The current President of the Republic mulls whether to stand against his old ally Prime Minister Erdogan in upcoming direct presidential elections. Turkey’s political future is at stake.
Category: Society
BEIJING — In China, the core users of the professional social networking site LinkedIn are white-collar and managerial-level staff of large companies, particularly multinationals or joint ventures with foreign firms. Still, the network has a long way to go if it wants to recruit native Chinese. The users it can claim in China tend to […]
The French navy has announced it will allow women to work in submarines starting in 2017. A Le Temps columnist contemplates whether that takes gender equality too far.
Two sisters return to the camp 70 years after they were first brought there, sharing memories of snowball fights, feelings of guilt and the need to never forget.
Two Argentine authors dig deeper into the causes – and cycles – of poverty in Latin America.
A smile, a chuckle, a LOL, a full-throated guffaw: getting yourself laughing is good for the soul, good for your health.
CORDOBA — Back in 1984, UNESCO included Spain’s Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba on its World Heritage list. Thirty years later, the site that tourist guides describe as one of Andalusia’s architectural masterpieces — a symbol of the golden age of the Umayyad civilization and of the “concord” between religions — now represents conflict. Though the exceptional […]
MUNICH — Audiences mostly find the sex-obsessed protagonists of Steve McQueen’s movie Shame and Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac bizarre and alien, or at the very least irritating. But there really are people like that in real life. Take, for example, this 58-year-old man somewhere in the eastern part of Germany sitting by his phone. He’s […]
Gossip columns and scurrilous TV shows peer into people’s private lives more every day. Not about freedom of information, they perpetuate the social complexes of the Colonial era.
As war upends the economy in Damascus, a few brave souls are launching small business projects that provide jobs for those desperate to work.
QUINGGOU — It was back in the mid-1990s, amid China’s major economic reforms. Liu Changxia and other men in the village of Qinggou felt it was “time to leave home” because the farm wasn‘t bringing in enough and their families needed to be provided for. The whole country was talking of nothing but economic growth. […]
Below are some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world. Worldcrunch Pick Jack White broke a record last week when he recorded the title track from his forthcoming album Lazaretto just hours before selling it to eager fans who queued up outside his studio. Fans could buy a vinyl 45 of the […]
Photographs that have caught our eye and captured events.
-OpEd- This is the time of year when American colleges inform applicants whether they’ll be accepted or not. Admission to prestigious universities grows tougher every year. Stanford University“s acceptance rate has fallen from 22.4% in 1970 to 5.7% in 2013. It’s the same for the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, […]
If you’re here searching for the secret to eternal life forget it, we’re not there yet. But in the meantime, here’s some supercentenarians from around the world with their own secrets to a long life. Some might surprise you!
Much of the rhetoric around human resources strategy involves the idea that working in a team is the key to succees. But in some cases, researchers say, it can even breed laziness.
Just before last week’s death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El Espectador spoke with arguably the only other Latin American author in his league, 2010 Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.
Residents of Ballarpur city in India woke up to an unpleasant surprise this week, after a full-grown leopard had taken shelter in a cowshed during the night. Early Monday morning, local residents of the busy neighborhood, with the help of a forest department team, eventually managed to capture the leopard. The one injury reported can […]
Falsely considered a type of magic, achieving hypnotic trance is already part of our everyday lives. Its potential applications for medical science are vast, if still largely unexplained.
Results from the world’s large largest airline rating portal Skytrax give high marks in Asia: Exactly seven airlines in the world have been give five-star ratings: ANA (All Nippon Airways), Asiana Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, Hainan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines. But at the other end of the scale is another Asian […]
It was about noon on a Friday last August, and Jawdat Ghorab was fishing some 100 meters away from the shore. “I was throwing out my net, and pulling it up slowly, just like I always do,” he said. All of a sudden, the net became very heavy, so heavy that he couldn’t pull it […]
A new German study shows that half of people born today will live to be 100. Surely this calls for a new way to think about life – and lifestyle.
Even if you don’t judge him South America’s greatest writer, there’s no denying that his life lived with joy and principle is the stuff of modern legend for a country, and continent.
Being overly shy isn’t always a simple personality trait, something kids will “grow out of…” It can also reach the point of clinical illness. How to know when your child needs treatment.
Categories
The Myth Of The Asian Math Genius
SHANGHAI — After the excellent performance of Shanghai children in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an expert delegation led by British Education Minister Elizabeth Truss paid a visit to Shanghai recently to learn from the city’s experience in teaching – and teaching math, in particular. The local press reported that the visiting delegation […]
Below are some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world. Worldcrunch Pick Last month, the London-based band Gallon Drunk released their 8th studio album, The Soul Of The Hour, and it’s probably one of the best things you’ll hear this year, or ever. The Soul Of The Hour is as rock’n’roll as […]
Adios Gabo! From Bogota to Warsaw and beyond, the passing of the great Colombian writer is marked with Page One features.
The daughter of Lea Garofalo, who was brutally killed by her Italian mob husband in 2009, courageously speaks out against the dark underworld – and her own father and boyfriend.
“It’s not easy being green.” — Kermit the Frog PARIS – For some of us, being green is a hard-to-quantify choice of using a reusable bag at the grocery storetaking or taking public transport. But for others, environmental friendliness is a hard calculation to reach carbon-neutral status. That means removing as much carbon dioxide from […]
LANZHOU — Over the last few days, panic has been spreading about the drinking water in Lanzhou, the capital city of the northwest Gansu Province. The water contains dangerously high levels of benzene, a cancer-causing substance. Television reports show the public madly rushing to the supermarkets for bottled water. What if this also happens to […]
Critics of both Nestor and Cristina Kirchner have focused on the “populist” nature of their hold on power. But to understand their rule, it may be wiser to follow the money.
ALGIERS – Shaken by the strength of bloggers and Internet users opposed to a fourth term for outgoing Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the head of state’s campaign team didn’t wait long before equipping themselves with their own virtual communication tools. The unprecedented online confrontation has put the Bouteflika’s supporters on the defensive. His team opened […]
Britons and Americans used to depict Germans as obsessed with Nazi uniforms, now our supposed obsession is nudism. A friendly patriotic ode to letting it all hang out.
Long hailed as the future of chess, the Norwegian-born grand master is now, at the ripe age of 23, the reigning world champion. The next question: will he be the greatest of all time?
Categories
Pablo Escobar’s Hippos Are Running Wild
The late Colombian drug lord spent some of his cash on a private zoo, which the Colombian state took over after Escobar was killed. But now, deadly hippopotami have fled the reserve.
Disabled kids can be integrated in regular classes, but only if they are on the university track.
Drones don’t just make news, they are beginning to cover it. Brazil street protests are an early testing ground. But for now, the entertainment press is out ahead of the pack.
Below are some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world. Worldcrunch Pick Union Jacks, parkas and tracksuits. This month marks the 20th anniversary of Britpop, that music genre symbolizing the new pride Britons had for their Kingdom in the 1990s. Now some might say Britpop was born long before April 1994, that […]
The Latin world loves its city public spaces, and their evolving aesthetics can often lead to heated arguments that go beyond simple matters of urban planning.
BOGOTA — Colombia’s National University is working on recycling used banknotes, by processing them into an absorbent material that cleans water and air of pollutants, El Espectador reports. Some 169 million banknotes in Colombia are replaced every year. And the University’s chemical engineering department found that shredding them creates “activated carbon,” a crystalline substance able […]