Some 6,000 people gathered in Bogota for artist Spencer Tunik’s latest outdoor photo shoot. The clothes-free event was a stunning splash of hope for a country torn for so long.
Author: Worldcrunch
PARIS — Should Palmyra be rebuilt? And under what conditions? No sooner had Syrian forces and the Russian Army freed the “pearl of the desert,” a spectacular Greco-Roman city with traces of Eastern influence, from the yoke of the Islamic State (ISIS), then the debate over how to restore it to its former glory was […]
French daily Le Figaro reports Wednesday that a 24-year-old woman will be prosecuted for posing as a victim of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris in order to get a 20,000-euro compensation (about $23,000). The police started having doubts after the woman presented forged medical certificates, saying her arm had been wounded from an explosion […]
MUNICH — Traffic collisions. Heart attacks. Even terrorist attacks. Tragedies strike every day, tearing people away from their loved ones forever. But events like this have a collateral impact beyond the victim’s next of kin. They also affect the messengers, the proverbial bearers of bad news. People with certain chosen specific vocations — police officers, […]
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Where Are The Men Of Damascus?
Forced conscription for what many describe as “someone else’s war,” has led to widespread exodus and shuttered up draft-dodging for much of Syria’s adult male population.
The killing of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo after a toddler fell in his enclosure is just the latest example of the twisted concept of the zoo industry. What lessons for your kids?
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Inside A Church — Video Quote Of The Day
Renmin Ribao, June 7, 2016 Tuesday’s front page of the Chinese state-run daily Renmin Ribao features President Xi Jinping in front of American and Chinese flags as he spoke at China-U.S. bilateral talks in Beijing. The 8th round of China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Development and the 7th round of China-U.S. Cultural Exchanges and High Level […]
Friends are the new family! Friendships are the greatest love affairs you’ll ever know! Nonsense. Take a journey to the dark side of your so-called friends.
A brutal gang rape in Sumatra has sparked street demonstrations, candlelight vigils and calls for stricter punishment for sexual predators. Grassroots groups, in the meantime, are focusing on survivors, helping them live with the trauma, not just ingore i
MOSCOW — He is described as the Russian equivalent of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. After launching VKontakte, Russia’s biggest social network, a decade ago, Pavel Durov has more recently become one of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest, if ever discreet, opponents. Forced into exile after quarrels with the Kremlin, he is never where you’d expect him […]
El Comercio, June 6, 2016 “Vote by vote” reads the front page of Peruvian daily El Comercio Monday, as ballots are still being counted after Sunday’s presidential election, the second-round vote being too close to call last night. The front page features a painting of the two main candidates, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski from the center-right […]
A recent drug raid in a south-central Bogotá neighborhood that shares its name with the New York borough uncovers a veritable den of vice, violence and unfettered gang rule.
KIGALI — About a 20-minute drive from the Rwandan capital of Kigali, there’s a barren road that leads to a construction site amid cornfields and banana trees. A single blue sign from the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation indicates the entrance to the location, which stands at the top of a hill. There, across a […]
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Clown Show — Video Quote Of The Day
PARIS — The death of Muhammed Ali is that rare global moment when the world is not only talking about the same topic, but largely saying the same thing. The 74-year-old boxing legend transcended differences without ever flinching from life’s toughest questions. He was the Greatest, and also good; a fighter hailed for his intelligence […]
Chen Man’s release from prison has historical significance, writes Liang Yingfei.
It is both a cultural phenomenon and a marketing play, but one researcher says that Muslim-inspired fashion is ultimately true to the faith.
If foreign endorsements are any reflection of the quality of the U.S. presidential campaign, we are most certainly doomed. Democrat Bernie Sanders, who is facing a do-or-die party primary in California on June 7, got the helpful support of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Latin American leader, himself facing angry calls for his ouster, has […]
From David Lynch to Francis Ford Coppola and Wes Anderson, filmmakers are going beyond movie sets to design hotels, bars and nightclubs.
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French Floods On Le Parisien Front Page
Le Parisien, June 3, 2016 “France Wades” is the front-page headline splashed across Friday’s national edition of the Paris-based daily Le Parisien, accompanied by the image of military vehicles struggling to drive on a national highway, near the city of Orléans. Last month was the wettest May since the 1880s, and the resulting floods across […]
Former employees from German gun company Heckler and Koch face charges in German court for illegal deals with Mexico. But were government officials complicit?
With the help of its Russian partner, Novatek, and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), French energy giant Total has created an uprecedented liquid natural gas plant on the frozen Yamal Peninsula, some 370 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
SPOTLIGHT: WHY ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MATTERS NOW As the country responsible for the Holocaust, Germany understands better than others the importance of acknowledging and atoning for the wrongs in your past. But today, German lawmakers will confront another country’s historical crime, as a debate opens on a resolution that would officially qualify the 1915 mass deportations […]
“Hello fetus listeners …” The Babypod is a speaker that, inserted vaginally, will expose a fetus to music of your choice inside the womb. But what kind of music should we choose?
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Syria’s Gruesome Organ Trade
In Syria and its neighboring countries, an underground network of organ traders has sprung up, preying on the thousands affected by the five-year-long war by offering them desperately needed cash for nonessential organs.
BERLIN — The sight of a swing causes not only children, but also many adults, to impulsively sit down, push off with their feet and swing back and forth for as long as possible. This very impulse was a stroke of luck for Oliver-Selim Boualam and Lukas Marstaller, when the management of the Cologne Furniture […]
SPOTLIGHT: GOOD AND BAD NEWS FOR THE PLANET Breathe in … Last year, an estimated 147 gigawatts was added to the world’s renewable power capacity — the largest such global rise ever recorded, making it an “extraordinary” year for renewable energies. According to the Renewables 2016 Global Status Report, investment in green energies around the […]
Of the various measures emerging to combat global warming, a small Canadian company says its solution to manipulate Carbon Dioxide is both easy to set up, and scalable.
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Floating To Sleep
This unusual float, part of the Madeira Flower Festival that fills the streets of Funchal every spring, looked very comfortable indeed.
-Analysis- SAO PAULO — Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party always liked to think of itself as a crusader for the poor. Yet in the wake of the party’s 13 years in power, there are still 73,327,179 citizens living below the poverty line in the country — a staggering 36% of the population. Don’t take it from […]
SCOTTSDALE — In this suburb of Phoenix, Carrie Lightfoot chooses her weapon of the day from a compartment stash under her bed. She’s spoiled for choice: six semi-automatic pistols and a revolver, not to mention the AK-47s and shotguns. The scene looks like something from old westerns, but Lightfoot embodies a contemporary America, where more […]
MUNICH — For a communal housing project, there are bound to be endless discussions over commons areas before the foundation stone has even been laid. There are also financial questions such as “can I sell the apartment if I have to?” But the most pressing point is just how many people will be living more […]
FUWWAH — Stepping off a small boat as it docks along the Nile, Ahmed Khaled, a 22-year-old fisherman, looks dissatisfied. For the fifth time in just three weeks, he had carefully prepared the lures and rigs of his fishing equipment and set out in his sick father’s sailboat — only to come back empty-handed. “The […]
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Making Space For Islam In Catholic Italy
Competing Muslim groups are vying for official recognition from the Italian state — and a share of the country’s “8 per 1,000” taxpayer pie.
BUENOS AIRES — Brian Molina and Maximiliano Fernández, two of Argentina’s emerging rap stars, met in jail. Molina was 11 years old when he wrote his first song. It was May 2005, and he was living at the Borchez de Otamendi home for minors in Buenos Aires. When he performed his song for friends, teachers […]
-Analysis- PARIS — There is something rotten in Europe. A kind of fetid wind, or foreboding gust, is blowing through. The far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) nearly won the presidential election, the best result for a far-right party since World War II. The FPÖ candidate, Norbert Hofer, might have shown the friendly face of […]
How a former fighter lost both his brothers: one to Bashar Al-Assad’s forces and the other to the Islamic State