Worldcrunch
WASHINGTON – It’s called the “curse of the second term.” American political commentators can go through each of the past two-term presidents and point to an unexpected phenomenon, a political error or some other trip wire set off in the second four-year stint in office. All the occupants of the White House have experienced it, […]
Let’s conduct a simple experiment: search on Google for any image of a recent American President — Johnson, Nixon, either father or son Bush, Clinton, Obama — at the moment of their first election victory. Then, search again for an image of the same man a few years later. Each will show the fatigue that […]
Too many travelers ignore some pretty basic American laws that can seem foreign to them. Here’s how it looks to the Italian go-to lawyer in New York for just such cases.
Forget New York, Washington, Boston, Houston, Miami and Chicago. Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Hooters, Checkers, Target, Best Buy, 7/11, CVS, Wal-Mart, Family Dollar? Well, forget them too. If you’re looking for the soul of America, get in your car and drive out to back country. Where nothing happens. Nothing at all. Like Hollywood, […]
AP (USA) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate has approved a bill aimed at avoiding tax increases and spending cuts. Senators voted 89-9 to approve the proposal. Three democrats and five Republicans dissented. In a statement released by the White House early Tuesday morning, President Obama said, “While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they […]
AP, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT (USA) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was admitted to a New York hospital on Sunday, after the discovery of a blood clot stemming from a concussion she suffered earlier this month, reports the AP. #SecClinton is being treated for a blood clot stemming from a concussion sustained […]
NEW YORK TIMES, AP (USA) Worldcrunch Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded the U.S.-led forces that stormed to victory in the first Persian Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, has died at the age of 78. The New York Times called Schwarzkopf the “most acclaimed military hero since the midcentury exploits of Generals Dwight D. […]
REUTERS, CNN Worldcrunch HOUSTON – Former President George H.W. Bush has been in a Houston hospital for more than a month, and in intensive care since Sunday, a family spokesman has revealed. He has been in the intensive care unit at Methodist Hospital since Sunday, spokesman Jim McGrath told CNN late Wednesday. Bush is in […]
US STATE DEPT. (USA), AFP Worldcrunch An independent inquiry has criticized the State Department for inadequate security at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on the day of the September attack that killed four American government personnel including Ambassador John Christopher Stevens. The 39-page unclassified report, which also cited intelligence failures, focused much of its […]
CNN, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, CBS, MSNBC (USA) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – As the devastated Connecticut town continues to bury its young, attention elsewhere in the United States has begun to shift more squarely to Washington and the question of gun control legislation. Will last Friday’s mass school killing n Newton, Connecticut be a tipping […]
-Essay- BERLIN – My five-year-old son Finn goes to an American kindergarten – a place just like Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Bethlehem in Pennsylvania is about as far from Philadelphia as Newtown is from New York – in their own way, both are typical U.S. East Coast towns. Finn’s school even looks […]
BOSTON GLOBE, CNN (USA) Worldcrunch NEWTOWN – On Monday the Connecticut town prepares for the first funerals of the mass shooting at an elementary school that killed 20 young children and six educators. President Obama vowed on Sunday to use “whatever power this office holds” in coming weeks to prevent other mass shootings like the […]
-OpEd- PARIS – America is crying for its children. The country is in mourning, after the Connecticut elementary school shooting that left 28 dead, including 20 children between the ages of six and seven. President Barack Obama shed real tears as he was listing the number of recent shootings: “These neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and […]
NEWTOWN (Reuters) – Residents of the small Connecticut community of Newtown were reeling on Saturday from one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, as police sought answers about what drove a 20-year-old gunman to slaughter 20 children at an elementary school. The attacker, identified by law enforcement sources as Adam Lanza, who once […]
Twenty of the victims are reportedly children. The gunman, a son of a kindergarten teacher at the school, killed himself.
-OpEd- BERLIN – The resignation of David Petraeus as head of the CIA means that we can once again play that great political guessing game that measures the gap between what’s being said and the real reasons behind what’s happened. It is apparent yet again that moving out of public office is almost as difficult […]
THE WASHINGTON POST, LOS ANGELES TIMES (U.S.) Worldcrunch The Pentagon announced early Tuesday that the scandal surrounding departed CIA chief David Petraeus has apparently ensnared General John R. Allen, Petraeus’s successor as commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. According to the Washington Post, an anonymous senior defense official announced Tuesday that the FBI […]
Barack Obama’s victory on Tuesday was very different than his win four years ago. In 2008, he won the White House with a powerful message of change; a fresh start for the nation. Charming a majority of Americans back then was a young, black senator, breaking both the political status quo, and longstanding racial barriers. […]
THE MIAMI HERALD, WASHINGTON POST, REUTERS (U.S.) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – Fresh from his election victory and emotional Thank You’s (see below), Barack Obama will turn back to the gritty business of trying to turn the U.S. economy around. The first order of business will be a Friday appearance to address the so-called “fiscal cliff,” a […]
TEL AVIV – Following the example of President Shimon Peres, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak did not bide their time in congratulating Barack Obama on his electoral victory November 6. They declared that the two countries “will continue to work together” and that their strategic alliance is “stronger than […]
To say that the U.S. is more divided than ever has become a cliché. The country has been largely divided down the middle ever since Ronald Reagan’s runaway victories in the 1980 and 1984 elections, when the Republican candidate won respectively 44 and 49 out of the 50 U.S. states. What Americans call “a landslide” […]
XINHUA, GLOBAL TIMES, PEOPLE’S DAILY (China) BBC (UK) LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch BEIJING – Barack Obama’s hard-fought reelection coincides with the once-in-a-decade handover of power in China, as the Communist Party Congress opens this week in the capital. But all this superpower politics has produced comparably little mainstream Chinese coverage — either of Tuesday’s noisy […]
-Analysis- Barack Obama’s reelection to a second term in the White House is in spectacular contradiction to the trend in Western politics since the beginning of the current economic crisis. One after another, Western leaders have been dumped by voters who have made them pay for the effects of the crisis and the austerity measures […]
Worldcrunch Four more years. Barack Obama has been re-elected President of the United States, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney and defying odds for an incumbent candidate running in the face of persistent economic problems. Winning at least 303 electoral votes, he swept the battleground states of Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia Tuesday […]
-Editorial- MUNICH – Obama’s victory is not a shining victory. The president stays president. But Americans did not re-elect Barack Obama because they thought his first four years were so grand and convincing. America’s voters were perfectly prepared to fire him – they just weren’t ready to vote Mitt Romney in to replace him. The […]
EUROPE CORRIERE DELLA SERA (Italy) “Obama: Trust Me, Again. Romney: It’s Me Tomorrow” DIE WELT (Germany) “Two Men, Two Visions” LIBERATION (France): “Double or Nothing” ABC (Spain): “A Duel Until The End” ASIA/PACIFIC THE HINDU (India): “U.S. Presidency Poised On Razor’s Edge” MANILA STANDARD TODAY (Philippines): “Still Too Close To Call” THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW […]
WASHINGTON D.C. – As the campaign draws to a close, the American people have been hit by a barrage of promises of a better, more civil future. The two candidates have vowed, even sworn, that they will work harder with the opposition. Mitt Romney mentioned it first in one of his advertisements and confirmed it […]
BEIJING – At the final debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, which was focused on foreign policy, the subject of the rise of China was clearly on the agenda. But when the moderator posed the question: “What do you believe is the greatest future threat to the national security of this country?” Obama cited […]
PARIS – Naive or arrogant? Daring or cautious? Four years after he entered the White House, Obama remains an enigma. Naive or cunning?“I never saw someone so competitive. What is the only thing that Barack Obama hates more than losing? Losing twice,” confides Robert Gibbs, his former press advisor. But Obama wants to win fair […]
PARIS – Happy Election Day, America! Happy American Election Day, World! Still undecided? Still hungry for poll numbers?? Still there??? Worldcrunch is here to help. In particular, with our news partners from around the world, we have kept a close eye on how non-Americans have been covering the U.S. campaign: from the Italian correspondent trying […]
SPRINGFIELD – Whenever he has half an hour free, Joe goes into the yard of his little house to split logs. “It’s fun for me. It’s the only thing that really gets my mind off the election.” In the living room there is a pool table, a bearskin on the wall, and his tools. “I […]
NEW YORK – In the focus groups he organizes to understand American voters, Democratic Party pollster Stan Greenberg says lately participants have actually broken down emotionally when answering questions about their lives. “Three-quarters of the population are struggling. Families are overwhelmed, salaries have decreased by 20% and health benefits are falling,” Greenberg, co-author of the […]
POLITICO, WASHINGTON POST, BUSINESS WEEK, NEW YORK TIMES (U.S.) Worldcrunch Sure, it may come down to a few undecided voters in some sleepy town in Ohio, but U.S. presidential elections are also by now very much global events. So as the world prepares to follow the final countdown to Tuesday’s showdown between President Barack Obama […]
DETROIT – An old woman stands in front of a one-armed bandit with a half-lit cigarette between her lips. She takes tokens out of a bucket of popcorn and slides them endlessly into the same slot. You can tell she has been doing this for years. Further in, at the blackjack table, two young men […]
WASHINGTON – As Mitt Romney would say, it’s a particularly well-stuffed “binder full of women.” The 2012 vintage of candidates for public office is one of the best — at least in terms of quantity. More women are running for Congress this year than ever before. The newspapers are comparing it to the 1992 so-called […]
THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, CNN (U.S.) Worldcrunch With less than a week until election day, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney remain in a virtual dead heat, according to latest poll figures. The latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll tips Romney with 49% and Obama at 48%. There has not been one […]
-Op Ed- SANTIAGO – The most urgent problem for the second term of President Barack Obama or the first term of President Mitt Romney will be a problem that neither of them created. We are talking about the cryptically dubbed ‘fiscal cliff,’ which, if it is not solved, will push the United States into another […]
CNN, NBC NEWS, NYT (USA), BBC (UK), INSTAGRAM Worldcrunch As superstorm Sandy continues to wreak its deadly destruction over the Northeast, here are the latest developments, by the numbers: • 16: number of reported deaths caused by the storm in the U.S. • 68: number of lives claimed outside the U.S., including 51 in Haiti […]
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE, WUNDERGROUND.COM, BALTIMORE SUN, STRATFORD PATCH (U.S.), INDEPENDENT (U.K.), STERN (Germany) Worldcrunch NEW YORK – As day breaks, Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the east coast of the United States, with schools, stock exchanges, airports, subways and a presidential election on lockdown, as residents and rescue personnel brace for what may be […]
-Essay- Chinese-Americans account for 1.5-2% of the population in the United States, while Asian-Americans taken altogether account for 6%. In comparison, Jews account for only about 2%, but the positions that the two ethnic groups occupy in the eyes of American politicians are not comparable. Rudolph Giuliani, the New York mayor, once rushed to the […]