LA NACION, CLARIN (Argentina) Worldcrunch VIÑA DEL MAR – The Chilean government has called an investigation to identify and sanction marines caught on tape chanting “Argentines I will kill, Bolivians I will shoot, Peruvians I will cut their throats.” About 30 marine cadets from the Naval Polytechnic Academy were filmed chanting their offensive song as […]
Category: Society
BEIJING – After it was recently revealed that the entire family of a top housing administration official in the northern Chinese city of Zhengzhou had two sets of identity papers (or hukou), people have taken to joking online that China doesn’t really have 1.3 billion people, as many people have a “dual hukou.” The hukou […]
In Egypt’s capital, “D.capuccino” is the latest sign of piety since Mubarak fell. In separate sections for men, women and families, it serves up Italian coffee and “pure, Islamic values.”
AYUTLA – In the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero, residents of about 15 municipalities have decided to form a “community police” to confront the drug cartels. “The state,” says one farmer matter-of-factly, “has abandoned us.” A commander of the group, who goes by the moniker G1, is talking in the parking lot of the Aurrera […]
FEZ – It had served over the years as a prison, a carpet factory and a boxing gym. But last week, the building in this ancient Moroccan city’s central medina was officially returned to its original incarnation: the Slat-al-Fassiyine synagogue was inaugurated by King Mohammed VI after a long-anticipated restoration. Rare in the Arab world […]
CLARIN (Argentina), EL PAIS (Spain) Worldcrunch BARCELONA – This so-called Robin-Hood pursuit, which appeared to come to a head in March 2009, is back on again. It was four years ago that the then 32-year-old Catalan man, Enric Durán Giralt, was sentenced to prison by a Barcelona judge for stealing from banks — and giving […]
Once mercenaries for Ivan the Terrible, the Cossacks were known as great fighters before being wiped out by the Bolsheviks. Now, they are on the frontline of a nationalistic revival.
KOMMSERSANT (Russia)

 Worldcrunch MOSCOW – The doctor is in the house! At least, that is what Moscow’s city government is hoping. Under a new program called “The doctor is next door,” the city will be renting space to private medical practices on the first floor of residential buildings for 1 ruble ($0.03) per square meter […]
Categories
It’s Toddlers And Tiaras, European-Style
A casting call for kids in the Swiss Alps offers a somewhat softer image than the all-or-nothing American children’s paegants.
CBS NEWS, USA TODAY, REUTERS (USA) Worldcrunch MOBILE – Ill-fated Carnival cruise ship Triumph finally docked in Mobile, Alabama late Thursday, after being stranded for five days in the Gulf of Mexico without any power supply. Four hours later, the last remaining passengers had disembarked and been taken to hotels in New Orleans and Texas, […]
BERLIN – In my local video store, they’ve just created a new section for TV series. The very great majority of the series are American: The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Girls, Modern Family, Lost, 24, various CSIs, and so on and so forth. The dominant culture in Europe […]
AMSTERDAM – We all know that families today are no longer only made up of Mom and Dad and the kids. This has led the Netherlands to work on legislation that would make it possible to have more than two people as parents. Take Susanne Supheert, 25 – she has four parents. It was more […]
LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, 20 MINUTES (France) Worldcrunch PARIS –Eight members of the feminist Ukrainian group FEMEN celebrated Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announcement this week by disrobing inside Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The bare-breasted activists rang the cathedral’s new bells — currently exposed in the middle of the nave — with sticks, before getting […]
Worldcrunch 1. ARGENTINA – The twin sister of a murdered model is set to wed her dead sister’s killer, much to the dismay of her parents, according to Buenos Aires daily Clarín. The wedding has been in the works for months, but these two lovebirds hold back nothing when it comes to romance: the ceremony […]
XINHUA, CHINA.ORG.CN (China), Worldcrunch BEIJING – There’s a new study in China aimed at finding out more about the lives of the corrupt. Among the findings of the study, dubbed the “Officials’ Image Crisis Report,” was that 95% of Chinese officials being investigated for corruption also kept mistresses, according to Xinhua. The link between political […]
OSLO – Before we even begin, it’s not pronounced “munch,” “mench” or even “manch” – it’s “moonk!” It’s a question of politeness, and also the locals are more likely to understand us if we pronounce his name correctly. In Olso, the artist is everywhere, just like his iconic masterpiece. Just like a spoiled child, Skrik, […]
SABAH (Turkey), THE GUARDIAN (UK), YNET (Israel) Worldcrunch Nine years after her husband’s death, Suha Arafat regrets her marriage to the former Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. They married in a secret wedding in Tunisia in 1990 when Suha was 27. Arafat, then 61, was 34 years older. In an interview given last week to […]
KFAR KAMA – Bent down in his field in this lower Galilee town, Amjad Shami points out the countless underground tunnels dug by voles. Three years ago, he says, these rodents destroyed his entire harvest. Shami says he continues to try to fight them with pesticides, which do little more than poison his land, infect […]
LOS ANGELES – And the winner of the 55th Grammy Awards is… the younger generation. Sunday night’s Gammys were all about Mumford & Sons, Fun, Gotye and the Black Keys. Gotye (left) and Kimbra (right) during their acceptance speech, Youtube. Here are the night’s big winners: Record of the year: Somebody That I Used To […]
A landslide last month in Zhenxiong County in southwestern China killed 46 villagers. Once the bodies were recovered, the local authority — without any prior agreement from family members — cremated them. This set off a storm of protest from relatives of the deceased, and widespread criticism from the public. Zhenxiong authorities sparked further outrage […]
BERLIN – People who were there said he cried for several minutes at the executive committee meeting on the morning after his defeat. As party members analyzed what had gone wrong in the state election campaign, the governor of the German state of Lower Saxony, David McAllister, burst into tears. Angela Merkel comforted him, and […]
KAYANZA – It seemed like such a small thing when it began nearly a year ago here in northern Burundi: Pygmies would share their unique weaving techniques to the ethnic Hutus and Tutsis of the Kayanza province. But learning to weave carpets, nets, handbags, even tables and chairs…and for free…has earned unexpected waves of good […]
ISTANBUL – Four heavily made-up, peroxide blondes are sitting on a talk show set. In broken German, they’re trying to prove that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is wrong. It’s a particularly bizarre bit of religious propaganda – but since 2011 creationist theories have been packaged this way for Western viewers and broadcast by the […]
LE TEMPS (Switzerland) Worldcrunch PUERTO BAQUERIZO MORENO – The famous giant tortoise of the Galapagos is saved! At least for now… It was thought that the ancient Galapagos tortoise endemic to these South American islands had gone extinct with last year’s death of Lonesome George, the last of the living among this type of tortoise, […]
PARIS – Temptations for children take many forms: video games, computers, TV, tablets. According to French audience measurement company Mediametrie, children between four and 14 spend more than two hours in front of the TV every day. On Jan. 22, the French Academy of Sciences issued a warning about children watching television or movies from […]
This musical and cultural project in Switzerland aims to redefine the very essence of the creative process.
ANSA, LA STAMPA, LA REPUBBLICA (Italy) Worldcrunch FLORENCE– It only took a step in the wrong place by a worker doing maintenance in the floor above to bust through a 500-year-old fresco in the famed Uffizi Gallery. According to ANSA news agency, the fallen piece depicted an allegorical female figure from the 16th Century. The […]
THE HERALD SUN, NHMRC, AAP, THE AUSTRALIAN (Australia) Worldcrunch MELBOURNE – Australia is officially the meanest country EVER! New hygiene rules mean that Australian children will be banned from blowing out birthday candles at school parties. Photo devinf Yes, you read it correctly. No this is not a cruel joke. According to the latest National […]
AP, EL UNIVERSAL (Mexico), NEWS.COM.AU (Australia), INDEPENDENT.IE (Ireland) Worldcrunch The big news arrived in America’s mailbox on Wednesday: the U.S. Postal Service will end Saturday delivery service starting this summer, responding to budget cuts and the growing use of the Internet for long-distance communication. AP has the news from Washington. Not surprisingly, changes to postal […]
SKY NEWS (Australia), THE GUARDIAN (UK), LIBERATION (France), AP Worldcrunch PARIS – Gay marriage rights are gaining momentum around the world. In the last four days, three countries have each taken a major step toward expanding marriage rights to same-sex couples. FRANCEThough the legislative process is just beginning, the French National Assembly approved a centerpiece […]
MUNICH – It is shortly past 10 a.m. in a Munich middle school and Tammy is lying on the floor, muzzle tucked between his paws, stomach rising and falling gently as he breathes in and out, apparently asleep. Occasionally, when Salma leafs through the pages of her book, the dog’s eyes blink open then shut […]
FOLHA DE SAO PAULO (Brazil) Worldcrunch BRASILIA – Francisco Everardo Oliviera Silva – better known as Tiririca (Grumpy) – was elected to the Brazilian Parliament in 2010 with the highest number of votes. He had campaigned on the slogan “Vote Tiririca, it can’t get any worse.” Now he says he has lost hope for politics […]
Police have arrested “yakuza” mob members, who recruited people who owed them money or were mentally disabled to do cleanup work in contaminated nuclear zones.
GOMA – Young Muslim men in the Democratic Republic of Congo are less interested in having several wives than their fathers were. Facing rising prices and feuds over inheritance, the new generation doesn’t see how the benefits outweigh the costs of having multiple spouses in the same household. As for the women of the current […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – German clothes shoppers have started going for bright colors, after years of opting for safe gray or navy blue. So retailers – who were taken by surprise – had no choice but to act quickly to place large follow-up orders. But according to the National Association Of German Textile […]
TURIN – So it’s like this: after having solved a mystery involving the Pope in Rome and the esoteric world of Leonardo da Vinci in Paris, the new Dan Brown thriller will be set in the streets of Florence, as well as in the pages of Dante’s Inferno. Dan Brown is no master of style, […]
“This is the saddest moment in my 45-year career as a psychiatrist…” Dr. Allen Frances wrote this in a December blog post on the Psychology Today website. The reason was the approval by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) of the new edition of psychiatry’s bible – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM […]
Pennies may not change anyone’s life, but at least it helps President Dilma fulfill a campaign promise.
TAWASOL, (Saudi Arabia), AL-ARABIYA (UAE), AL MOHEET (Egypt) Worldcrunch RIYADH – A Saudi cleric says babies and young girls should be covered from head to toe as a way of protecting them from sexual abuse. Sheikh Abdullah Mohamed Daoud made his statement on the al-Madj satellite station in October last year, but the video was […]
PARIS – Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the famed Swedish superstar striker of the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) soccer team has just released his autobiography, entitled “I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic.” He spoke with Le Monde. LE MONDE: This book sold 700,000 copies in Sweden. Did you expect it to be such a hit?ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIC: That is more than 7% […]