EFE, ANIMANATURALIS (MEXICO) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – Hundreds of animal rights activists in Mexico City took to the streets this weekend to call for an end to bullfighting in Mexico, reports EFE. More than 200 activists took their clothes off and poured fake blood on themselves during the demonstration. They planted fake “banderillas” on themselves, […]
Category: Society
PARIS – Kevin Kelly is a stimulating iconoclast. How many books are bought but not read? Probably many more than we think. Hence the idea of paying readers who read a book from the beginning to the end. Kevin Kelly thought about patenting his idea, but, since ideas don’t necessarily make a project, he decided […]
TIMES OF INDIA, OUTLOOK (India), BBC (UK). NEW DELHI – Indian President Pranab Mukherjee has approved a new rape law that would provide harsher punishment for rapists, including the death penalty. The BBC reports the brutal gang rape on a 23-year-old woman in December caused an outrage across the country and sparked a debate about […]
ALGIERS – The ultimate goal is Europe. But first the immigrants from countries in central Africa are trying to get refugee status in Algeria. “We were told that if we claimed we were fleeing the war, we would be taken care of and handed out IDs,” says Trésor, a Congolese migrant taken in by the […]
XINHUA, JIANGXI, GLOBAL TIMES (China), WANT DAILY (Taiwan) JIANGXI – The Chinese New Year is the worst holiday to be single in China – the family pressure is too intense. “With or without money, get married to have a better New Year,” goes the Chinese proverb. The Chinese New Year– also called the Spring Festival […]
GENEVA – He’s back. Adolf Hitler is back, in a book by Timur Vermes – a comedy in which Hitler returns to Berlin in the summer of 2011. The book, which has reached the top of the German bestseller list, is causing much controversy in a country that would rather forget it has been 80 […]
WORLDCRUNCH Worldcrunch PARIS – When David Beckham announced that he had signed a five-month contract with France’s Paris Saint-Germain soccer club, millions of fans of both Monsieur and Madame Spice started fantasizing about the Beckhams moving from the city of angels to the city of lights. As it turns out, Becks and Posh’s kids are […]
MOSCOW – According to Anton Zharov, a lawyer specializing in adoption, the proposals coming out of the Duma (Parliament) to solve Russia’s orphan problem are like a printer that has gone insane. “You can’t solve Russia’s orphan problem in one year or in three years. Instead of talking to specialists and trying to establish a […]
This growing phenomenon is showing up across the region, a potential sign of entrenched unemployment and even deeper social malaise.
HURRIYET (Turkey) Worldcrunch ISTANBUL – Alcohol sale bans in Turkey, which started in universities, have now been expanded to police-related offices, academies and training facilities. The Istanbul daily Hurriyet reported that the move by the Tobacco and Alcohol Market Regulatory Authority (TAPDD), is the first such ban on alcohol sales in public institutions. The TAPDD […]
OpEd: Same-sex civil unions have been defeated in Poland’s Parliament, thanks to a hard-right minority inside the ruling party. History tells us this will not stand.
Chinese GDP is growing — but it is ever more at odds with the better life Chinese people aspire to. Despite new leaders’ best intentions, China’s ambitions could all come undone.
SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – When Germany talks about social networks, it is usually talking about Facebook and Twitter, not about YouTube. And yet the video platform, with its 800 million daily users, is certainly in the Facebook league and is used by many more people than Twitter. The fact that YouTube has become […]
Nanette Blitz Konig was friends in Amsterdam with the young writer of the diary of life hiding from the Nazis. She recalls seeing Anne for the last time alive, in Bergen-Belsen.
BUENOS AIRES – There was some bitter irony that the news that Máxima Zorreguieta would soon become the Queen of the Netherlands arrived on the eve of her father’s 85th birthday. When she married Prince Willem-Alexander in 2002, the Dutch government refused to invite her father Jorge, because of his past as a high-ranking official […]
HINDUSTAN TIMES, TELEGRAPH INDIA, TIMES OF INDIA (India) Worldcrunch CALCUTTA- Author Salman Rushdie’s visit to Calcutta to promote the film adapted from his novel “Midnight’s Children” has been cancelled, due to security issues. Salman Rushdie by futureshape Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses earned him a fatwa death […]
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TVNZ, NEW ZEALAND HERALD (New Zealand) Worldcrunch WELLINGTON – In order to adapt to the decreasing volume of posted items, the New Zealand Post is considering cutting mail delivery from six to three days a week to allow “greater flexibility” in its services, according to the New Zealand Herald. Although Communications and Information Technology Minister […]
BERLIN – In the musical “My Fair Lady,” Professor Henry Higgins expresses outrage at the “cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.” The guilty parties are the Scots, the Irish, the Welsh – and of course Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl from London with whom the linguistic purist falls in love. If Americans escape his […]
I’ve been dreadknapped!? And they didn’t even take my wallet.
BUENOS AIRES – At 7 a.m., Norma Andia begins her radio show with an ambulance siren and a charming accent from the high plains of Bolivia. “Let’s go, are you listening to me? Why the long face, didn’t you get enough sleep? And you, yes I’m talking to you – don’t hurt your woman thinking […]
BEIJING – Since 2010, China’s number one state-owned newspaper, the People’s Daily, has published quite a number of commentaries concerning hot-button social issues. We are very pleased and applaud this. In general, these commentaries have a higher purpose and discuss national issues with sharpness. Recently, though, the People’s Daily published a commentary written by Bai […]
After a nearly 10 percent jump in obesity, the first efforts have been launched at educating Congolese about both diet and exercise. But skinny to many means sick — and poor.
BERLIN – “I think it totally sucks that you think that word should be left in children’s books. You can’t imagine how it makes me feel to hear or read that word. It’s really really terrible. My Dad is not a ‘negro’ and neither am I.” That was written by nine-year-old Ishema Kane in her […]
PARIS – Industrial-style metallic chests, steel chairs, and workshop lamps – as soon as they were featured on the pages of mail-to-order furniture catalogs, French hipsters shunned them. Industrial-style is done, dead. It has been replaced by colorful Formica, linoleum and oilcloth fabrics. “Plastic is fantastic!” sang French pop band Elmer Food Beat in 1991 […]
BERLIN – Social networks like Facebook make many things easier. You can find out right away if Alex got the job or not, and you can not only read about Marie’s vacation, but you can also see all those pictures of her on the beach, too. There’s also a downside to this. Researchers have conducted […]
Two decades after the Sicilian Mafia killed magistrate hero Giovanni Falcone, crime networks have shifted drug trafficking from bases to Russia, Colombia, Burma…and beyond.
Some 1.2 million were forced to relocate by China’s massive Three Gorges project. Moving to unfamiliar land, many of these internal migrants struggle. Some tell another story.
UNITED DAILY NEWS, RADIO TAIWAN INTERNATIONAL (Taiwan) Worldcrunch TAIPEI – “Just by smelling it, I can tell where it comes from and what its quality is…” This unique touch of boastfulness comes from You Qi-Cheng, who runs condom manufacturer Fuji Latex. Mr. You’s claim of olfactory prowess quickly circualated on the Chinese Internet, after the […]
SAINT-NAZAIRE- “Business is slow these days, too slow…” says 34-year-old restaurant employee from Saint-Nazaire in western France, Cedric Derouin. As he dries drinking glasses, he talks about the consecutive closings of dozens of local businesses, the laying off of his only coworker a few months ago. He shares his uncertain future with the workers from […]
ISTANBUL – Turkey has finally passed a hotly-debated law that will allow Kurdish criminal defendants to speak their mother tongue in court. The drama leading up to Thursday’s vote is a reminder of how complicated — and charged — the broader “Kurdish Question” continues to be in Turkey. The final round of debate on pitting […]
At an employement agency in southeastern Poland, notices offer a variety of job opportunities abroad. One particular post advertising agricultural work in Germany looks, at first glance, to be a good offer. The reality is very different. To be able to send people to work abroad, Polish employement agencies need to be signed into a […]
BERLIN – Chinese censors have made some significant changes to several parts of the latest James Bond film “Skyfall.” One scene, showing a French hitman killing a Chinese guard in a Shanghai skyscraper, was cut out entirely. So was a mention of prostitution in Macau. Other changes are reflected in the subtitles. In the original […]
LA STAMPA (ITALY) Worldcrunch BUCHAREST– A public service campaign in Romania is trying to prevent pedestrian deaths by showing how some stray dogs in Bucharest are street smarter than humans. Say WHAT!? Yes, really. You can scroll to the bottom of the page to see the video. But first, you might want to remember all […]
A book by a longtime friend of the Colombian legend includes never-before-released letters from when Garcia Marquez was writing his epic “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
PARIS – In the U.S., they are called the helicopter parents. These are the hyper-moms and uber-dads who hover relentlessly over their children, transforming themselves into personal assistants on the weekends: driving them to baseball or dance practice, Chinese lessons, screaming at the math teacher who had the nerve to give little darling a B […]
“Behind the closet are those wives imprisoned in an unhappy marriage…” A Chinese woman used her personal blog to describe life as the wife of a gay man, before her husband decided finally to come out. According to a report conducted in 2005 by Liu Dalin, a prominent sexologist, 90% of Chinese homosexual and bisexual […]
-Essay- RABAT – Along with Arabic, French has long been one of Morocco’s languages. It is the language of culture; it is the flipside of our identity — of our double identity, if you will, which is the result of a long coexistence and exchanges between generations. Even though Morocco has been independent from French […]
A Chinese reporter crosses the border to take the pulse of the closed-off nation, where young North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may have begun to loosen things up ever so slightly.
CLARIN, EL DIARIO (ARGENTINA) Worldcrunch CORDOBA – In some places, the cops are busy cracking down with tough new laws on drinking and driving; elsewhere, the focus is on texting and driving. But in Argentina“s second-largest city, the newest threat to highway safety is the cigarette. Beginning next Monday, police in Cordoba will begin handing […]