LA REPUBBLICA, CORIERRE DELLA SERA (Italy) Worldcrunch LA SPEZIA – Sounds like a classic recipe for summer fun: little kids, bubbles, ice cream cones….Chinese bacteria? A huge stock of allegedly toxic made-in-China bubble soap toys has been seized by Italian Police, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica report. Italian children, to whom the products were […]
Category: Society
An old man, a pregnant woman, a crowded bus. Why doesn’t anyone give up their seats anymore? There are as many theories as there are people, polite and otherwise.
Categories
What’s Wrong With Chinese Education
China’s education system produces students highly adept at reciting back what their teachers tell them, and teachers who focus only on regurgitating what the state textbooks contain. What’s lost is the curiosity and creativity that motor
From the Ming Dynasty to Hong Kong gangsters, shark fin was once the symbolic ingredient of Chinese people of wealth and status. But times and tastes are bound to change.
Once South Americans looking for residency in the US or Europe would concoct bogus unions with friends. Now in Brazil, the game has flipped.
SING TAO (Hong Kong), LIANHE ZAOBAO (Singapore) Worldcrunch HONG KONG – The Chinese political system is one of “progress, selflessness and solidarity.” And the “Western” alternative of multiple political parties? Well, that’s sure to bring “malignant party struggle, and it’s the people who pay…” Such keen analysis is standard fare from the corridors of China’s […]
With its blue waters and soft breezes, the island of Zante is the essence of a Greek paradise. It turns out it was also home to widespread scams of state benefits that help explain what is so deeply broken in modern Greece.
LE MONDE, LE COURRIER DE L’ATLAS (France), AFP TUNIS – A Tunisian university dean risks a five year prison sentence for allegedly slapping a student who refused to take off her veil, Le Monde reports. The case is the latest development in the bitter row at Manouba University between secularists and Salafi students who follow […]
NANFANG DAILY (China), GUCHENG.COM (China) Worldcrunch GUANGZHOU – For a country like China, founded on the precepts of fairness and justice, where the proletariat are supposedly the masters, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Thanks to photographs posted this week by a Chinese blogger, we see the space under a viaduct in Guangzhou city covered with […]
Lyon is the hometown of France’s new Women’s Rights Minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who wants new measures to stamp out prostitution. With French sex workers demonstrating in the streets, Le Monde looks at how prostitution has evolved in Lyon.
Drug dealers often “cut” their pure product with other substances to increase profit margins. A seven-year-long Brazilian police study found such relatively benign substances as caffeine to some pretty awful stuff.
Categories
Giant ‘Pig King’ Gets Buddhist Funeral
CHANGJIANG NEWS NET (China), HUNAN ONLINE (China) Worldcrunch WENZHOU – A few days ago a special Buddhist funeral ceremony was held in a temple at Taishun in Zhejiang province. But it was not a person being laid to rest, but rather a renowned “Pig King” from a nearby village, the Hunan online reported. Dozens of […]
GUARDIAN, TWITTER WORLDWIDE Worldcrunch In a bitter defeat for large media and pharmaceutical companies, the European Parliament on Wednesday roundly rejected the global ACTA anti-counterfeiting accord. The Guardian reports that the US and Japan are likely to proceed with approval of the international accord, and it remains to be seen whether European supporters try to […]
Interview: The legendary Italian actress shares memories of when it all began, and describes a life that remains rich with honors and new artistic challenges.
Here’s one way to try to get elected mayor – buy yourself a village. And thanks to eBay, you can make an offer with a click of your mouse.
Worldcrunch ÉPOCA (Brazil) SÃO PAULO – We can all agree that Brazil is the country of beautiful beaches, sensual rhythms and slim, gorgeous bodies. Right? Well, at least for that last category, we may have to leave things loose on our definitions. Once considered worldwide sex symbols of toned slimness, the ladies of Brazil are […]
The approval of European bailout measures has been widely criticized. But a German branch of the global activist group Attac went the next step, comparing the fiscal response to a 1933 law that paved the way for Hitler’s regime.
Worldcrunch TIANFU MORNING POST (China) CHENGDU – These days in China, marriage proposals are over-the-top and the richer you are the better it is. Last month, the spotlight was on 11 very rich men looking for wives, kicking off a high-profile search in ten major cities. Needless to say, the ladies the men were looking […]
Worldcrunch LA REPUBBLICA (Italy), EL DIARIO VASCO (Spain) , SPORTS ILLUSTRATED With Spain’s Euro 2012 soccer championship victory, a 4-0 trouncing of Italy (the biggest ever margin in a European final) that secures an unprecedented third major title in a row, the question is on every sports fan’s lips: Is Spain the best national soccer […]
It may look like art, but it’s just a beautiful dress: Mary Katrantzou is leading fashion’s digital print boom, a new generation of designers creating clothes with the help of such tools as Photoshop.
In the region of Bavaria, there is an often hidden parallel justice system, where imams and self-appointed judges circumvent the German legal system and Islamic law prevails.
Jealousy, fights, fits of rage…even murder: Italy has noticed a rise in reported cases of 60-something and 70-something men who kill their wives and lovers. What ever happened to those his and hers rocking chairs?
Worldcrunch WANT DAILY (China) SHANGHAI – There have been numerous recent reports of female passengers being harassed on Shanghai’s subway. Instead of acknowledging the complaints and enforcing security measures, the Shanghai subway authority has decided instead to post a photo of a woman wearing a transparent dress clearly showing her underwear on its website. The […]
Wolfgang Draeger has dubbed Woody Allen’s parts in German since the American actor-director’s first film appearance in 1965. Did vanity drive Allen to replace Draeger for the German version of “To Rome With Love?”
Worldcrunch LE MONDE (France), NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GABON – Authorities in Gabon burned more than 4.5 tons of illegal ivory this week after the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species released a report showing that elephant poaching has reached a record high in the past few years. The year 2011 saw the highest recorded levels […]
Worldcrunch IL SOLE 24 ORE (Italy), DIE WELT (Germany) BBC NEWS (UK), LE MONDE (France) BRUSSELS – Spain and Italy…Spain and Italy. Sports junkies know by now the lineup for the finals of the 2012 European Soccer Championship, after Italy defeated the favored Germans 2-1 in Warsaw on Thursday night, following Spain’s semifinal win over […]
Categories
Report: DSK And Wife Of 20 Years Split
Worldcrunch CLOSER, VOICI (France) REUTERS PARIS – Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his wife, prominent French journalist Anne Sinclair, have split after 20 years of marriage, a source close to DSK has told Reuters. The French edition of the weekly magazine Closer first reported the news in its online edition, adding that Sinclair, […]
When a family in Congo suffers an illness or poverty, the blame is often laid on one of the children, who may wind up accused of sorcery. If that happens, other truly horrible things may follow.
Categories
German Court Bans Religious Circumcision
Worldcrunch DER SPIEGEL, FT DEUTSCHLAND (Germany) COLOGNE – A court in Germany’s western city of Cologne has banned the circumcision of young people for religious reasons. The court has deemed that the religious practice, part of both Jewish and Muslim traditions, amounted to bodily harm. Judges did allow that boys who declared they wanted to […]
Zhou Yinzi moved last year from China to Plainsboro, NJ. Used to dreary classes, she discovered a new world of sexy principals and crushworthy teachers, piercings and booming T-shirts. An exchange student’s love letter — to her teachers, most of
Worldcrunch LES INROCKUPTIBLES (France) PARIS – French marijuana activists are stepping up their fight to legalize the drug, opening several “Cannabis Social Clubs’ across the country. Known as a CSC, they are cooperatives of regular marijuana users who grow the plant for their own consumption, explains French magazine Les Inrockuptibles. The goal is to be […]
Categories
China’s Power Gap
Essay: Why do powerful officials break the rules and earn promotions, while a migrant mother faces bureaucratic traps that don’t allow her child to go to school? Facing up to the question of administrative power is fundamental for China’
LA REPUBBLICA (Italy) ROME – Online homophobia has reached a new low in Italy where a Facebook page circulated this month with the declaration: “Aborting a gay (fetus) is an act of faith.” Rome daily La Repubblica reported that the Italian language Facebook account was opened on June 19 with this false claim: “Thanks to […]
Essay: Swiss supermarket chain Migros plans to introduce a special label for products imported from Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. This attempt at “transparency”instead recalls the ‘J’ that Nazis
Worldcrunch AP, CNN Nora Ephron, the Manhattan-born screenwriter, filmmaker and journalist best known for her romantic comedies (When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle, Julie & Julia…) has died from leukemia in New York, aged 71. Ephron will be remembered as an author who “challenged and thrived in the male-dominated worlds of movies and journalism […]
Exclusive: Two weeks ago she sparked an international uproar in her defense with a grisly photo of her dead would-be second child, after a forced abortion for violating China’s one-child policy. Feng is now being hounded by locals, and her husban
20 MINUTEN ONLINE (Switzerland) ZURICH – “Maybe we need another Kristallnacht…this time for mosques.” That tweet was sent from the account of Alexander Müller, a member of the Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP), a right-wing populist party. The Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, is the name given to an infamous night in 1938, when the Nazis […]
A portrait of the Artist: arrogant and aloof, ambiguous loony, Mephistophelian charmer, lonely provocateur, clothes designer, baroque musician, and Juventus soccer fan.
A French squash-loving hydrodynamics scientist has finally answered a time-old question: why does hitting the ball near the corners make its trajectory utterly unpredictable?
You probably know him…or her. Charming, manipulative, a smooth talker and guilt-tripper who ends up making you do what he (or she) wants. So-called “narcissistic perverts” are all around us, explains a growing body of psychological res