Its early adopters swear by the SF-based car-service app. But as Uber expands internationally, local cabbies in Milan and Paris are fighting back. Will rickshaw drivers in Bangalore be next?
Category: Society
DELHI — The weather is cold and damp in Delhi, but the city’s chief minister has spent the night sleeping on the streets. Arvind Kejriwal’s head is wrapped in a grey scarf when he steps up to the microphone in the square behind the parliament building. He is surrounded by ministers and leading members of […]
With rumblings that young people are disenchanted with the social network, a reporter visits the Harvard University campus where Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook 10 years ago.
MBALLING — Some 20 people, all officially cured of leprosy, are sitting together at the functional rehabilitation center in Mballing, Senegal. But seeing them calls to mind the ancestral fears linked with this disease: club foots, mere leg or arm stumps, hands without fingers, misshapen faces, washed-out eyes that can no longer be opened. The […]
After building Beijing’s Olympic Park for the 2008 Games, a Chinese-American urban planner and Israeli architect continue to help develop green cities in a largely polluted China.
A new French law targeting clients of prostitutes has focused attention on the changing call-girl business. Here’s another world, of ‘escort boys,’ with both male and female customers.
-Commentary- BEIJING — Reports about rich Chinese men snapping up French chateaux for big bucks have been prolific lately. Many Chinese are astonished that these French cultural relics are available to private buyers at all, much less foreign ones. But I believe this represents not so much how open France is but rather how closed […]
Three musicians, a divisive Middle East leader and a soccer legend were among those to whom we bid farewell this past month.
LONDON — It’s that time of year again, and Super Bowl fever is definitely NOT spreading across the planet. Still, the rest of the world is slowing warming to American football, and the game will be broadcast live Sunday in more than 180 countries and in more than 30 languages, mostly on cable and satelite […]
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: This week, The Who singer Roger Daltrey told NME he would reunite with his bandmate and guitarist Pete Townshend later this year to make their 12th album, as the British band is set to celebrate their 50th […]
In the Netherlands, a growing movement to lease clothing rather than piling up ever more cheaply-made, environmentally damaging jeans, shirts and sweaters.
After the nation and world’s attention turned to the plague of Indian gang rapes, a women-only police unit was founded in Bhopal with one central objective. Some say they go too far.
Categories
The Jewish Ghetto And Its Phantom Opera
Nazis used a Czech military fortress to hold Jewish prisoners during World War II. Yet somehow art and music flourished, including one notable opera that had gone tragically unperformed.
The unlikely story of a Bosnian refugee who stumbled into winning best actor honors at the Berlin Film Festival, yet still can’t feed his family.
Categories
Naples, The Beauty And The Horror
Luigi De Magistris, a left-leaning former prosecutor, was the latest would-be savior for the troubled Italian city. But look around, things in Naples are worse than ever.
Yakuza, Japan’s notorious crime syndicate, is trying to emerge from two decades of economic stagnation, and is betting on the much-discussed stimulus from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: Earlier this month, Legacy Recordings released “Elvis, The Movie Soundtracks,” a box set of not 2, 3 or 5 albums, but 20 complete CDs compiling the King’s best movie songs. Between 1956 and 1969, Elvis played in […]
China tries to come to terms with its not-so-distant past.
MUNICH – After soccer star Robert Enke took his own life in November 2009, public dismay at the news was considerable. At a memorial service in the Marktkirche church the next day, followed by a funeral march in Hannover attended by some 35,000 people, fans were out in force for the German national soccer team’s […]
A heinous mob killing in Italy, an abusive nurse in France and a bad idea at the Arc de Triomphe made our latest global police blotter…
Categories
French Infidelity And The Internet
A website created by and for women to arrange discrete extra-marital escapades has attracted 800,000 users in France. Another tale of French sexual morals, now with a digital twist.
TEL AVIV – New research from Ben-Gurion University found that 91% of those working in human resources in Israel are women. It is data that largely conforms to recruiting and personnel departments around the developed world. According to the figures released by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in the UK, 72% of […]
Philosophers debate the meaning and sincerity of social network friendships, finding affirmation or disagreement from the words of long-dead forebears. Because there’s no app for that.
BERLIN — According to a popular German carnival song, “fat girls have pretty names.” Perhaps, but what’s abundantly clear is that heavier models have much prettier faces than their gaunt, undernourished counterparts. Any visitor to last week’s Curvy is Sexy expo in Berlin could see that. During the simultanous Fashion Week, stressed-out, expressionless stick models, […]
Gay rights activists condemn the accusations from the man once responsible for the safety of the Pope as the “worst stereotypes” that homosexuals have long been subject to.
Longer life expectancy is changing the demographics of our politicians. Wiser and less worried about reelection, the elderly are bound to make better leaders in our fast-moving society.
SAO PAULO — With the arrival of the summer season and hot temperatures in South America, a new revolution has begun in the Brazilian workplace — for the right to wear bermuda shorts at the office. Author and fashion consultant Gloria Kalil calls the would-be movement this season’s “sensation.” To encourage and convince directors and […]
Categories
Tough Labor For Syria’s Refugee Students
GAZIANTEP — Syrian university students unable to complete their degrees due to the country’s ongoing conflict and displaced to Turkey are now jobless, or scraping by as day laborers. Fares, a 29-year-old from Kfar Nabal in the Idlib province, was studying for his final university exams when the security situation in the country made traveling to campus impossible. After years in medical school, he had just completed his training at the Ibn Rashed Hospital in Aleppo. He planned to specialize in the cardiovascular system, but was forced to drop those plans when it became impossible to travel to Aleppo for […]
Times are tough for corrupt officials who have long counted on cashing in when the Chinese New Year festival arrives.
A Washington D.C. jury has convicted a 49-year-old German man of killing his 91-year-old wife in their home in the capital’s posh Georgetown neighborhood.
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: This year’s Sundance Film Festival (Utah), which runs through January 26, will feature the new documentary “20,000 Days on Earth,” by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. The film focuses on the ever fascinating Australian musician Nick Cave, […]
Putting the ‘organized’ in organized crime, necessary for Argentina’s efficient distribution of illegal drugs. And of course there are plenty of corrupt politicians and police along the way.
Sebastien Valiela, who caught the French leader sneaking to see his mistress, is among the world’s best paparazzi. He’d already exposed the deepest secret of another French President.
KARACHI – Begging and sex work are what transgender people in Pakistan too often end up doing. But this also means that they are more likely to have information about the dark world of child sex trafficking. Bindya Rana had the idea of tapping into this connection to find missing children. “We are provided with pictures of the missing child, which we pass on to the transgender people in the areas where they beg and live,” Rana explains, noting that some 2,000 transgender are on the case. “We direct them to search, and if they get any information to let […]
More than 13,000 families have been evacuated from areas of Iraq no longer under government control, including the city of Fallujah. The Al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIS has gained control of strategic swathes of the country, actively seeking to create divisions among jihadist Syrian rebel groups. ISIS has earned a […]
Instead of actually forging relationships, or continuing those they have already, Japanese people are hiring actors to play the roles of loved ones.
Foreign interests are eyeing Uruguay’s recent legalization of cannabis use in its territory. Will big pharmaceutical firms be allowed to move in on this huge business opportunity?
Categories
Crime Int’l: Venezuela, Ireland, And More
Grisly murders in Venezuela and Ireland, dirty pond water and an angry French baker are among the recent crimes on our global blotter…
A quick farewell to the USS Forrestal, after its symbolic link to the Brazilian military coup and a part of John McCain’s eventful biography.
Immigrants from Eastern Europe are an all-too-convenient target for the Tory prime minister as voters still struggle despite reports of economic recovery.