Worldcrunch
BUDAPEST – Over 70 million liters of mineral-rich healing waters bubble out of Budapest’s 118 thermal springs every day. That’s a claim no other big city on the planet can make. The baths are as old as the city itself. The Romans were well aware of the beneficial effects of the warm springs, and the […]
RASHID – Rosetta is not the town it once was, nor does it attract visitors in the same way it once did. It is somewhat surprising, considering that the town is located where the world’s longest river empties into the sea, and where the key to understanding that river’s greatest civilization was discovered – the […]
KHADICHAUR – Araniko Highway, connecting Kathmandu to the Nepal-China border, doesn’t look much like a highway. It is narrow strip of roadway sometimes covered in asphalt, sometimes just dirt. This 115-kilometer road, winding between mountains and ravines is also deadly. Or it would be, without the incredible dexterity of the truck and bus drivers who […]
EL UNIVERSAL (Mexico) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – About 200,000 restaurants, taverns and cafés in the Mexican capital removed saltshakers from their tables – permanently – on April 4. The move, reports El Universal, is part of an effort to raise awareness on the dangers of a high sodium diet and its correlation to hypertension and […]
LA DEPECHE DU MIDI, LE FIGARO (France) Worldcrunch TOULOUSE – Three months ago, Jeannot Marciniak, a 70-year-old retired garbage collector from this city in southwest France, packed his bags for India, a country he’d long dreamed of discovering, reports Le Figaro. While sitting on a bench in Pondicherry, in southern India, a man came up […]
HANOI – We are in Hanoi, sitting in Mrs. Vu’s kitchen. The table is weighed down with exotic delicacies, passion fruit, pineapple, slices of melon, litchis, dragon fruit, kumquats, grapefruit, heart-shaped pieces of watermelon and small, fat bananas. We’ve already made considerable inroads into the spread, as if we hadn’t eaten for days. Mrs. Vu, […]
XINHUA (China), BBC NEWS (UK), BLOOMBERG, REUTERS Worldcrunch SHANGHAI – Chinese authorities slaughtered more than 20,000 birds and closed a poultry market in Shanghai on Friday, due to the new H7N9 bird flu outbreak that has already killed six people over the past week. State news agency Xinhua said the Huhuai market for live birds […]
MANAUS – As the plane approaches the dense green mantle, interrupted by the curves of the most abundant river in the world, you start to make out the shapes of the friendly – and not so friendly – animals living in the rainforest. Before we embark for our cruise on these alligator, snake and piranha-infested […]
AMSTERDAM – Land of tulips, windmills and canals, the Netherlands is always an enchanting country to visit. But 2013 holds some special surprises. Here in the capital, the eccentric and transgressive mix with more classic beauty and history: from the coffee shops and red light district to the many museums and over 7,000 monuments sprinkled […]
CORRIERE DELLA SERA, LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch VERCELLI – This northern Italian city is more than 2,000 kilometers away from Chernobyl, so it’s almost impossible to imagine how the very same radioactive particles ended up here — or in the innards of 27 wild boars. Caesium-137 is a radioactive isotope, formed by nuclear fission on […]
This is the good kind of cheesy…
The South American root has been shown to boost energy for athletes, increase fertility for women, and enhance a man’s sex drive.
CHALLAPATA – Standing beneath the Bolivian sun, it takes just one long look at the quinoa fields stretching as far as the eye can see, to understand why the Andean people call quinoa the golden grain. “We also call it chisiya mama, which means ‘mother of all grains’ in the Aymara language,” smiles Valentina Rodriguez, […]
TURIN – Have you ever wanted to take a stroll in Yosemite National Park? Or discover the South Omo Valley in Ethiopia? How about Cappadocia in Turkey? Now you can explore all of these sites from the comfort of your living room thanks to Trail Me Up, a sort of Google Street View, where you […]
FOLHA DE S. PAULO (Brazil) Worldcrunch BALNEÁRIO CAMBORIÚ – A sea lion measuring about three meters (9.8 feet) long left his home in the warm waters of the Golfo do Mar and took a waddle-walk into this Brazilian resort city’s downtown shopping area. It was around 5:20 p.m. Saturday evening when onlookers watched as the […]
SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – What better way to help educate kids on healthy eating than with some Big-Mac-And-Large-Fries-sponsored lessons!? This special sauce comes courtesy of a German non-profit, that has called on McDonald’s to be one of the sponsors for a new government-sanctioned program to provide nutrition education in schools, writes Süddeutsche Zeitung. […]
PARIS – The horsemeat lasagna scandal has reignited the debate on “junk” food. However, it can be very difficult to sort out the good and the bad… Some key recommendations from Dr. Laurent Chevalier, a prominent French nutritionist: 1 – Favor organic products. They are less contaminated by chemicals – especially pesticides and hormones – […]
Adventurers flock to the Finnish hinterland to take in the Northern Lights, winter sports and some culinary surprises.
BEIJING – Before even leaving for the United Kingdom, we had already decided to try out the local cuisine as much as possible. It shouldn’t be too difficult to avoid Chinese food – even though there are Chinese restaurants in every corner of the world these days. After all, we were only spending a dozen […]
DIE WELT (Germany), THE LOCAL (Sweden) Worldcrunch BERLIN – Among the many questions raised by Europe’s spreading horsemeat scandal is what to do with all the products of questionable provenance. Most major supermarkets have simply dumped out loads of horse-tainted “beef” lasagna, and the like. What a waste! But all’s not lost. A spokeswoman for […]
BERLIN – There are more and more healthy food snobs in our society – and I’m probably one of the worst. It all began when I was sick and a friend showed up with a green smoothie, telling me that drinking it would bring “pure light” into my body. I got better right away, and […]
STUFF, TV3, ONE NEWS, NEW ZEALAND HERALD, AUCKLAND NOW (New Zealand) Worldcrunch AUCKLAND – An award-winning filmmaker was killed in a shark attack on Wednesday at a popular surfing beach west of New Zealand’s largest city. Muriwai beach on Auckland’s west coast has been closed after a fatal shark attack: ow.ly/i52Gv — nzherald (@nzherald) February […]
Worldcrunch Maybe it was inevitable that Europe’s worst false-advertising scandal in memory would wind up hoofing through the front door of the Old Continent’s best-marketed, most clean-scrubbed, low-cost brand of home furnishings and other you-can-count-on-us modern life supplies. Yes, that’s right: horsemeat in IKEA’s scrumptiously affordable Swedish meatballs. Outrage is bound to follow, but those […]
Horsemeat in our pure processed delights! Are we innocent victims or willing suckers of the consumer marketing machine?
AFP (France), BBC (Uk), LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch Nestlé, the world” biggest food company, is now riding straight into the center of the growing horsemeat scandal. A spokesman has confirmed 1% presence of horse DNA in two of its beef products sold in Europe, Buitoni Beef Ravioli and Beef Tortellini, reports BBC. The Swiss-based food […]
MUNICH – Horsemeat passed off as beef – across Europe, the food scandal continues to make headlines. On the food circuit in Munich, at Kaspar Wörle’s horsemeat butcher shop, it hasn’t caused much of a stir – except for the fact that the phone has been ringing uninterruptedly since the scandal broke. “People want information,” […]
DAGENS NYHETER, ABBA THE MUSEUM (Sweden), COURRIER INTERNATIONAL (France) Worldcrunch STOCKHOLM – Thirty years after the broke up, iconic Swedish pop band ABBA is still making headlines, writes Courrier International. On May 7, a huge ABBA museum will open in on Djurgarden island, in Stockholm. Tickets have already gone on sale, says ABBA The Museum. […]
Worldcrunch PARIS – Call it “Horsegate” or just a really bad case of un-authentic Italian food, but the story of horse meat winding up in one of Europe’s most popular brands of “all beef” frozen lasagne has been galloping on for four days. We have Romanian meat in question? And also e-questrian. You see where […]
CHICHICASTENANGO – “What happened to the Mayans? Why did they disappear?” asks a tourist, while the minivan enters the winding streets of Chichicastenango, in Guatemala. The guide, Haroldo, smiles, just as every guide should when asked that question, and answers: “Disappear? Look around you, these are the Mayans, they are here.” This is the first […]
THE INDEPENDENT, THE GUARDIAN, THE DAILY MAIL, BBC (UK) Worldcrunch LONDON – British government food officials have warned the public not to eat frozen beef lasagna sold by the Findus brand after tests showed they contained up to 100% horsemeat. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has ordered all British companies to test their processed beef […]
CAIRO – Among the amazing landscapes Egypt possesses, the most precious are undoubtedly the seashores on the North Coast and the Red Sea, as well as the desert. Countless sites in these areas are unique and rare wonders of nature, and require special care and protection. The Egyptian Tourism Ministry has a plan for how […]
The taste of Alsace deep in the Malaysian heartland.
GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch LISBON – The images are in, and 45-year-old Hawaiian Garrett McNamara appears to have set an all-time record for biggest wave successfully surfed, taming what was reported to be a 90 to 100-foot monster swell Monday in Portugal. McNamara, an expert in riding these massive walls of water, held the previous record […]
BASEL – Johann Ludwig Burckhardt’s bust can be seen at the foot of the monumental staircase of his family’s palace in Basel, Switzerland. It is hard to believe that this is his family home when you see his long curled beard and oriental turban. Burckhardt – also known as Sheikh Ibrahim – who died at […]
SANTA RITA – “Don’t let nostalgia screw you…” Alfredo tells the young Totò in the 1988 Italian movie Cinema Paradiso, urging him not to look back, to forget his native Sicily: the “evil earth.” Maurizio Spinello, instead, kneads that very nostalgia into his bread every day, having chosen to stay in his village of 11 […]
PUNTA ARENAS – The first image that you see when you arrive at the edge of the American continent is intense, almost vehement. It is rays of light that pierce the clouds and give the whole landscape a glow. That was just the beginning of our Patagonian journey on the Stella Australis cruise ship. Our […]
BBC, THE GUARDIAN (U.K.), IRISH INDEPENDENT, IRISH TIMES (Ireland) Worldcrunch DUBLIN– Horse meat has been found in some beef products on sale in the UK and Ireland according to the FSAI (Food Safety Authority Ireland). Although it poses no risk to public health, for many people it is an ethical question. In fact, that’s almost […]
Located near the Berlin zoo, the address is the first in Germany for the famed US luxury hotel brand.
JERUSALEM POST, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL (Israel) Worldcrunch JERUSALEM- With Israel’s largest storm in 20 years bringing snow and freezing temperatures to Jerusalem and the mountains in the north and center of Israel on Wednesday night, authorities closed part of the main highway connecting Tel Aviv and the capital for a short time due to […]
OUEST FRANCE, DIRECT MATIN (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Some might say that McDonald’s in France is getting just a wee bit too, well, French. A year after introducing various “McBaguette” offerings using the famous French bread, the American fast food chain has just introduced its version of France’s national sandwich: jambon-fromage. If that sounds chic, […]