Chinese tourists flood in, leaving behind filth and stretching public resources. And that’s just scratching the surface. A Hong Kong writer dissects growing tension between two cultures.
Category: Society
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Treating Cancer In War-Torn Syria
DAMASCUS — Syria’s medical infrastructure has crumbled, making traditional treatments hard to come by for patients still living in the country. That has left raditional herbal and medicinal druggists, known as Attareen, as the only real alternative to cancer patients and other long-term care patients trapped in Syria. Jawad, who has lung cancer, often visits Damascus’ Shaalan Market in search of tropical fruits. Readily available and costing between $8 and $14, Jawad and many of his friends who are also cancer patients have included these fruits in their daily diet. “During my online research for alternative cancer treatments, I found […]
A married man from the eastern Chinese province of Anhui was looking for some online hanky-panky. So the man, identified by the Market Star Daily as a forty-something named Mr. Zhang, reached for his mobile phone and clicked on “Shake”, a location-based social plug-in service provided by Weixin (Chinese for WeChat). Zhang began chatting, and […]
Argentine politicians may not all have liked Jorge Bergoglio when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. But from President Kirchner to her potential successors, all want a piece of the pontiff.
An orphanage in this southeastern city received more abandoned babies in a pilot “safe haven” program than anywhere else in the country.
With the world focused on Crimea and trying to figure out what Vladimir Putin will do next, we stumbled upon some old photos of the Russian leader. We couldn’t help notice a certain resemblance…
KASHGAR — The Matang nut cake and skewered kawap (mutton), an ancient Kingdom reduced to ruins in a desert, and the simple imagery of folk singing and dancing: These are the stereotypes most Han Chinese have of the Uyghur people. It made sense for me to travel to find out more in their native land, […]
Egyptian writer Haytham El Wardany’s latest work offers a novel approach to dealing with the capital’s overwhelming excess of aural stimulation.
More than 61% of Greeks aged 25 or younger are unemployed amid the country’s economic crisis. They are educated and demoralized, writes one young woman lucky enough to have work.
JOAL — On the beach here in Joal, a large fishing harbor south of Senegal’s capital of Dakar, a group of women watch as fishermen unload their catch from their motor boats. It wasn’t such a good day. But empty nets are not the only disappointment here. A Russian factory that will transform fresh fish […]
The massacre of 29 people in Kunming this month is related to Xinjiang, a province where the relations between the Han Chinese and Uyghur are more tense than ever.
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Hit It! The St. Patrick’s Day Edition
March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day and while Ireland gets the day off to celebrate, those of Irish decent (and whoever else may be thirsty) will be celebrating this weekend. So, we decided to put a “green” version of Hit It! for this week to get you in the mood. Our bonus video this week […]
KAMAISHI — Tsukayo Ito lost everything in the tsunami three years ago. Since the 2011 disaster, the 88-year-old geisha has been living in a settlement of containers in Kamaishi. On the walls of her tiny living room are the few photos that could be salvaged from the rubble. She has almost no possessions, but still […]
HONG KONG — Rarely do Chinese names appear in news stories about people donating their art collections to museums. That is especially true in the realm of contemporary visual art. But prominent Chinese art collector Guan Yi recently made an exception by donating 37 pieces of his collection to Hong Kong’s M+ Museum, which is […]
The American-invented dream of averting the finality of death by freezing one’s body is a world unto its own. Now it’s spreading to the UK, France and beyond.
It has been one year since Pope Francis was elected to the head of the Catholic Chuch. It was virtually instant stardom for the Argentine-born Pope, and magazines around the world couldn’t get enough of the supremely humble 266th pontiff. UNITED STATES ARGENTINA: BRAZIL: PERU: ITALY: POLAND: PORTUGAL: GREAT BRITAIN/IRELAND: FRANCE: GERMANY: SWITZERLAND: GREECE: NIGERIA: […]
Illnesses in children rise along with the stress levels of their parents, according to a new survey in Germany. Are households with two working parents sending more kids to the doctor?
BERLIN — Sonya* disappeared during the fall school vacation in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The 16-year-old high school student, the daughter of an Algerian and a German, left her family’s house in Konstanz and never returned. Sonya’s parents called the police fearing the worst. Had their daughter been kidnapped? Was she possibly the victim […]
While much of the West has seen the danger in abusing psychoactive drugs such as Valium, sales of these drugs in Brazil are skyrocketing, and doctors warn that it’s out of control.
Why can’t the Italian state take better care of one of the world’s most treasured archeological sites? A tour of ancient artifacts, contemporary degradation and out-of-order bathrooms.
BEIJING — The continuous heavy haze over Beijing is an ever-present reminder of the country’s losing battle with pollution. But it may also have been the engine to jump start the Chinese government’s recent push to promote the sale of and use of electric vehicles. Beijing officials, who had instituted incentives for purchasing electric cars, […]
War, famine and poaching are taking direct aim at the signature five beasts of Africa’s savannah that Ernest Hemingway once made legendary. What can be done now to save them?
KEMPTEN — Perhaps it’s a rather tired comparison, but the Allgäu region in the southern German state of Swabia is well known for its snow. This past weekend it was piled several feet deep on the Nebelhorn mountain. Eight ski lifts were in operation, with winter vacationers on every run. A few miles to the […]
KAMPUNG CHETTI — The Malaysian states of Penang and Malacca are home to UNESCO World Heritage Sites, but now a 600-year-old village in Malacca is under threat from a high-rise development and highway project. About 300 people live here in Kampung Chetti, the heart of the Chettis community whose heritage can be traced back to South India. Their ancestors came here 600 years ago as traders, and since then they have intermarried with the locals and have created a strong bond with the other Malaysian races, says resident SK Pillay. “We can mix very well with the Chinese, we can […]
Outrage in China has followed the Kunming attack that killed 29, not just for the violence, but for the way the West has (and hasn’t) defined what happened. Making sense of the *T* word.
Tensions are running high in Simferopol, the capital of the region of Crimea. A Polish reporter tries to take the pulse of a people increasingly divided.
Below are some of the songs topping the charts around the world. Worldcrunch Pick The first clips of the long awaited Jimi Hendrix biopic All Is By My Side were released yesterday, showing Outkast’s Andre 3000 playing the famous guitarist (see below). The film was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in Sep. 2013, […]
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Yoko Tawada, A Writer Split In Two
STOCKHOLM — Some say Japanese-born Yoko Tawada who has adopted Germany as her home is a writer with a split cultural personality. After 30 years, she still struggles to reconcile the differences. “Like two personalities, they don’t want to be one,” she says. “They didn’t want to tell one story. I couldn’t put them together. It’s impossible.” In Sweden to launch her 23rd book, The Naked Eye, the award-winning author says the story has links to her own experience traveling by train from Japan to Germany. “I came to Europe by the Trans-Siberian Railway,” she says. “It is a slow […]
MUNICH — Pharmaceutical companies know that doctors more frequently prescribe medicine produced by companies whose sales representatives visit them regularly. That very logic means that these same companies are also busy trying to “recruit” future doctors across Germany, according to a recent survey of German medical school deans and some 1,100 med students. The study, […]
In search of comedy in a complicated country, Youssef is back on the air.
As Chinese Premier Li Keqiang rolled out the country’s new ‘war on pollution,’ Le Monde paid a visit to the city that has registered the dirtiest air in China.
When she died of a brain tumor at the age of three, Naomi*’s parents, who were by her side until the end, decided to tell their story amidst a growing push to extend assisted death to children.
AJMER — In India, 70% of the population lives in rural areas, mostly in poverty. But as a voluntary program has proven, impoverished people can become experts in solar power. Thanks to Barefoot College, an NGO based here in Ajmer, in the western part of India’s Rajasthan state, some 600 women have been fully educated about solar power, a small step towards eradicating poverty. Sunaina Das, 20, is reviewing all the components needed to make a solar lamp. Though she doesn’t know how to read or write, she’s learning to become a solar engineer. “I’ve come here for training,” she […]
The singular tale of a young French-Malian who spent three years in the world’s jihad hot spots in an attempt to join al-Qaeda fighters. No one would take him.
A common archaeological theory holds that ancient Greeks threw their trash in the fields, which would explain the abundance of ceramic shards. But a dissenting narrative has emerged.
A visit to Tzahala, a tony district on the edge of Tel Aviv, where a canine unit and dozens of cameras have been brought in to fight crime. But at what price?
Though reports say Peru has surpassed Colombia as world’s top source of cocaine, it has not faced the same kind of violence. Is Lima turning a blind eye toward drug trafficking?
A quick look back at notable deaths of the past month
BEIJING — There is a career crisis in China’s judiciary, and it’s especially acute here in the capital. First the numbers. According to statistics obtained by Li Yuanfang, a National People’s Congress member, of the 2,053 judges recruited in Beijing between 2008 and 2012, 348 have since resigned. That’s 16.9% of new recruits leaving their […]