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Society

After Michelin Stars, Italian Chef Sends Out-Of-This-World Menu Into Space

Vac-packed pesto risotto never tasted so good!

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Society

Bolshoi Dancer Confesses To Acid Attack

CHANNEL ONE, KOMMERSANT (Russia), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch MOSCOW – One of Moscow’s Bolshoi ballet leading soloists has confessed to being the mastermind behind an acid attack that nearly blinded the company’s director, Sergei Filin in January. According to a statement released by the Moscow police, Pavel Dmitrichenko, 28, was arrested together with two accomplices: […]

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Society

Sixty Years After His Death, Stalin Still A National Hero To Some In Georgia

A visit to the dictator’s birthplace in the former Soviet republic of Georgia where a complicated relationship with the notorious native son plays into current tensions with Russia.

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Society

EU Proposal: Having A Bank Account Should Be A Basic Human Right

SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch BRUSSELS – Freedom of speech, right to a fair trial, access to public education and … a checking account for every citizen? In the future every EU citizen should have the right to a basic bank account, according to proposed European-wide legislation, reports German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. The proposed measure is […]

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Society

What Bill Gates Has Done That’s Setting Off Radical Islamist Killing Sprees

The Microsoft founder and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are active in trying to eradicate polio. But immunization efforts have led to deadly attacks from Nigeria to Pakistan.

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Society

Economic Crisis Makes France’s Historic Public Bathhouses A Modern Necessity

PARIS – Their vintage facades date back from a time when apartments didn’t have bathrooms. For many people, washing up meant a sink and cold water. The whole family went to these public baths, regularly or for special occasions. But as time passed, these public baths were transformed into nightclubs, shops – or simply demolished. […]

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Society

Fashion Retailer Mango Apologizes For “Slave Style” Necklace

LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR (France), THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch PARIS – Spanish fashion retailer Mango has issued an official apology for advertizing a necklace on its French website as “slave style,” blaming it on a “translation error.” Screenshot of the incriminating ad on Mango’s French website now removed French actresses Aïssa Maïga and Sonia Rolland quickly […]

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Society

Israel Rolls Out First Palestinian-Only Buses In West Bank

YNET, HAARETZ (Israel) Worldcrunch QALQILYAH – The first official Palestinian-only bus lines began service Monday morning. According to Israeli daily Haaretz, the Israel’s Ministry of Transportation said it has launched the special bus lines in order to avoid conflicts. The lines are for the Palestinian workers who travel each from the West Bank into and […]

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Society

In Germany, A Deeper Look At Teacher Burnout

South of Munich is a clinic that specializes in treating teachers with psychological problems. The causes aren’t always what you think.

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Society

Men Who Need A Boost – High Heels Weren’t Originally For Women

Worldcrunch TORONTO – The epitome of femininity and glamour is a pair of high-heeled shoes, but originally, they were actually designed for men. According to a recent BBC report, high heels were worn as a form of riding footwear, with the heel allowing a soldier to stand up in his stirrups securely so he could […]

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Society

After Knut: Zoos And The Line Between Animal Boredom And Animal Cruelty

HAMBURG – For Stephan Hering-Hagenbeck, whose family has run this city’s zoo for over 100 years, there are challenges both inside and outside the gates of any such “animal park.” Inside this zoo, as for every zoo around the world, the biggest challenge is to keep the animals from getting bored. Hering-Hagenbeck explains that animals […]

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Society

Listen To The World’s First Crowd-Sourced Track By Swedish Superstar DJ Avicii

LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – On Jan. 9, Swedish superstar DJ and producer, Avicii put out a call that he wanted to record a crowd-sourced single. After seven weeks and more than 13,000 fan submissions later “X You” is finally complete and is the world’s largest music collaboration. Here is his call for […]

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Society

Buenos Aires Soars Into The Colorful World Of Lucha Libre

BUENOS AIRES – A new exhibition at Buenos Aires” Palais de Glace museum delves into the colorful and high-flying world of Lucha Libre – the freestyle wrestling so popular in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. In Lucha Libre, the good guys are called “tecnicos” (technicians) while the bad guys – who wear even more […]

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Society

Banana-Based Moonshine Microbrew Is A Killer In Burundi

NGOZI – In the north of Burundi, new brands of “beer” have sprouted recently. They are produced locally in a multitude of small breweries or imported from neighboring countries in little plastic bags. These alcoholic beverages are three times less expensive than normal brews – $0.30 for 50ml – and very strong, containing up to […]

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Society

Tear Down This Wall! We Want Luxury Condos! Berlin Debates Cold War Memorial

DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – “Tear down this wall!” Ronald Reagan famously implored in Berlin in 1987, challenging Mikhail Gorbachev to bring an end to the Cold War. Now, it appears, this was also the much quieter request of a luxury condominium developer. The longest remaining portion of the Berlin Wall, stretching 1,316 meters […]

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Society

The Afghan ‘Borat’ Turns Out To Be A Vegetarian Surfer From Florida

But you may also find Amanullah Mojadidi doing performance art pieces in Kabul.

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Society

Chinese Parents Petition Congress For Same-Sex Marriage Legislation

CHINA DAILY, SOUTHERN METROPOLIS DAILY (China) Worldcrunch GUANGZHOU – An organization of parents of gay and lesbians in China has sent an open letter to China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), demanding the legalization of same-sex marriage, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily. “Some of our children have been living with their partners for nearly 10 […]

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Society

Child Psychology: When A Temper Tantrum Is Just A Temper Tantrum

The new edition of the DSM, modern psychiatry’s bible for mental disorders, gives a medical diagnosis for what others just call bratty behavior. How parents can recognize the difference.

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Society

Stephane Hessel, Best-Selling French Author, Father Of The Occupy Movement, Dead At 95

LE MONDE, AFP, FRANCE 24, LIBERATION (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Stephane Hessel, the French best-selling author, Resistance figure and diplomat died last night at age 95. He is mostly known however, for his rights activism – his tireless combat for the disenfranchised and illegal immigrants, writes France 24 and is considered the father of the […]

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Society

In Kyrgyzstan, Where Kidnapping Brides Is An Accepted Tradition

Forced marriages in this central Asian country are not simply about arrangements between families, but also strangers abducting women to be their wives.

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Society

After Chanel Perfume, Brad Pitt Now Hocking Cadillacs In China

ECONOMIC OBSERVER (China) Worldcrunch BEIJING – From Brangelina to Bradillac? You have to be in China, but car lovers and movie fans now have a new automotive pinup after Brad Pitt was named official spokesman for the luxury Cadillac XTS sedan, being rolled out especially for the Chinese market. The parent company of the Cadillac […]

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Society

Do Sports Make You Smarter? Study Finds Athletes’ Brains Have More Gray Matter

BOCHUM – Intensive sports make our muscles grow – nothing new there. But now clinical neurophysiologists from Germany’s Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB) have shown that sports can change our brain too. For their research, 26 high-performance athletes (half of them practitioners of judo and karate, the other half marathon runners and triathletes), and 12 non-athletes, had […]

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Society

Brazil: Olympics Edition Of Monopoly Game Is PR Job For Rio’s Mayor

FOLHA DE SAO PAULO (Brazil) Worldcrunch RIO DE JANEIRO – No matter who’s playing, a new Monopoly game created especially for the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Olympics always has the same winner: Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes. “Your house now costs more after the pacification of a neighboring community. Get 75,000 reais ($ 37,500)…” This sentence […]

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Society

Why The Chinese Public Ridicules Suicides Of State Officials

BEIJING – Over the past three years, a growing number of high-ranking officials in China have committed suicide, according to data from the Legal Weekly journal. In just the last two months alone, three officials — Qi Xiaolin, Deputy Secretary of Guangzhou’s Municipal Public Security Bureau, Zhang Wanxiong, Vice-President of Liangzhou Court of Justice in […]

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Society

Turkish Airlines Loses First Battle In War On Alcohol

ISTANBUL – A Turkish writer has won a court battle against Turkish Airlines for censoring an article published in their inflight magazine. In June 2009, Buket Uzuner was commissioned to write an article about Istanbul’s Moda neighborhood for Turkish Airlines’ Skylife magazine. In her article she criticized the city of Istanbul’s ban on alcohol sales […]

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Society

Watch Beckham Bend It In Paris

Worldcrunch PARIS – David Beckham has finally made his much anticipated debut in Paris, almost one month after signing for Paris Saint-Germain. Here’s Becks warming up before Sunday’s kick-off. Although he only played for the last 14 minutes of Sunday night’s game, Becks was finally given a chance to get his much-advertized bottom off the […]

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Society

Five Things That Happened At The Oscars Plus All The Winners

WASHINGTON POST, VOICE OF AMERICA, YAHOO (USA) Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – In case you missed it, the 85th Academy Awards took place last night. Life of Pi was the biggest winner of the night, scooping four golden statuettes. Here’s what you need to know about this year’s Oscars: 1. Daniel Day Lewis’ win for his […]

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Society

Uruguay Government Says Don’t Smoke Pot — Better To Eat It Instead

TELAM, EFE (ARGENTINA) Worldcrunch MONTEVIDEO – Uruguay introduced a bill last November to regulate production and sale of cannabis. Under the proposed legislation, Uruguayans over 18 will be able to purchase pot in state-approved distribution centers. Time to light up? Well, not exactly. While the country is waiting for Congress to pass the bill, the […]

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Society

American CEO Adds To Long History Of French-Bashing

And don’t forget: bad blood runs in both directions!

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Society

An Alpine Ghetto For Switzerland’s Rejected Asylum Seekers

LANDQUART – He stirs his spaghetti with one hand, holding a cigarette in the other. Mohamed* has drops of sweat beading on his forehead despite the near-freezing temperatures. “It’s really tough here,” he says in his broken English. “Last week, there was a knife fight between the Afghan and the Nigerian. They were drinking, shouting. […]

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Society

Wanted: White Western Tourists For Role In Bollywood Movie

Up close, on set and in search of extras inside India’s over-the-top movie scene.

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Society

When Egypt Deletes Women’s Rights Heroines From School Textbooks

Street artists spray the images of the women who have fought for equality in Egypt, from the early 20th century to the Jan. 25 uprising.

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Society

Uruguay Debates Whether To Clean Dictonary Of Racist Expressions

MONTEVIDEO – Racism and racist expressions are often ingrained in society. In Uruguay, they are also written in the dictionary. Last month, Vice-Minister of Culture and Education Oscar Gomez urged the Uruguayan Academy of Letters to remove racist and offensive expressions from the Dictionary of Uruguayan Spanish. It is part of a campaign launched on […]

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Society

Former DSK Lover’s Lurid Memoir: He Was “Half Man, Half Pig”

And a bit “Poodle” too, according to Marcela Iacub, a lawyer and writer who had an eight-month affair with Strauss-Kahn last year.

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Society

The “End Of History Illusion” – Why We Like Change, As Long As It’s In The Past

A new Swiss study helps explain why we think that our important changes are behind us — and how this false belief can drive us to make poor decisions.

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Society

Black Moccasins And Truck Driver Dreams – Up Close With Amos Oz

Perhaps the most acclaimed Israeli writer of his generation, and a fixture of the peace movement, Oz continues to surprise at the age of 73.

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Society

In Mexico, 64 Dialects At Risk Of Extinction

EL UNIVERSAL (Mexico) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – Linguistic experts have identified as many as 364 different dialects in modern Mexico, with at least 100 people speaking each linguistic variation. But this wealth of language diversity risks disappearing. Javier López Sánchez, director of the National Indigenous Languages Institute in Mexico (INALI), says that currently 64 dialects […]

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Society

Rwandans Risk It All For Their Ancestral Lands

RWANDA – Severe weather kills and natural disasters can be particularly deadly in Rwanda, like elsewhere in Africa. The most deadly storm last year killed at least 72 people and injured more than 120. According to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs (MIDIMAR), in 2012 alone, 3000 homes were destroyed. Justin Kayira, Director […]

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Society

Catholic Church Opens Up To Yoga And Meditation

ADNKRONOS, LA STAMPA (Italy), THE TELEGRAPH (UK) Worldcrunch ROME– With a surprising twist of flexibility, a key Italian bishop and doctrinal expert has given his green light to integrating yoga and meditation into Roman Catholic spiritual practices. Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli, the bishop of the city of Frascati, near Rome, said that he is “open” to […]

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Society

The Tragic Fall Of Oscar Pistorius, A Modern-Day Icarus

The Greek tragedy featured man-made wings melting under the sun. In South Africa, the bladerunner may have gotten too close to the gods as well.

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