Abu al Fadl devoted the final months of his life to clearing al-Bab of improvised explosives left behind by ISIS in everything from washing machines to cooking pots. The 60-year-old disabled several thousand mines before one took his life.
Category: In The News
Image is valuable currency in our modern world. It can make or break a brand, or a career. Entire nations, meanwhile, also have to consider how they are seen — at home and abroad. We also know that for both companies and countries, image so often starts at the top. Take the now former Uber […]
Unlike the ‘Righteous Among The Nations’ of the Nazi Holocaust, individual Turks who opposed the Armenian genocide are lost to history. Again, Turkey’s government is largely to blame.
KABUL — When a series of terrorist attacks rocked the Afghan capital late last month, killing more than 150, less than a kilometer away from worst blast, a group of women were busy preparing a morning show for the country’s only TV station run by women. Zan TV, or Women’s TV, was launched this month, dedicated to women’s voices and women’s issues. Since the end of Taliban rule in 2001, Afghanistan has gone from having just one state-owned TV station to 76 stations broadcasting across the country. But despite the proliferation of channels, women are often neglected by the Afghan […]
Despacito, by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi, is 2017’s runaway worldwide hit. Muy bien! It follows a long, though not-so-frequent history of non-English songs breaking down language barriers to elbow aside the Beatles or Michael Jackson. From Volare, which was Italy’s entry for the 1958 Eurovision contest to Gangnam Style, from South Korean YouTube sensation […]
The Antarctic, one of the last, unspoiled parts of the natural world, will, like the Amazon, face man’s destructive onslaught unless states take action quickly.
Paul is 14 years old. For months, he was assaulted and bullied by his classmates, and finally had to leave the school. Anti-Semitism lives on in Germany — but it’s changing.
A tiny revolution can be heard rumbling through Spain: starting June 30, parents will have the ability to chose the order of their child’s last names.
GENEVA — It may sound like hocus-pocus, but with the growing influx of African migrants, social services in Switzerland are having to tackle a new and perplexing problem: witchcraft. The phenomenon specifically involves African women — mostly prostitutes from Nigeria — who were “bewitched” before leaving home and suffer serious psychological consequences as a result. […]
A pulsing, hazy world comes to life every night in Brazil’s largest city, as drug traffickers and users gather to buy, sell, barter, smoke. When police intervene, a new neighborhood is found.
-OpEd- BERLIN — Last year Angela Merkel said that “the welfare of Africa is in the German interest.” Since then, the Chancellor has spoken more about Africa than any of her predecessors and has made the continent a priority for Germany’s G-20 chairmanship this year. On Monday, the German Chancellor invited eight African leaders to […]
What does Donald Trump see when he looks out toward Cuba? Havana, after all, is just a few hundred miles south of the U.S. President’s own coastal getaway at Mar a Lago, Florida. In Trump’s eyes, is the island nation still fundamentally a Communist enemy, even though the Cold War ended nearly three decades ago? […]
The online media star, who sits on the board of the ride-sharing app company, says Uber doesn’t just suffer from a culture of sexism. It’s also burnout — and bad sleep.
PARIS — New York City. 2022. The Big Apple is packed — with 44 million inhabitants — and roasting. Average temperatures are in excess of 30ºC. The metropolis is enveloped in a thick, greyish fog. Water is scarce. Fauna and flora have almost disappeared. Food produced from agriculture is a distant memory, alive only in […]
From bulky satellite corpses to tiny metal splinters, the Earth is surrounded by a cloud of space debris. But now there are plans for a groundbreaking clean-up.
PARIS — When the migrant crisis started spinning out of control in the summer of 2015, a deep fracture appeared inside the European Union, between countries willing to open their doors and countries ready to erect walls to block the flow of incoming migrants. The tension culminated in late September of that year, when the […]
Three men tied the knot in a city-sanctioned ceremony that protects inheritance rights of this self-proclaimed ‘polyamorous’ family.
The great powers seem to be spurning multilateralism and resorting once more to force as a means of pursuing national interests.
You don’t need a brain like Jeff Bezos to figure out why he began selling books online and not cars. Books are a cheap and easily-shipped commodity product. By contrast, people rarely buy a car without driving it first, while vehicles are bulky and customization options abound. There’s more: new cars are typically bought on credit. Manufacturers and dealers tend to have tight-knit relationships, and in the U.S. there are pesky laws protecting dealers (as Tesla has discovered). U.K. CAR MARKET 90 billion pounds Still, besides a few exceptions — bullets and cigarettes — Amazon.com Inc is getting closer to […]
Basketball star-cum-celebrity apprentice-cum-cultural envoy Dennis Rodman is in North Korea for yet another rendezvous with his “lifelong friend” Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of the hermit kingdom. When Rodman last visited Pyongyang in 2013, he blasted then President Barack Obama for nurturing hostile relations between the U.S. and the pariah state. But now, under Donald […]
-Analysis- PARIS — The scene repeats itself. On the ground, bodies in blood, inanimate, unconscious or already dead, others staggering around frightened and haggard. Soon after, the sounds of sirens, as rescue workers and emergency medical care arrive. Later, we see the first faces of the victims, the identities of the killers. At the scene, […]
-Essay- BOGOTÁ — A theology teacher I knew used to tell me, a mocking grin on his lips, “you’re the last communist left,” to which I would reply, smiling, “and you’re the last evangelist.” In today’s upside-down world of thieving politicians and self-righteous saints, corrupt and holy men, such concepts as communism have lost their […]
Congratulations to all those 2017 graduates out there. It couldn’t have been easy! Elsewhere, we have gathered some examples of the wackiest college courses from around the world. If you could go back to school, which one would you pick? [dailymotion //www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x5oefjq expand=1] Take 5 – Wacky College Courses by Worldcrunch
“A Masterstroke,” “A Tsunami,” “The Takeover.” Newspapers in France summoned their best metaphors this morning to describe what already looks like a landslide — yes, another favorite electoral metaphor — in favor of Emmanuel Macron’s party in yesterday’s first round of legislative voting. Ahead of next Sunday’s second and final round, the new president’s party […]
After becoming the world’s newest country by separating from Sudan, the nation of South Sudan faces a grave food crisis brought on by ethnic and religious conflict.
BUENOS AIRES — Eduardo Roverano, 61, inherited the family business, a Buenos Aires funeral home founded in 1883 by his great grandfather. “I have vague memories of when the funeral cart was drawn by black horses,” he recalls. “I began working at 15. And it wasn’t a desk job. They sent me to pick up […]
A new study found that dozens of São Paulo women infected with Zika gave birth to babies without Microcephaly. Researchers are trying to trace the difference in the effects of the disease in different regions.
Categories
The Losers Of British Democracy
The British pollsters — and prime minister — have come up short once again. The surprisingly lackluster performance of the Conservatives in Britain’s snap election yesterday has dealt a blow to Prime Minister Theresa May. Following David Cameron’s Brexit debacle on June 23, 2016, this marks the second time in less than a year that […]
WASHINGTON — As former FBI Director James Comey held the political world in thrall Thursday from inside a packed Senate hearing room, House Speaker Paul Ryan walked into an unusually empty press briefing across the Capitol. Before Comey’s testimony about his private interactions with President Donald Trump had even concluded, Ryan joined an effort already underway among GOP lawmakers to place it in the best possible light for Trump. “Of course there needs to be a degree of independence” between federal law enforcement and the White House, Ryan said. But, he added, “The president’s new at this. He’s new to […]
Though peace is far secure between the Democratic Republic Of Congo and Rwanda, organized efforts to bring their youth together are multiplying.
As Venezuela’s leftist regime further tramples its own laws and social-democratic ideals, protesters are reminding us what a popular uprising looks like.
NEW DELHI — Wearing orange dresses with matching turbans, a group of folk musicians play tunes on their pungi, also known as been, a traditional flute made from gourd fruit. The audience at Surajkund Craft Fair on the outskirts of the Indian capital is enthralled. Many break into dance. But the musicians themselves don’t look very enthusiastic. “This is not what we want to do; it’s been thrust upon us,” says Badri Nath, 75, who heads the troupe. “But since our original work has been banned, this is all we can do. Whether we are happy or not doesn’t matter.” […]
The two deadly suicide attacks in Tehran, at the Parliament and inside the mausoleum of Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, appeared as the latest in the litany of woes terrorists have brought to the Middle East. It may also mark a whole new chapter in the region. Iranians, in spite of the political and […]
Exploitation of so much data by artificial intelligence could lead to the automatic evaluation of individual employee performance.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel came back Monday from Ankara empty-handed. German military personnel currently stationed at NATO air bases in Turkey will likely soon follow. Amid a growing rift between Berlin and Ankara, Gabriel had failed to convince his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu to lift Turkey’s ban on German lawmakers visiting the approximately 250 […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Just two weeks after the tragedy in Manchester, the United Kingdom has once again been hit by a terror attack. And it was carried out with a modus operandi we’ve become familiar with: A van rams into pedestrians in a busy area before the terrorists go on a killing spree, weapons in […]
Is the unnamed, faceless author the true superstar of the 21st century? A new book explores the history of anonymity in pop culture, and beyond.
Categories
My (Great) Grand-Père’s World
My grandson — Worldcrunch’s photo editor and once a chubby baby in my wife’s arms — has just made me a great-grandfather for the fourth time. Bienvenue to the world, Félix! The new dad’s two older sisters, posing in this family portrait in the Austrian Tyrol, have already given me three adorable great-granddaughters. While my […]
Forget the Strait of Hormuz. The real place to watch the simmering diplomatic battle between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is 5,500 kilometers to the southeast, in the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia. That’s because the petroleum market’s center of gravity, along with that of the global economy, is in Asia these days. As recently as the 2003 Iraq War, the U.S. and Europe accounted for more than half of the world’s oil imports. The share has now fallen to barely more than one-third, as imports by the north Atlantic countries have stood still while those by China, India, […]
India is a nation both eminently democratic and full of poor people. What can Mexicans learn from changes happening there?