Worldcrunch
LIMETE — Three times a week here, in this municipality within the Kinshasa province of Congo, street children gather in the square to practice Brazilian capoeira, a martial art that incorporates dance, music and acrobatics. For the past seven years, these unlikely enthusiasts of the disclipline have occupied a portion of an abandoned basketball court. […]
The popular TV dramas were once considered a reflection of the Syrian President’s will for reform. Things have changed since the uprising in 2011, even if the shows must go on.
MUNICH — It only takes two minutes to gather enough material to make a person squirm or provoke them to pick up the phone to call a lawyer. Two minutes to see that racism flourishes not only on the fringes but also in the heart of our societies, in the minds of philosophy students and […]
Panhandlers, window-cleaners and street peddlers would be targeted in plan put forth by the mayor of the heavily indebted Spanish capital. Good luck collecting…
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: On Thursday, Paul McCartney played a surprise concert in New York’s Times Square, after announcing it only minutes before on Twitter. Come on down to Times Square… It’s all going to be happening there! — Paul McCartney […]
VATICAN CITY — There’s a joke going around St. Peter’s Square: Next thing you know, to comply with his ecclesiastical vows of poverty, the pope is going to put the Vatican up for sale! That day hasn’t yet arrived, but the idea speaks as much to Pope Francis’ unpredictability as to his now famous acts […]
Animal-related crime was making news around the world this week, including 30 lizards in a Japanese suitcase and two tons of elephant tusks in Vietnam. Take a tour of Crime Int’l… (photo: iisg)
Since returning from Camp Grounded, Anastasia Savvina sees the world differently. “On the bus, everyone stares at their cell phones,” she says. “People don’t look each other in the eye anymore. And I, who only have an old phone without any connection, I look at them.” Camp Grounded is a retreat for those who want […]
One native of Sierra Leone, who arrived in Italy via the now notorious island of Lampedusa, is trying to find peace in a Roman slum.
SILAH — The men entered by the window of Silah’s police station. There were maybe 60 of them, their unmasked faces easy to recognize since they all live in the small town. “Average citizens, aged between 18 and 45,” one policeman says. That mid-August day, these “average citizens” set about sacking the station, taking radio […]
PARIS — Are Nobel Prizes a wicked luxury? This year, like every year for more than a century, Scandinavian juries will honor researchers in physics, chemistry and medicine, an author, and a man or a woman who contributed to peace. The season will end with the presentation of the latest prize, created a little more […]
PARIS – The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose global ranking of schooling levels has become a reliable source of national pride and shame, has now set out to measure how different countries in the developed world stack up in adult skills. (Read this piece by OECD’s Andreas Schleicher, who has spearheaded both […]
ISTANBUL — Last month the Turkish government unveiled its so-called democratization package, which included everything from a lifting of a headscarf ban to new multilingual education and reform of the national electoral law. Now comes another legislative push, but this time it would include a series of measures to increase the authority of the police […]
CRISSIER — Not far from a highway turnoff near the Swiss city of Lausanne, there is a wooded enclave surrounded by a national forest. On a slice of these lands — around 70 acres of woods, agricultural fields and parks — the pupils of the Bois Genoud private school are enjoying themselves in complete freedom. […]
TEL AVIV — A record number of undergraduate students will get their degrees this year. But what awaits them isn’t pretty: job insecurity, bosses who are indifferent to what they studied, a shortage of jobs that match their education and talents, and big debts accumulated during their years at university. All of this suggests that […]
BEIJING — As a Shaolin Temple disciple since childhood, Shi Xingfeng, president of Bojing Security Agency, often has to remind himself to hide the heroic spirit that often glows from the eyes of martial arts masters. “It’s professional discipline,” Shi says. “You’ve got to learn to be an invisible bodyguard.” As a matter of fact, […]
LAMPEDUSA — Two brothers, both with the same dream: escaping the violence and chaos of Eritrea. One has already spent nine years living that dream; the other still hasn’t been rescued from the sea that swallowed him last Thursday. Desperation and grief are in the eyes and voice of Adel, who emigrated to Sweden nine […]
PARIS — “Camille, watch out! Your hair!” Myriam calls to her 7-year-old daughter as she leans against the wall, temporarily crushing her blond ringlets, curled with an iron and hair-sprayed early in the morning. Though it’s Saturday, mother and daughter have woken early to leave their home in northern France by 8:30 a.m. They are […]
HAVANA — Though propaganda from the Cuban regime claims otherwise, the everyday reality for Cuban women does not involve fighting economic aggression from the United States. Instead, they struggle to provide basic necessities such as food and clothes for their families — and occasional luxuries such as cosmetics — sometimes having to pay with their […]
BERLIN — Ritual circumcision for Muslim and Jewish boys remains legal in Germany. Germany’s legislative body, the Bundestag, decided as much last year in what was a win for the country’s religious minorities. But Muslim girls must participate in co-ed swim classes, according to a recent decision by Germany’s highest court on such matters — […]
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. (photo: Khaled – David Bascunana) Worldcrunch Pick: “Knock, knock. – Who’s there? – The. – The who? – Yes.” Our pick of the week is The Who’s “Quadrophenia.” Oct 19 will mark the 40th anniversary of the British band’s […]
MUMBAI — At the height of the Mumbai rush hour, boarding a train is about as easy as finding a comfortable position in a rugby scrum. On the overcrowded platform, those wearing glasses carefully tuck them away in their cases before taking a deep breath and pushing into the compact crowd of passengers until they […]
The past week (Sep. 27-Oct. 3) witnessed a Madagascar mob, Brazilian motel mystery, the suprise end to a search in France, and other crimes and misdemeanors around the world. (photo: alvara_qc)
Since the opening-up of China, the hukou system — a household registration system that basically divides citizens into urban and rural categories — has come under increasing fire. As urban citizens enjoy a range of preferential public services such as free schooling and social security, migrant workers living in the same city but with rural […]
KEFLAVIK — The first thing that strikes you on landing at Keflavik International Airport is the weather. It’s raining. The clouds hang so low that it looks like you could reach out and touch them. Welcome to Iceland. A land mass covering 103,000 square kilometers, Iceland is a little larger than Hungary, but at 330,000 […]
BENI — On a recent Friday, soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) were spending the morning helping civilians clean the road that leads to the new cemetery of this northeastern Congolese city. Here, AK-47s have been replaced by hoes, spades and rakes. Colonel Tito Bizuri, who is in charge […]
MOSCOW — Since the first traffic camera was installed in Moscow in 2008, a new kind of traffic violation has been born — license-plate camouflage. The cameras capture license plate numbers, which is how drivers who break traffic laws are identified. Tickets are then sent by mail. More than 60% of traffic tickets are now […]
YUTZ — Use a digital tablet in gym class? You might smile, but in room A101 of the Jean-Mermoz Junior High in northeastern France, the visitor today is Luc Di Pol, whose job title for the regional education authority is digital supervisor for physical education. Here in the mostly rural French department of Moselle, Di […]
Over the past 15 years, global investors have experienced a series of bubbles: the Internet bubble in 2001, the real estate and credit bubbles in 2008, and then gold this year. The expansions and adjustments of these bursting bubbles seem to have already become commonplace. Though many governments with troubled economies have tried to face […]
BOGOTA — With the expansion of Chiribiquete National Natural Park, Colombia’s National System of Protected Areas has gone a long way to preserve an additional 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of Amazonian jungle. The importance of this new area is not difficult to measure. In those 27,800 square kilometers of jungle located between Guaviare […]
PARIS — As French lawmakers consider new legislation that would make it a crime to pay for sex, it’s becoming clear that we tend to know very little about the clientele of prostitutes. Based on the few reports that have been published on the subject, between 12% and 18% of men (and less than 1% […]
GENEVA — A musician and PhD in bioacoustics, Bernie Krause is on a mission to create a systematic organisation of the landscape of sound signatures. He sums it up this way: While a picture is worth a thousand words, a soundscape is worth a thousand pictures. “There was a time when I considered natural soundscapes […]
Watch France’s former first lady, ex-model and forever chanteuse Carla Bruni-Sarkozy blank on the lyrics (and the chords) to her most famous song Quelqu’un m’a dit during a benefit concert to combat … Alzheimer’s disease. After a brief pause at Wednesday’s event in Paris, Bruni-Sarkozy got back on track.
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldrunch’s pick of the week is the British pop band Pulp. Its frontman Jarvis Cocker turned 50 this month, so we thought we’d celebrate his birthday by listening to Pulp’s legendary single “Common People”, which was released in May […]
RIO DE JANEIRO — Two minutes to midnight were long past when, at the end of Iron Maiden’s concert in Rio this past Sunday, lead singer Bruce Dickinson slipped backstage to get a cold beer after two hours of jumping from one side of the stage to the other. But what he cracked open wasn’t […]
SCHILTIGHEIM — We didn’t see the big grey sedan coming, before it had stopped in the middle of the parking lot in the downtown shopping center. There are a dozen little boys killing time between the parked cars, drinking soda and talking football. Welcome to the Marais housing project in Schiltigheim, on the outskirts of […]
MOSCOW – The Russian government is looking to change the law on mass communications, which could potentially have a serious impact on the way the media does business. Perhaps the most important proposal put forth concerns who can open and own a media company. Currently, media business owners must be legal adults, cannot be presently […]
Imagine a future where all high school students could go on to study whatever subject they want, where a university isn’t forced to limit the number of applicants it can accept or base its enrollment policy on grades or finances, but only on the wishes of students. It’s the dream of an education revolution that […]
JIANGNAN – It’s that time of a year again for Chinese crab lovers. Connoisseurs of mitten crabs, this expensive seasonal delicacy, know that the crustacean is concentrated in Jiangnan, in the southern part of the Yangtze Delta, The autumn harvesting is carried out mostly very early in the morning before sunrise. Using the crab’s phototropism, […]
LIMA — Why are more and more Mashco-Piro native Indians who have always lived in deep isolation in the Amazon jungle being spotted around inhabited areas? This question is worrying Peru as never-before-seen photographs of the tribe emerged in August. “We usually get a glimpse of them once a year, but their appearances have been […]