Worldcrunch
PARIS – After years at Dior, designer Hedi Slimane was named creative director at Yves Saint Laurent in 2012, where he has embarked on a strategy to revolutionize the legendary French fashion house. He has just opened a new flagship store on Paris’s luxurious Avenue Montaigne and renamed the brand “Saint Laurent.” Black, white and […]
In Poland, after criticism of the treatment of asylum seekers, the government has responded with some very practical training for those who come face-to-face with immigrants every day.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga knocked off Roger Federer to advance to the semi-finals of the French Open. Can history repeat itself?
In Germany, efforts are on to increase the number of male teachers. Here’s the tale of a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who wound up on very different terrain.
Underage workers wind up digging for gold, and too often dying in the process. Family traditions are part of why no one is ever held responsible.
Drugs themselves are crazy enough, but what they’re called can sometimes make them (or at least make them seem) even more insane. Drug producers, dealers and users are increasingly creative in both the manufacturing and naming of drugs. Die Welt reported last month on the growing concern over the use of crystal methamphetamine, which in […]
BEIJING – Who are the happiest people in China? In a survey conducted by Xiaokang (meaning basically well-off) magazine last year, in the eyes of the public, civil servant comes top of the list as a profession. However, the newly published 2012 China Workplace Mental Health Research Report has shown that officials’ own sense of […]
MUNICH – People notice you when you’re with a baby – and not only when it’s screaming its lungs out in the supermarket. Just being pregnant earns a woman kudos for having a special kind of radiance. Once the child is born of course parental beauty is not usually the thing others remark on – […]
BUENOS AIRES – When she was young, Rita would browse through books in her house and not understand a thing. Why did Sleeping Beauty wake up? Why did Little Red Riding Hood open the door for the wolf? Rita would stare at the illustrations but her mother and father didn’t know how to tell the […]
Even if the urban riots in Sweden last week took many by surprise, the signs were all around.
MUMBAI – Shilpa Dhar is wearing fake eyelashes, jingling bracelets, and cherry-red nail polish. She tilts her head as she speaks, which makes her jet-black hair twirl around her neck. She smiles because her friends have told her she has a nice smile – so she smiles all the time now. “I have a Kareena […]
WARSAW – Children’s education used to be in hands of educated women – for whom it was the only way to make a living – or less well-off students. Many famous writers and scientists have held this position at some point in their life. The governess may seem like a thing of the past, but […]
PARIS – News media startups like ours cannot sit still. Not only are we busy each day hunting down great stories, but we must always be on the lookout for new ideas. And so my eyes lit up when my Worldcrunch co-founder Jeff Israely first started talking about applying our own unique formula to a […]
This week’s selection of magazine covers from around the world.
GLOBAL TIMES, SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST (China) Worldcrunch BEIJING – “My fellow Chinese citizens, it brings me no pleasure to report to you this terrible news. A great calamity has befallen our nation. Our pride, our dignity, nay, the very integrity of our national soul is at stake,” writes the South China Morning Post in […]
NEWS.COM.AU, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia) Worldcrunch CANBERRA – Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has had another sandwich thrown at her as she was visiting Lyneham High School in Canberra — the second bread-based attack to target her this month. Gillard was visiting the school to announce education funding reforms when a student hurled a white-bread-salami […]
Wealth divides and political opportunism are creating a toxic mix of economic sentiments in Putin’s Russia.
LONDON – Police are investigating complaints about a British National Party (BNP) election leaflet depicting Polish people as monkeys campaigning for the Labor Party. This is just one of several recent controversies involving the BNP, an assortment of neo-fascists, nationalists and xenophobes, whose members have been accused of verbal and physical attacks against ethnic and […]
OECD Worldcrunch PARIS – The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has just released its Better Life index — a survey ranking 36 countries according to 11 criteria: Housing, Income, Jobs, Community, Education, Environment, Civic Engagement, Health, Life Satisfaction, Safety and Work-Life Balance. For the third year in a row, Australia takes the […]
That’s just one way to say, “getting in the sack…,” which is all they’re about. Are you impressed?
BUENOS AIRES – Emotional education is a teaching concept that helps students learn self-awareness (recognizing their emotions) and self-regulation (managing their emotions). While employed by some teachers to help children to gain more confidence and learn more efficiently, “educación emocional” has recently become so popular among educators in Argentina that a debate has been opened […]
LA CROIX (France), LE PARISIEN (France), AFP Worldcrunch PARIS – Some 350 people were arrested over the weekend in Paris, during protests against gay marriage. Meanwhile in the south of France, the Cannes Film Festival celebrated gay romance, awarding the top Palme d’Or prize to a love story about a lesbian couple. Despite the law […]
ABC, THE AGE, SKY NEWS AUSTRALIA, SYNDEY MORNING HERALD (Australia) Worldcrunch MELBOURNE – Australia’s top Cardinal George Pell acknowledged Monday that senior members of the Australian Catholic Church had covered up cases of sexual abuse. “I am fully apologetic and absolutely sorry,” Pell said. “I’m certainly totally committed to improving the situation. I know the […]
Worldcrunch CANNES – Most of the pictures emerging from the film festival in the south of France are from press photographers and paparazzi, but some of the most candid photos are being snapped by the festival’s long-time president, Gilles Jacob. Jacob, who turns 83 in June, is a film critic, writer, director and producer. He […]
BEIJING – “So,” says Ai Weiwei: “Now they get to listen to this.” By “they” he means his jailers. “My voice may not be perfect, and may not even sound good. I admit I was a little inhibited at first. But it’s a voice and now it’s out there.” As of this week, Beijing avant-garde […]
LA VOIX DU NORD (France) Worldcrunch SECLIN –A mini flock of three crows have been terrorizing a neighborhood in this northern French town, attacking children on their way to school and people walking their dogs. Three black birds, obvious fans of Alfred Hitchcock movies, have launched a series of attacks on the inhabitants of the […]
A dark history is reopened after Green leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit won a Prize for “exemplary democratic disposition.” Digging into his and others’ past finds shocking acceptance of pedophilia.
Crossing two taboo topics: prostitution and the sexuality of the physically and mentally handicapped.
AFP, AAP, ABC NEWS (Australia) Worldcrunch ALICE SPRINGS – A controversial cull of up to 10,000 wild horses began in central Australia on Wednesday, in a bid to control feral animals destroying the outback. The feral animals, which include horses, donkeys and camels, are dying in the thousands because of lack of food and water. […]
BEIJING – Last month, this city’s Human Resources and Social Security Bureau introduced an administrative circular that stipulates “in principle” municipal government departments should impose age restrictions when hiring graduates settling in Beijing who are not officially residents holding local household registrations. Those with undergraduate degrees who have moved to Beijing shouldn’t be hired if […]
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST (China), AFP Worldcrunch BEIJING – Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei has released a foul-mouthed heavy metal music video entitled Dumbass that parodies his months in police detention. In the video for the top single from his upcoming debut album The Divine Comedy, Weiwei tells the story of his 81 days […]
A proposed bill that would allow the use of English in universities has set off an uproar among intellectual champions of the French language.
This week’s tornadoes that flattened entire neighborhoods in Oklahoma, and elsewhere in the United States Midwest, remind us again of the potential magnitude of nature’s wrath. In 1931, the great flood of China’s Yellow and Yang-Tse rivers led to the death of about 4,000,000 people from drowning, disease and starvation. More recently, Haiti suffered a […]
REUTERS, NME Worldcrunch Ray Manzarek, keyboard player and founder member of the 1960s rock band The Doors died late Monday aged 74, following a battle with cancer. Manzarek, who lived in Northern California’s Napa Valley wine country for the past decade, had been seeking treatment for bile duct cancer at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, […]
TIMES OF INDIA, INDIA WEST, DNA (India), REUTERS Worldcrunch LONDON – Two drops of Gandhi’s blood are being auctioned Tuesday in London. The two microscope slides are expected to be sold for between £10,000 and £15,000 ($15,200-$22,800), Reuters reports. The “fragments of Gandhi’s blood” were donated by the father of the Indian Independence movement in […]
Worldcrunch LUMBINI – Happy belated birthday, Buddha! The birthday of Prince Siddhartha Gautama is a holiday traditionally celebrated in Mahayana Buddhism on the 8th day of the 4th lunar month. This year it fell on May 17, and that got the peace and party started from Sioux City to Sri Lanka. The occasion allows us […]
A stinking, snorting tale of NIMBY cruelty from the Bavarian heartland.
LEIYANG – After working for many years in Foshan, a city in China’s manufacturing heartland of Guangdong, Zi Xiaohu and his wife recently decided to move back to his hometown in the central province of Hunan. The couple’s child, who remained behind in the village while the parents worked, is about to start preschool. The […]
While the movie world descends on Cannes, there are those up north who note that there is no more glamorous French face than that of the capital herself.
Whether alcohol or absinthe, LSD or heroin, some of humanity’s creative geniuses produced their greatest work as mind-altering substances did theirs. A Paris exhibit connects the dots.