Six month later, a reporter is reconnected to a family who’d fled war in Deir ez-Zor, Syria. They wound up in a small village, where they are building a new life. Integration is not easy.
Author: Worldcrunch
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Bullfighting Dad Causes Uproar In Spain
El País, Jan. 26, 2016 Spain is waving a red flag at famous bullfighter Francisco Rivera Ordóñez after he posted a picture of himself taunting a bloody calf while holding his five-month-old daughter. Ordóñez posted the photograph, featured Tuesday on the front page of Spain’s leading daily El País, on his official Instagram account a […]
Car-sharing in France has gotten complicated. Though Uber was forced to shut down its amateur driver service UberPop, another app is antagonizing competitors by continuing to operate, and working with “suggested” prices.
COLLEAGUE KILLS 10 AFGHAN POLICE A rogue Afghan police officer drugged and shot dead 10 of his colleagues early today at a checkpoint in Afghanistan’s central province of Uruzgan, Al Jazeera reports. The man collaborated with Taliban insurgents, who joined him in shooting the officers. Weapons and ammunition were missing from the checkpoint after the […]
-Analysis- ISTANBUL — The Geneva process for the Syrian crisis was launched with a stated commitment from Russia and the United States to find a political solution. But it will go nowhere if it can’t overcome the clashing desires of the various fighting interests. Certain international actors penned a temporary road map in Vienna back […]
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The Diving God
Parts of the Mayan city of Tulum, along the east coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, were dedicated to the worship of the Diving God. He has since given way to more humble beach-going mortals enjoying the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea.
ADDIS ABABA — The black-and-white robot stopped and its eyes, two small red lights, suddenly lit up. Rotating about 90 degrees, it recognized the blue plastic ball a few centimeters away, came forward and kicked it. “The robot is Chinese, but the processor is made in Ethiopia,” Getnet Aseffa explains. “A student developed it, and […]
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Modern Living In A Rock Mushroom
In Cappadocia, these fairy chimneys date back to the 4th century, drawing curious tourists from around the world. But some of the ancient troglodyte structures still serve as people’s homes.
BUENOS AIRES — It’s a dinosaur battle of titanosaurian proportions. Argentine paleontologists announced last week the discovery of remains of what they termed the Notocolossus gonzalesparejasi — a dinosaur likely to dwarf another sauropod found in Patagonia in May 2014, whose cast skeleton has just made its debut at New York’s American Museum of Natural […]
FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF EGYPT’S ARAB SPRING Photo: Amr Sayed/APA/ZUMA Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has warned against protesters using today’s fifth anniversary of the Jan. 25 revolution to disrupt the country. Al Arabiya reports that security forces were on high alert and the streets of Cairo were mostly calm this morning, five years to the […]
Jornal de Noticias, Jan. 25, 2015 “Marcelo crowned,” Portuguese daily Jornal de Noticias writes on its front page Monday, as center-right candidate Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa won Sunday’s presidential election with 52% in the first round, a resounding victory otherwise marked by a low turnout of just 48.8%. “The people command, and the people chose […]
Though the technology now exists to clone humans, and mercenaries are at the ready if allowed, most of the mainstream geneticist community points to other ways to get life-saving stem cells.
TOLIARA — The heat and the years have taken a heavy toll on Rebokane Mahatsanga’s frail, scaly-skinned body. Squatting, almost prone, among a few bad-looking ears of corn on his patch of land, he doesn’t quite know his age anymore. “I think I’ll be 100 soon,” he says, his eyes half-closed. People don’t really celebrate […]
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My Kind Of Tree
This big plant we came across in Guadeloupe is nicknamed “traveller’s tree,” supposedly because its sheaths can hold rainwater. But the murky and foul-smelling water this one held made me glad I never was that thirsty.
Even as Belgium has emerged as a hub of Islamic terror networks, a Belgian Muslim is the theatrical toast of the town as he tackles jihad, racism and culture wars with humor.
-Essay- NEW YORK — In searching for an image that could help to illustrate the dreadful, complex and totally out-of-control situation in Syria, I stumbled upon an article in the Marginal Revolution that compares the events in Syria to the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Since Yugoslavia and Syria were both multinational countries, and […]
More than 50 cities have canceled or drastically cut traditional Carnival extravaganza due to public cutbacks. But some say killing the party will only make things worse.
GUNMEN STORM PAKISTAN UNIVERSITY, DOZENS FEARED DEAD A group of gunmen killed at least 21 people and wounded more than 50 as they stormed the Bacha Khan University in Pakistan’s northwestern Charsadda District this morning, The Express Tribune reports. A security official quoted by Reuters said the death toll could rise to 40. Police have […]
Researchers across the globe are trying to understand what drives the sense of martyrdom to which terrorists aspire. Complicating the explanations is the fact that these killers have a wide range of psychological profiles.
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Putin Without Pants On Russian Weekly Cover
“But there is no money,” reads the front page of this week’s edition of Moscow-based magazine The New Times, alongside a caricature of Russian President Vladimir Putin as an empty-handed, pants-less joker whose socks need mending. Russia is facing a deepening economic recession, caused notably by the low international oil price. And though Putin has […]
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Herdsman & Stuntman
In the barren plains of Hungary, one of these csikós wranglers was getting ready to perform the “Puszta-five”: riding five horses at the same time while standing on their bare backs.
As nationalist groups around the continent take on the Pegida brand name, a mass European-wide rally is planned in at least seven cities for Feb. 6.
BOGOTA — Bogotá”s new mayor, the technocratic Enrique Peñalosa, wants to remove some of the Colombian capital’s abundant graffiti — those deemed to be “non-artistic.” But the move is being perceived by some as a reversal of the socially oriented policies of his predecessor, leftist Gustavo Petro, who essentially considered all such street art socially […]
BUENOS AIRES — For supporters and critics alike, the recently concluded eight years of President Cristina Kirchner“s government provided no shortage of bright lights and loud music. Now, just over a month after the presidential victory of Kirchner rival Mauricio Macri, emerging headlines tell of a secret bonafide disco party. Clarín reports that new Central […]
China’s avoidance of market rules have given rise to bloated, wasteful and debt-laden state-owned enterprises that continue to be funded despite their lack of merit. An overhaul of these must be on tap to improve the country’s stagnating e
CAIRO — “I wanted to live through the military coup. Now, after all I’ve seen, I think I must have been mad.” Thus Youssef — not his real name — began our interview. For him, everything changed on the dawn of Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013, the day the Rabea al-Adaweyya sit-in was dispersed when several […]
Social media and advances in cosmetic medicine are pushing beauty standards to new limits and putting anyone who dares ignore their looks at risk of being rude.
Chile’s preeminent 20th-century artist and a leading global figure of surrealism and abstraction, Matta’s work was both unique and quintessentially Latin American.
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Big Fat Marketing Fail For Nike In China
HONG KONG — Just did it. Nike has made a marketing blunder for the ages, Mingbao, a Hong Kong daily reports on Thursday, after the U.S. sports retailer launched a new model of sports shoes onto the Chinese market in the hope of cashing in on the upcoming Chinese New Year spending season. According to […]
-Op-Ed- PARIS — In the 1970s, in the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s visit to China, commentators talked about the Washington-Moscow-Beijing triangle. These days, in the Middle East, there is another triangle: between Riyadh, Tehran and Washington. The problem for the region’s stability is that this triangle is absolutely dysfunctional. Indeed, the only way to understand […]
Deforestation is one of the primary causes of global warming, and much of it has happened across vast areas of the Amazon rain forest. Will pledges at the climate change conference in Paris really count?
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s glamorous singer wife Peng Liyuan used to perform with them. But so too did less reputable women, including several who became the center of public scandals. Now, after more than six decades of service, the Chinese People’s Liberation Song and Dance Troupe has been disbanded, reports Taiwanese newspaper China Times. Founded […]
Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi has been arrested for her provocative work. With a new exhibition in Hong Kong, Asia’s battle for free speech and open sexuality comes together.
Local organizations have been working day and night over the past two months to prepare Syrians for the winter cold. Nearly a dozen people died there last January due to a fatal combination of inadequate shelter and freezing weather.
La Prensa, Jan. 11, 2015 “Horrified!” Monday’s front page of Mexican daily La Prensa reads, quoting White House reaction to the Rolling Stone”s interview — by actor Sean Penn — with the world’s most prominent drug trafficker, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Mexican authorities started U.S. extradition proceedings late Sunday against the Mexican drug kingpin, who […]
It has been considered not politically correct to talk about challenges of integrating Muslim immigrants in German society. That has changed forever after the New Year’s attacks on women in Cologne.
The boom of platforms for freelance workers, on the Uber model, presages a world where the wage system will no longer dominate. This will require new social protections for the good of workers — and the economy.
TIANJIN — A stone’s throw from the highly polluted Bohai Gulf, the Tianjin eco-city is like a mirage. Its buildings, surrounded by trees, offer a rare green and airy setting in the surrounding industrial development zone, which is choked, for much of the year, in a blanket of smog. Public lighting is charged through solar […]
-OpEd- ROME — The year begins with the absurd destiny of two children, both tiny victims of a war that we’d rather not see. On the left is a screen-grab image of a shockingly young boy who is featured in the first propoganda video of 2016 by the butchers of ISIS. Like adults members of […]
-Analysis- ISTANBUL — Saudi Arabia silenced Ayatollah al-Nimr by executing him. He was an open critic of the Saudi royal dynasty and the cruelty against the Shia, while a longtime advocate for democratic elections. The Saudis lumped Nimr in with 46 al-Qaeda members who were charged with terrorism in order to ruin his reputation. You […]