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Author: Worldcrunch
LONDON — According to a new British law, any teacher, doctor, nurse or social care professional who comes across a case of a girl who has undergone genital mutilation has the duty to report it to the police. This law, which took effect on Oct. 31 and applies to any victim under the age of […]
SEOUL — Poverty among the elderly has been blamed for the growing rate of suicides among senior citizens in South Korea’s capital, where 50 seniors took their own lives last year. According to the Korea Labor Institute, 48.6% of the country’s elderly were living in poverty last year, the Korea Herald reports. The highest suicide […]
As it loses territory in Iraq and Syria, ISIS may pursue the *distant enemy* that Osama bin Laden put at the heart of his own longer-term pursuit of a caliphate.
The supply crisis that has plagued supermarkets and consumers for months now has hit the health care sector, with medicines, doctors and even emergency care in short supply. Plummeting oil prices are a major factor, as is the legacy of Hugo Chavez.
A scam at the Manila International Airport, involving security personnel planting bullets in the luggage of unsuspecting passengers to extort money, caused outrage throughout the Philippines earlier this month. As reported by KBR, carrying a single bullet on the Southeast Asian island is illegal. Several Filipino and foreign passengers have claimed in recent weeks that […]
HAMBURG — In Birgit Böhm’s opinion, the “4” she’s looking at is balancing on one leg, like in the nursery rhyme “A little man in the forest,” and wearing a little red cloak. The “7” next to it looks like it’s made of thick gardening wire. And it’s green! The rest of the numbers and […]
Though 146 countries have pledged to fight global warming ahead of the UN’s COP21 conference, market realities and other forces means such commitments are unlikely to materialize.
BOGOTÁ — Recent election defeats for the social-democratic Peronist candidate in Argentina, and for Bogotá”s unapologetic socialist mayor, may be part of a wider trend for leftist leaders across Latin America. Both those elections — not to mention several mass protests against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers Party — suggest voters are tired of business-as-usual […]
PARIS — Colonel Eric de Lapresle had never seen anything like it. Since this month’s Paris and Saint-Denis terrorist attacks, the French Armed Forces recruitment services have received some 1,500 requests for information per day. That’s three times more than before Nov. 13, says de Lapresle, the head of marketing and communication for French military […]
NEW YORK — On a recent Sunday afternoon, David Bromwich paces his friend’s kitchen in Brooklyn barefoot, waiting for some tea to steep. As the alarm on his phone goes off, he’s already pouring. “It has a slight asparagus taste,” he says, slurping the hot green tea from a spoon. “There are so many chemicals in tea,” he explains, sticking a thermometer in another cup of water. “It’s the processing that unlocks all the different compounds.” Bromwich, a 36-year-old product manager at Thomson Reuters, has always loved tea, tasting every one he could as a kid and later mail-ordering the […]
An EU report issued to member states seven years ago offered an eerily accurate warning of what was to come — that areas affected by global warming and political tension (Yemen, Syria, etc.) would be vulnerable to destabilization.
The global refugee crisis forces us to rethink city planning and housing, with more focus on assuring people’s rights and needs. A chance to actually wind up with more human cities.
When fear gets hold of me When anger seizes my body When hate becomes my companion Then I get feminine advice, because it is only feminine pain And I am told feminine pain perishes like all feminine things. — Dahabo Ali Muse, “Feminine Pains” poem, 1998 HARGEISA — “On my wedding night, it felt like […]
MEXICO CITY — Who’s killing Mexico’s journalists? Reporters and editors have increasingly been targeted for murder during the ongoing war against Mexican drug cartels. But a recent investigation by Mexico City-based newspaper El Universal shows that a majority of the journalists killed were not investigating narcotics trafficking, but local police news and national politics. Some […]
Research suggests that sustained terror attacks over time deal a crippling blow to economies, but a single act of appalling violence, like the Nov. 13 attacks in France, may have fewer lasting effects than one might think.
Tunisia is the birthplace of the Arab Spring democratic uprising, and the only to have seen democracy survive. But it is both a source and victim of homegrown terrorists.
The story of how Lonnie Johnson, an African-American inventor just inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame, beat the odds to create a water gun with seriously fun firepower.
Marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the first in an in-depth multimedia series of reports from Africa, and beyond, about the continuing practice of female genital mutilation.
The killers and victims of the Paris violence are part of the same demographic, though they share different realities. Authorities haven’t heard the angst, but rap has been telling us for years how little the two groups share.
TEHRAN — Iranian traffice authorities have announced the removal of any “Latin” spellings of names and driving instructions in Tehran. The move comes as a surprise as many Iranians are hoping for a boom in foreign visitors following the phase-out of international sanctions. The capital’s head of traffic, Ja’far Tashakkori-Hashemi, recently told Iran’s ISNA news […]
Folha de S. Paulo, Nov. 24, 2015 Brazil is facing its greatest ecological disaster in memory after a huge wave of mud, caused by the Nov. 5 collapse of a dam at an iron ore mine, has reached the ocean, pouring its toxic waste into the Atlantic, Folha de S. Paulo reports. The startling image […]
ISIS has banned the use of newly pressed 500 and 1,000 Syrian pound notes. Some fear its the start of a currency switch, though others say it’s a way for some to profit on money exchanges.
More consumer spending in the short term, and a demographic correction over time, but China’s loosening of its birth policies may be most powerful as a symbol.
Abort until a son is born. Having a girl is bad news in China and India, where female fetuses are too often aborted on purpose. But, according to a new German documentary, even Europe is not free of the horrid practice sometimes called “gendercide.” Die Welt reports that the documentary entitled So Long As It’s […]
LONDON — What’s a politician most afraid of? British Premier Harold Macmillan’s famous answer to the journalist’s question is more relevant than ever: “Events, dear boy, events.” If you add the Paris death toll to the number of victims who died after ISIS bombed a Russian plane over the Sinai, that’s 353. And the previous […]
Argentina’s next president, the center-right Mauricio Macri, must be deft in reforming the economy of a society that has moved beyond a developmental stage, to one that sees itself as “at risk.”
German carmaker Audi has commissioned Etogas Ltd. to build the planet’s first power-to-gas plant to fuel cars with transformed wind and solar energy. Could this “windgas” technology make today’s electric cars obsolete?
In the wake of wanton terror, psychology replaces practically everything, from social life to and information. Emotion is now political — and strategic.
-Analysis- PARIS — The Nov. 13 attacks that saw jihadists slaughter at least 129 people in Paris raise two crucial questions: Who ordered these attacks? And who carried them out? The answer to the first is ISIS, the so-called Islamic State that spreads terror, slaughters Muslims and non-Muslims, destroys treasured monuments inherited from centuries and […]
WASHINGTON — In a pair of public appearances this week, CIA Director John O. Brennan made clear that he blames leaks by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden for enabling terrorists to evade detection. “Because of a number of unauthorized disclosures, and a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to […]
After the attacks in Paris, Marc Simoncini, the founder of Meetic, asked French entrepreneurs living abroad, sometimes for fiscal reasons, to come back to France.
ZAGREB — The firepower displayed in Friday’s attacks in Paris, including multiple explosive devices and at least five Kalashnikovs, raises the inevitable question: Where do the terrorists’ weapons come from? Terror investigators and crime experts say the most likely source are Balkan countries, a vestige of the wars that consumed the region through much of […]
The power of “Big Tobacco” in a state-run industry in China is surprisingly similar to the hold that U.S. cigarette makers long enjoyed. Indeed, Chinese anti-smoking advocates are decades behind Western counterparts.
PARIS — France’s intelligence services no longer rule out what not so long ago seemed unthinkable: the emergence on its territory of a “Lebanon-like” terrorism which would see suicide bombs replaced one day by the deadliest of operational modes — truck or car bombings, possibly activated remotely. “We have to accept the reality,” a well-informed […]
Most of the many thousands of sex workers in Thailand walk the streets looking for clients. But one group of women wanted a safe home base, so they opened a bar where they can entertain clients.
-OpEd- PARIS — A majority of historians describe the Spanish Civil War, fought from 1936 to 1939, as a dress rehearsal for what came next, World War II. Will historians of the future be saying the same about the Syrian civil war? All you need to do is replace Nazi Germany and the Italian fascists […]
There are signs that the reaction to Friday’s massacre may unite the country, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in a more lasting way than the Charlie Hebdo attacks did in January.
Charlie Hebdo, Nov. 17, 2015 “They’ve got the guns. Screw them, we’ve got the Champagne!” reads Charlie Hebdo“s much-awaited cover four days after the latest terrorist attacks that killed at least 129 people in Paris on Nov. 13. The ever-provocative satirical weekly was targeted in the last round of Islamist attacks in Paris, when 12 […]
SÃO PAULO — She has an automatic SUV; he has a normal five-speed sedan. She drives to make a bit of money on the side; he does it for a living, 12 hours a day. She’s an Uber driver; he’s an old-fashioned cabbie. As such, they stand on opposite sides of what has been a […]