Worldcrunch
WASHINGTON — Calvin is discovering a new popularity in America. No, not the character from the Bill Watterson comic Calvin and Hobbes, but John Calvin, the 16th-century French Protestant Reformer. The rise of this latest wave of neo-Calvinism, which follows another revival at the beginning of the 20th century, is all the more surprising because […]
A side-effect of the digital revolution may be the death of cursive writing. Though some may argue that pure utilitarianism is a trap, students must be prepared for a different future.
After striking it big in the U.S., Jurgen Hermann battled financial powers back in Liechtenstein. A reporter recalls the unraveling of a man now accused of murdering a top banker.
BEIJING — A friend of mine recently made an appointment for his heart problem at the cardiac unit of a very well-reputed hospital. When he finally managed to see the chief physician, the doctor’s first question wasn’t “What’s the matter with you?” or “How long have you been feeling unwell?” but instead, “What guanxi have […]
Behavior psychology, first introduced in the U.S. during the 1960s, is now a widely accepted part of criminal investigation tactics. A French special unit handles some 40 extreme cases a year.
SEOUL — South Koreans undergo more plastic surgery per capita than anywhere else in the world. Some surveys show that one in five women there have undergone a procedure or received Botox injections. All around the Apgujeong subway station in Seoul, for example, there are advertisements for plastic surgery clinics, showing before and after images of women who have gone under the knife. Images like these are among the reasons why 19-year-old Woori had some work done about a month ago. But she says pressure from friends and family was an even stronger influence. “Whenever I saw pictures of my […]
KABUL — Boxing is Shigofa Haidari’s passion. But in Afghanistan, that means practicing three days a week in Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium, where the Taliban used to organize public executions. Haidari is wearing a light headscarf today. An injury prevents her from training, but she is happy to watch her friends go through all the basic […]
As the world’s largest democracy goes to the polls for national elections, a closer look at India’s struggle to improve its schools through privatization. Even for the poor.
There are medically proven explanations for why our minds and bodies generally feel better when the season changes. So, goodbye Winter Blues, and hello Spring Euphoria!
On March 18, hundreds of Taiwanese university students stormed and occupied the Legislative Yuan, the island nation’s parliament. Five days later, they joined other civic groups and invaded the Executive Yuan, before being evicted forcibly by the police. In technical terms, the demonstrators were protesting the unilateral decision of Taiwan’s ruling party to pass the […]
Below are some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world. But first, our Worldcrunch Pick A previously unheard song by cult singer-songwriter Nick Drake, entitled Reckless Jane, has appeared online, almost four decades after the English musician’s death. Drake began writing it with his friend Beverley Martyn two months before he died. […]
They must look good and know how to…shop.
An Armenian-born American businessman has been paying to book Europe’s finest concert halls so he and his orchestra can play for tiny, unimpressed audiences. Who is this mystery man?
L’AQUILA — In this city in central Italy, there is an entire generation of children who ride in cars and go to restaurants like other Italian kids, but still have never gone to a proper school. These are the kids from L’Aquila, hit by an earthquake five years ago — on April 6, 2009 — […]
An Argentine couple struggling to afford rising housing prices went down to the dock and took matters into their own hands.
Tough on crime and blatently ambitious, Valls was plucked by President Hollande to lead a new government after Sunday’s disaster in local elections. It’s a risky choice, for many reasons.
President Dilma Rousseff’s once widespread popularity is sinking. But if Brazilian protests reignite when the World Cup begins, it could have major consequences on her October reelection bid.
KIGALI — In the courtyard of the Ecoplastic factory in the Rwandan capital, a group of men and women are hanging plastic bags on a line with clothes pins, like they would do to dry a load of wash. “People pick them here and there and bring them to us. We buy them and process […]
We bid farewell to eight global notables who died this past month.
Could landlocked Switzerland finally get some coastline? There is a movement afoot pushing Swiss annexation of the Italian island of Sardinia.
In serving the plundered art worth hundreds of millions, historical justice is being served. But it comes at the expense of legal rectitude.
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — The saying goes that if the word “but” is featured in a sentence, nothing that comes before it should be taken seriously. Whether this is always true, I don’t really know, but what happened after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan targeted Twitter at a political rally in Bursa reminds me of this […]
A political and environmental coup de théatre by Greenpeace has drawn attention to the need to protect the melting glaciers in Chile’s southern reaches.
Protecting the ‘green lung’ of the sprawling, wheezing metropolis is becoming increasingly harder in the face of surging population and hungry real estate developers.
Below are some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world. Worldcrunch Pick “We’re making a single-sale collector’s item. This is like somebody having the scepter of an Egyptian king.” This is how Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, in an interview with Forbes, described the hip-hop collective’s surprise new album, Once Upon A Time In […]
BUENOS AIRES — A shortage of affordable rentals in the Argentine capital has become manna for determined squatters who use “tricks of the trade” to move into once-cherished homes. Not just a homeowner’s nightmare, these situations are becoming bureaucratic ones for many as well. At the top of the list of this new breed of […]
-Opinion- BEIJING — After trying it out for less than two months, China’s southeast city of Guangzhou has announced it will suspend the “safe baby hatch” program, which provided a secure place to leave abandoned babies to increase their chance for survival. Since Guangzhou’s Children’s Social Welfare Home launched the arrangement earlier this year, 262 […]
Reports say the North Korean leader has made his slicked-back, shaved-on-the-sides coiff mandatory for young men in his country. Here’s how international VIPs look with Kim Jong hair.
A Latin American writer describes a single moment in time in Miami, where the sad contradictions of American culture were on full display.
BAHIA BLANCA – A transsexual in this Argentine city died after injecting silicone into her backside in what was most likely an attempt to look more feminine, the Buenos Aires daily Clarín reports. Cecilia Báez, 35, was at her home in Bahía Blanca when she lost consciousness after injecting the silicone into one of her […]
BADEN-BADEN — There is no fur in sight here — no wraps, mink collars, not even real-fur trim on a hood at Baden-Baden’s casino. Granted, this is not ideal fur weather, as the Sparkasse Bank thermometer reads 22° Celsius. But for rich Russians, it is still very much the winter travel season, and one wonders […]
A February double murder in the South African city of Soweto illustrates a quiet rise in demon worship among teenagers, influenced in part by American pop culture icons.
Weeks before Marquez’s death at 87, the Bogota daily wrote how the legendary novelist was followed right until the end by the ghosts of his strongest character: his mother.
“Clean and fair..” is how Egypt’s judiciary was described across the airwaves after the decision to execute 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
ABDUL REHMAN GOTH — Ahmad Baloch couldn’t remember life ever changing much in this centuries-old fishing village just outside Karachi. But when two nuclear power plants started being built nearby, coast guard and naval security personnel arrived. “They don’t allow us free mobility in the waters,” he says of his fishing trade in Abdul Rehman Goth. “What are we going to do?” Fears about a terrorist attack on the nuclear power plants have led to massive security around them, leaving the fishermen locked out. “There are not enough fish recently,” Baloch says. “We’re just worried for our next generation.” Families […]
Amid an ongoing public debate in France on end-of-life palliative care, doctors tell Le Monde how they secretly help their patients die.
BERLIN — Over the past week, the term “original inhabitants” has been used repeatedly to characterize Crimean Tatars, who seem to be the only inhabitants of the peninsula who don’t see a home for themselves in Russia. “The original inhabitants since the late Middle Ages were the Tatars,” a serious historian and professor of East […]
NEW DELHI — As India’s national elections approach, the country’s middle class is the center of attention. Analysts cite it as the decisive demographic in the vote slated next month. It is true that the electoral weight of the middle class hasn’t stopped growing: according to the Asian Development Bank, the Indian middle class rose […]
Below are some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world. Worldcrunch Pick British singer Kate Bush announced Friday on her website that she will play her first series of shows since 1979 in August and September across the UK. The first woman to top the British charts with a song of her […]
PALERMO — Italy was in shock again this week after a 2-year-old boy was killed in a revenge hit by the Sacra Corona Unita (SCU) organized crime syndicate on a Puglia motorway Monday night. The little boy, Domenico Petruzzelli, was one of three people, along with his mother and her partner — a convicted murderer […]