spying for Moscow started last January, and included a total of […]
BBC, TIMES OF INDIA, INDIAN EXPRESS Worldcrunch DHARMASATI GANDAMAND – At least 22 children have died from food poisoning after eating a school lunch in this village in eastern India. The meal was served at a government primary school on Tuesday in Dharmasati Gandamand in the state of of Bihar. The Times of India reports […]
Shiva was not like the other detainees in the Argentina prison. For one thing, this convicted kidnapper was studying to be a lawyer — which turned out to be the ticket for his daring escape.