WorldcrunchLE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR (France), THE DRUM (UK) Worldcrunch LONDON – To protest against strict adverstising rules imposed by the IOC on everything Olympic-related, reports Le Nouvel Observateur, a British website has launched a “Fauxlympics” advertising campaign. People were invited to send in Fauxlympic adverts in four different categories: The Sprint: Guerrilla ads that would be […]
BUENOS AIRES/ASUNCION – Argentine actress and pop star Moria Casán is still in trouble for supposedly stealing a sapphire and diamond necklace and earring set worth around $85,000. Paraguayan officials have issued an international arrest warrant for Casán, her manager and her assistant. Her lawyers have requested that she be exempt from preventative incarceration, and […]
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (USA), THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch Russian authorities have charged members of an Islamic sect with child abuse after discovering underground cells near Kazan in Tatarstan where a self-proclaimed prophet and his followers kept one to 17-year-olds for nearly a decade without heat or sunlight. The Guardian reports that prosecutors have opened a […]
Don’t cry for her, Moria Casán…or the $85,000 diamond and sapphire set
CAIXIN MEDIA, CHINA DAILY (China), CHINA TIMES (Taiwan) Worldcrunch YONGZHOU – Six years ago an 11-year-old girl was raped and forced into prostitution in Yongzhou, Hunan province. It took three months for the victim’s mother to rescue her. After three judgments, the Hunan Provincial Higher People’s Court has given a final verdict on the seven […]
LE MONDE, FRANCE TV (France) Cuba’s dreams of winning Olympic gold in the pole vault today were left in shatters – after Lázaro Borges’ pole snapped into pieces. The 26-year-old slammed the pole into the ground when attempting to clear a height of 5.35 meters but ended up awkwardly crashing into the mat when the […]
RAI, LA REPUBBLICA (Italy) Worldcrunch It has become an Olympic tradition for an athlete or two or three to test positive for banned substances during or after the Games. Also traditional are the subsequent heartfelt denials, stone-faced defiance and/or mysterious disappearance of said suspected performance-enhanced athlete. This year, however, we have a new response: The […]
The Royal family, the English pound and driving on the left, none of these British characteristics seem to be in synch with the rest of the world. However, the British don’t particularly care what others might think. Their traditions have a special meaning for them. They are the most complicated, most contradictory, and most interesting […]
BRASILIA – At first sight, Brasilia is made exclusively of highways. So either the city is hiding below the carefully trimmed grass, or it is just another Latin American myth. Its inhabitants are also invisible. How do they go from one place to another if there are no sidewalks or walkways? Our bus makes another […]
LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR (France) Worldcrunch Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt won gold in the Men’s 100 meter final in the London 2012 Olympics on Sunday, becoming only the second sprinter to win two consecutive 100m Olympic races. LONDRES 2012 – Usain BOLT double champion… par VideosMediaStudio Bolt shot to fame during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and […]
LA NACION (Argentina) CLARIN (Argentina) Worldcrunch BUENOS AIRES – The Argentine capital was at a virtual standstill for a fourth straight day Tuesday as a major subway strike began to take its toll on both people and businesses, La Nacion reports. The strike, which started Friday evening, is expected to continue for at least another […]
About a hundred cyclists streamed the streets of Hanoi on August 5 waving rainbow pennants and yelling “Support gay marriage!” Good Lord! Has prudish Vietnam initiated a sort of ‘social coming out,’ even before turning to democracy? The fact is that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a tightly controlled single-party state still shaped by Confucian […]
LE TEMPS, APS, THE LOCAL, LE MATIN (Switzerland) Worldcrunch BERN – The Swiss Public Welfare Society (SSUP) has launched a contest to change Switzerland’s national lyrics by August 2015, reports Le Temps. According the newspaper, the association finds the existing lyrics too awkward and outdated — so much so that a majority of Swiss don’t […]
FOSHAN – As a professional criminal defense lawyer, I have been to detention centers everywhere. They are of course all different, but at a recent first-time meeting with a criminal suspect he was separated from me by frosted glass. Because I had come all the way from Beijing, the pre-trial official of the Public Security […]
Protests are rising against plans to convert vast tracks of the sprawling Rome movie studios that were at the heart of La Dolce Vita, both in real life and on the big screen.
URUGUAIANA – Deportations, detention centers, �coyotes� helping to stow away immigrants in car trunks and boats to try to cross borders undetected. Although it may sound like a scene along the border between the United States and Mexico, this is instead the deep south of Brazil. Uruguaiana, a town in the southern state of Rio […]
LE PARISIEN, L’EQUIPE (France), TELEGRAPH (UK), L.A. TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch LONDON – Just after winning the team gold in the men’s team track sprint, British cyclist Philip Hindes admitted he had deliberately crashed in the heats in order to get a second chance at the race, the Telegraph reported. “We were saying if we have […]
Full statistics aren’t yet available — but even with partial numbers, it is clear that teen pregnancies are on the rise in Burundi. So far this year, 30 students from the Budahunga communal school in the Kirundo province have already been expelled for being pregnant. Ten others from two private schools of Bujumbura have suffered […]
EFE, EL COLOMBIANO (Colombia) MEDELLIN – The luxurious “prison” that infamous Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar built for himself and lived in for a year starting in the summer of 1991 is now going to become a home for the poor elderly, EFE reports. The palatial “prison,” called La Catedral, boasted splendid rooms, a gym […]
A new demography study shows that the much ballyhooed rise in the retirement age to 67 simply delays the hard questions about how to finance pensions as Germany’s population ages.
YAHOO! (USA), NEW ZEALAND HERALD (NZ), THE AUSTRALIAN (AUS) LONDON – New Zealand taekwondo athlete Logan Campbell has rejected being labeled “a pimp” after it was known he had financed his dream to take part in the London Olympics by running a brothel. The Kiwi athlete came under fire for opening a 14-room brothel in […]
BEIJING – Recently, the Chinese newspaper Global Times seems to have become less sensational than it used to be. But the other day, one of their commentary pieces showed they hadn’t lost their ability to shock — It was titled: “A proposal for repealing the appellation of intellectuals.” As expected, within a short time China’s […]
SALON, QUORA, KQ 103, CBS CLEVELAND (USA), HERALD SUN (Australia) Worldcrunch On Monday, writes Salon, Missy Franklin competed in two Olympic races in 15 minutes. She barely had time to get from one pool to the next, let alone make a pit stop along the way. Which made the website wonder: Since toilet trips can […]
LONDON – The telephone at Stephen Holt’s tailoring business hasn’t stopped ringing for days. Photos of his shop-front window in the English town of Surbiton are all over the Internet. Holt wanted to feature the Olympics somehow in his window display, but as a “non-sponsor” of the Games, he was strictly forbidden to do so: […]
When a marketing ploy blows up in your face: French online tee-shirt retailer Early Flicker has become Anonymous’ new target after trademarking the hacktivist’s logo and slogan.
XINHUA (China), CHINA DAILY (China), BBC NEWS (UK) LONDON – Eight women badminton players from Korea, China, and Indonesia were disqualified from the London Olympics for unsporting conduct on Wednesday. Chinese double players Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli are accused by the Badminton World Federation of deliberately losing a game on Tuesday to get easier […]
In northern Mali, Islamist extremists are on a rampage, destroying Sufi Muslim shrines and historical treasures. In a Timbuktu library, a man has vowed to protect his precious manuscripts from the fundamentalist wrath that has taken over the city.
COPENHAGEN – It’s party time in Christiania, a neighborhood of the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Hundreds have gathered to listen to Sussie & Leo, a crazy duet that plays old rock and roll hits with a certain touch of self-mockery. “I’m an absolute fan,” says Inge, a fifty-something-year-old woman with blue hair. “This group is part […]
NPR, LOS ANGELES TIMES, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE NATION, ABC NEWS (USA) Worldcrunch Gore Vidal, American author and essayist whose prolific career spanned six decades, died Tuesday at age 86, reports NPR. He died at home from complications of pneumonia. “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” RIP Gore Vidal, a great intellectual […]
DIE WELT (Germany)Worldcrunch LONDON – Different strokes for different folks, as the saying goes – although different courses for different horses might be more apt as far as the four-legged athletes competing in the Summer Olympics go. What makes the horses happy makes the riders happy, and that includes providing their mounts with the equine […]
A glimmering reminder that Europe still has some spare money (and time) to spend: even as Spain’s economy spirals out of control, vacations are still on -though shorter, cheaper and closer to home.
BEIJING – We all know about China’s economic growth. But the country also has the world’s fastest growing obese population in absolute numbers, according to data from the World Health Organization. This is not only because China has the world’s biggest population, but also because it has seen proportionately sharp rise in obesity. In 1980, […]
THE INDEPENDENT, THE GUARDIAN (UK), BRISBANE TIMES, THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia) Worldcrunch LONDON – Sixteen-year-old Ye Shiwen is the teenage torpedo, the Chinese swimming prodigy whose devastating performances have already made her the Games’ most talked-about new star, writes the Independent. But on Monday, after winning the 400 meters individual medley in a world-record […]
SAO PAULO – With an average of 14 murders a day over the past 18 months, the southeastern Brazilian state of Sao Paulo has a bona fide violence problem. In the first six months of the year, the number of homicides was 8% higher across the region than the first six months of 2011. And […]
LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch Baddre-Eddine Bentaïb, a French Muslim from the city of Orléans, has set up a website mapping and providing information on mosques throughout France. Now, he is embarking on a “Ramadan road trip” that will take him around the country. When travelling around France for his work, Bentaïb discovered there was no […]
LE POINT , NICE MATIN (France) Worldcrunch NICE – Overzealous forest rangers of the Mercantour National Park in the French Alps, gave a 1,500 euro fine to an association for organizing a catholic mass without authorization. At first, the rangers told them that it was forbidden to hold a religious event or play the saxophone […]
In Rwanda, where 60% of people live below the poverty line and land is scarce, burying the dead comes at too high a price. A new bill before Parliament would introduce cremation, a totally novel concept in this country.
The Tate Modern museum in London, is not like any museum you’ve every seen. It’s an ever-evolving space, adapting to new art forms as they come along.
Blackmailing, drug dealing, and murder…. if you think the female mafia bosses are softer than their male counterparts, think again.
During the month-long Ramadan fast, Muslims have to refrain from eating, drinking and smoking from dawn to dusk. A look in Morocco, when an extra burden for those who can’t indulge in their nicotine habit. But there may be a silver lining.