A deadly car crash in Singapore by a wealthy driver from China has sparked a new round of national resentment toward the Chinese. And Singapore is not alone.
Category: Society
The old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” has never been truer. An initiative to fight against prejudice, the Human Library project “rents” out people who have fallen on hard times or who have had a life
JAPAN TIMES/KYODO NEWS (Japan) YOKOHAMA – Japan is known for its vending machines: there is one on every street corner, selling anything from underwear and socks, to toys and green tea. But here’s one you may (or may not) be jonesing for: a vending machine that sells marijuana. Last week police in Kanagawa, near Yokohama, […]
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Nicaragua’s Sex Abuse “Epidemic”
LA PRENSA (Nicaragua) MANAGUA – A leading women’s rights organization is calling on Nicaraguan authorities to declare a “yellow alert” over the country’s growing sexual abuse “epidemic,” La Prensa reports. Martha María Blandón, the Central American director of the international rights group Ipas, cites official court statistics to suggest that abuse cases are on the […]
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Are Power Moms The New Gays?
Essay: ‘Brigitte Mom’ is a new German magazine for the post-modern mother, who the publishers want us to believe are the hippest urban creatures since upwardly mobile gays and lesbians.
EL MUNDO (Spain) MADRID – Has the European economic crisis managed to sully the Eurovision Song Contest? The 2012 edition of the competition, which takes place Saturday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, includes competitors from an array of debt-ridden countries. This is a European song contest, after all. But reports say that contestant Pastora […]
CORRIERE DELLA SERA (Italy) ROME – An Italian diplomat who was spotted last year performing on stage in a fascist rock band has been brought back from Japan, Corriere della Sera reported. Controversy had erupted when Mario Vattani, visiting home at the time during his stint at the General Consul of Italia in Osaka, was […]
Even though Brazil’s hosting of the World Cup and Summer Olympics are two and four years away, it is apparently already “clean-up” time for at least one Rio de Janeiro slum.
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Jeremy Lin Is A Junior High Exam Topic
LIBERTY TIMES (Taiwan) TAICHUNG – Is Jeremy Lin Taiwanese or American? This dumb question, as some put it, appeared on a recent test at a Taiwanese junior high school. Half of the students answered “Taiwanese.” Wrong! But the apparently light exam topic about an NBA basketball player has set off hot debate in Taiwan, where […]
Op-Ed: In China, the government has long been deciding who does what, where and when, even jailing people for moving without a “permit.” Now, its “Building The Socialist Countryside” policy has been relocating farmers i
EL TIEMPO (Colombia) BOGOTA – For the first time in the country’s history, a top Colombian court has awarded adoption rights to a homosexual man. The court made the landmark decision Tuesday, allowing American journalist Chandler Burr to leave Colombia with two boys – aged 10 and 13 – he legally adopted there in early […]
PAGINA DE MEDIA (Romania) This story has been updated After being the source of much mockery, Romanian reporter Adrian Boioglu wants to set the record straight. During a live weather report from Constanta on the country’s Black Sea coast, the roving news reporter from the Realitatea news channel appeared to get caught red-handed as he […]
EL UNIVERSAL (Ecuador) MADRID – For Ecuadorans hoping to escape poverty, Spain was long seen as a land of opportunity. Nowadays? Not so much. Due to the prolonged economic crisis in Spain, many Ecuadorans who took up residence there are ready to seek greener pastures — or simply return to their homeland (where 21% of […]
ÉCRANS, RTL (France) PARIS – Four French anti-racism organizations have sued Google for its automatic suggestion function that prompts search requests to see if certain public figures are Jewish, French website Écrans reports. The Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF), SOS Racism and two other groups said the search engine corporation’s “auto-suggestion” tool was breaching […]
In Burundi, birthdays, baptisms and burial ceremonies tend to be marked with big family gatherings. Guests are expected to help out by offering, for example, a case of beer. For families with modest incomes, the price of so much partying is often untenabl
LA TERCERA (Chile) SANTIAGO – Emergency workers in Chile have pulled off another daring mine rescue, lifting two men to safety early Wednesday morning from a partially collapsed coal pit in the town of Colonel. The rescue comes nearly two years after the world was captivated by the drama of Chile’s “los 33,” a group […]
LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR (France) CANNES – Alongside all the beauty on display, the 2012 Cannes film festival is also revealing an ugly side: first, reports of sea dumping off the scenic French coastline, then the notable lack of women directors, and now anger growing about celebrities demanding payment for press interviews. Canadian motion picture production […]
A series of drownings in the Garonne river has traumatized the French city of Bordeaux. First believed to be the work of a “serial pusher,” it has become clear that the cause of this spate of accidental deaths is binge drinking.
In the small French-Swiss border town of Viry, a new “ecodistrict” is being built from scratch. With environmentally friendly homes, the town is aiming to attract a rich population from neighboring Geneva – to the detriment of locals, wh
The Turkish Parliament is weighing whether to revise a clause in its Workplace Safety Law that could lead to the dismissal of employees who attend work after having consumed alcohol.
EUROPE 1 (France) PARIS – Sport can been a good way to escape the grind of prison life. Last week, that was quite literally the case for one inmate in France who used a basketball game to make his getaway. But what made last Friday’s daring escape all the more galling for authorities was that […]
American artist Jeff Koons wows again in a new exhibit at the Beyeler Foundation outside Basel, Switzerland. Divided into three parts – the new, banality and celebration – the show is unapologetically trite but wholly seductive.
Op-Ed: The trial of accused corrupt businessman Lai, who’d been extradited from Canada, leaves some in China more than a bit unsatisfied — life sentence notwithstanding.
YANGCHENG EVENING NEWS (China) GUANGZHOU – Eleven anonymous multi-millionaire Chinese entrepreneurs, all multi-millionaires, have posted ads in ten cities in a new public search for wives. The chance to marry one of the men, each with a net worth of at least 100 million RMB ($15 million), found no shortage of eager applicants, reports the […]
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France’s Little Soccer Team That Could
L’EQUIPE (France) The small city of Montpellier won the French soccer championship for the first time in its history on Sunday. At the top of many sports in the country, the southern city team beat Auxerre, claiming first place ahead its main competitor: the all-powerful PSG, the top team from Paris. To have an idea […]
On the outskirts of Delhi, Gurgaon is archetypal of the new middle class ghettos sprouting all over the country: a disorganized gated community of luxury condos, shopping malls and golf courses, but that’s missing basic infrastructure and public
LE MONDE (France) LILLE – Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s legal troubles have taken a troubling new turn. The former director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and onetime French presidential hopeful has been cited in a new ‘gang rape” investigation, a prosecutor in the northern French city of Lille announced Monday. The preliminary investigation concerns events that […]
DIARIO DEL SUR (Mexico) ARRIAGA – The impoverished Mexican state of Chiapas couldn’t be less hospitable to the many Central American migrants who cross over from Guatemala in search of better opportunities up north. In the border town of Arriaga, criminals prey on the new arrivals, as do coyotes (people smugglers) and even local authorities, […]
Mounting a television screen on a urinal is the latest way for advertisers to reach a “captive” audience — in this case, exclusively male.
PREMIERE (France) CANNES – Marilyn Monroe will unfortunately be the only woman to be in the spotlight during the Cannes Film Festival this year. Indeed, every single one of the 22 movies competing for the Palme d’Or was directed by a man. As is often the case, women’s only role will be to present the […]
A court in the German city of Detmold is currently trying the case of Arzu Ö, a Kurdish teenager who was murdered last November, presumably by members of her own family. Prosecutors say she “dishonored” her family, followers of the little-known Yazidi rel
LA RAZÓN (Argentina) BUENOS AIRES – An Argentine dog groomer has landed himself in a heap of trouble after accidentally killing one of his canine clients. The dog in question died on Oct. 2, 2010 due to a sedative overdose, La Razón reported. The groomer, identified as Mario Cabibbo, injected the drug prior to trimming […]
This weekend, the soccer team from Montpellier may become the champion of the French Ligue 1 for the first time in its history. It would be just one more success for this small southern city at the top in 22 different sports.
Some working parents couldn’t make it without the grandparents taking on steady child-care duties. But in Zurich, Switzerland, if the kids are with the grandparents for an extended stay, it must be reported to the city — or the family risks a fi
Chinese have set out en masse in recent years to find their fortune as immigrants in Europe. Lately, though, more than usual are returning home in the face of Europe’s economic crisis and opportunities in their booming native land. In Wenzhou, th
CORRIERE DELLA SERA (Italy) Church and home are twin pillars of life in Italy, a historically Catholic country that plays host to the Vatican. And so it is, not surprisingly perhaps, that the high priests of home furnishing, Ikea, have moved far ahead of the Catholic Church – not to mention, the Italian government — […]
French women buy more shoes each year than their other European counterparts. But what KIND of shoes says even more. Italian women are more apt to go for high heels…and others?
China’s modern legal system has thousands of laws governing every aspect of life. But instead of using this system to further democracy, Chinese officials increasingly use it to harass and intimidate the civil rights lawyers fighting for justice.
Analysis: In Menglian County, a remote area of China’s Yunnan province, young women’s passport applications are being rejected. Local officials say it’s because too many have gone abroad to become prostitutes, and come back with
Founded in 2009, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is vying to become one of the world’s top universities. It is trying hard to attract students from overseas, notably Brazil, by showering them with perks that are unheard