Aspiring writers who don’t have an inside track welcome the online publisher’s latest advances, such as awarding independent authors, but defenders of traditional publishing say it’s all a scam to destroy the publishing system and
Author: Worldcrunch
Representatives and victims in the Congo are pushing back on ancient traditions that render women without rights after the deaths of their husbands, even prohibiting them from eating or drinking when they want.
Are new technologies making the wage system obsolete, turning employees into independents? No, workers aren’t so much freelancing as moonlighting.
ROME — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has chosen Italy as his first major Western destination since winning elections in 2013, and the first to come in the wake of the Vienna accords on Iran’s nuclear program and the lifting of international sanctions. Italian newspaper La Stampa first reported earlier this month that the president will […]
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Why Boredom Is Good For Your Kids
MUNICH — To be a parent is to be a victim. That’s at least the message some parents convey. Yes, of course children are wonderful and sweet and all that jazz. But let’s be honest, aren’t some of the things children say just annoying? “I don’t liiike it.” “I don’t waaant to.” “Are we theeere […]
An 18-century gallery has been transformed into a “venue of free and creative exchange,” upending the usual relationship between art and the public.
-Essay- CAIRO — Assistant Professor in Islam and Modernity, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, Professorship of Islamic History, Specialist on Islam and/or Muslim Societies, Cultures, Arts, Politics, and/or Philosophy. These are just a sampling of the positions currently featured in job listings of the Middle East Studies Association. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks […]
As students return to school this month in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo, they won’t be heading back to the same classrooms they left last year. Instead, they’ll be studying in basements and other “secure areas” across the devas
A new wave of democratic protests has been spreading across Africa, from Angola to Burkina Faso and beyond, as several long-time leaders look to extend their rule for as long as they can, often defying their country’s own constitution. Front and center in these popular movements have been several prominent hip hop stars. The French-language […]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sparked outrage with his thesis that a Palestinian gave Adolf Hitler the idea to annihilate the Jews. It is, of course, utter nonsense. But from a German perspective, there is another problem.
Daniel Scioli, candidate closest to the outgoing Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, is leading the polls. But whoever wins, the future of the country is a wide-open question.
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The Torrid History Of Sex In Arab Films
CAIRO — In 1929, Egypt’s Interior Ministry banned Wedad Orfi’s Masat al-Hayah (“The Tragedy of Life”). “The story as we saw it revels in self-indulgence, overshadowing the good part of it, leaving only a few meters of preaching, which neither leaves a strong enough impact on the viewer, nor gives the viewer a sublime idea […]
A group of well-educated Afghans with credentials to work in Europe are instead committing to stay in their troubled homeland – and using Facebook to encourage others to do the same.
La Nazione, Oct. 21, 2015 In what it characterizes as an international scoop, Italian daily La Nazione reports that Pope Francis has a curable brain tumor, which the Vatican no doubt has been trying to keep secret. “The Pope Is Sick,” is the newspaper’s front page headline Wednesday, the same day the Vatican characterized the […]
With renewed violence raging between Palestinians and Israelis, and an international community caught up with other conflicts, the two-state solution is all but dead and buried. Another reason to mourn the Israeli leader, assassinated Nov. 4, 1995.
An exclusive look at the evolution of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade through the words of members and locals in the Yarmouk Valley in southwestern Deraa.
What if everything were free? Well, it is at Debora Fischkandl’s little Paris shop, no strings attached. And hers isn’t the only one. A look at the radical side of the sharing economy.
Turkish President Erdogan was quick to blame U.S. and French leaders after terror attacks struck those countries, but has failed to take responsibility for allowing the deadly Ankara attacks to occur.
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Another Venezuelan Opposition Leader Jailed
CARACAS — Venezuelan security agents have detained Manuel Rosales, an opposition politician returning to the country after six years in exile, at the airport in Maracaibo, in the western state of Zulia. Opposition daily El Universal reports that the 63-year-old former presidential candidate and ex governor of Zulia, was arrested “literally as he got off […]
NEW YORK — A U.S. intelligence official has leaked a cache of secret slides that reveal details of the American military’s use of drones to assassinate suspected terrorists. The documents include suspicion that innocent people are regularly killed in the operations and that sometimes vague criteria are used to decide whom to target. The so-called […]
Brazil has utterly failed to find an environmentally friendly response to waste disposal. The struggling economy makes change unlikely, meaning ever more garbage “pickers” making modest livings sifting through the dumps.
Born around the time of the 1993 Oslo Accords that were supposed to usher in Middle East peace, these young people are well-informed, disillusioned and very, very angry.
VANCOUVER — James Hankle, a software engineer in his 50s sporting bluejeans and a Green Party T-shirt, is explaining his fix for Vancouver’s runaway property prices when he’s interrupted by an eavesdropping passer-by: “Stop allowing people from China to buy our houses and leave them vacant,” she says and walks away. Despite British Columbia’s aversion to pipelines and affection for pot, housing affordability has pushed both aside as the No. 1 issue raised by area residents in the run-up to Canada’s election this month. It’s not completely surprising given that Vancouver has become North America’s most expensive city. Surging purchase […]
SAO PAULO — The mess that is Brazilian politics right now would make for a fantastic television drama series. Its intricate plots, combining power disputes and alliances concluded behind closed doors, would easily match those of Game of Thrones, except that the omnipresent blood would be replaced with dirty money. Ever since her reelection for […]
PARIS: French civil engineering firm Colas has launched the world’s first “photovoltaic roads,” capable of withstanding the weight of cars and bicycles and producing electricity by exposure to sunlight. Known as “Wattway,” the concept could revolutionize solar energy production. Colas says that covering just 2.5% of France’s road and highway network would be enough to […]
This article is part of sponsored series from the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity EL BRECHOUA — A small but significant revolution is underway amidst the golden wheat-covered hills of the Moroccan municipality of El Brechoua, 60 kilometers from the capital of Rabat. The fields of wheat extending as far as the eye can see […]
Church leaders believe Christian missionary work is endangering civil peace as ever more Muslims emigrate to Germany. Limiting proselytizing is a radical break from 2,000 years of practice.
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Behind The Missing Obama-Rouhani Handshake
TEHRAN — Iranian legislators questioned Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif about why he had shaken hands last month with U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The gesture was viewed by many as another positive sign of Iran’s thawing relations with the West, but has irritated the country’s conservatives opposed […]
MATADI — Elie Luemba says her youngest son fooled her and her husband for far too long. “We used to give him a little money every morning to buy himself donuts at school,” she says. “But he was actually using the money to bet on sports results with his classmates.” The irony is that Luemba […]
Is capitalism coming to Kim Jong-un’s North Korea? According to South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo, North Koreans who got rich thanks to state-backed monopolies are being encouraged by the regime to open small banks across the capital in a bid to boost the free economy. Some of the money-lenders even have installed ATMs, though these […]
BEIJING — Like others, as a child I used to daydream about taking a shovel and hunting through our yard for priceless treasure buried from ancient times. What I never would have imagined is that such an act can get you into serious trouble — even if it’s done on your own property. It’s a […]
Salty-snack junkies, the lactose-intolerant and lovers of Asian food are providing an economic boost for farmers in the war-torn northern provinces of Ivory Coast.
VATICAN CITY — A letter delivered to Pope Francis, reportedly signed by 13 Roman Catholic cardinals, questions whether the pontiff has organized the ongoing Synod on the Family in such a way that ensures “predetermined results on important controversial issues,” Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso has reported. The magazine’s longtime Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister reported the […]
BEIRUT — American antitank missiles supplied to Syrian rebels are playing an unexpectedly prominent role in shaping the Syrian battlefield, giving the conflict the semblance of a proxy war between the United States and Russia, despite President Barack Obama’s express desire to avoid one. The U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles were delivered under a two-year-old covert program coordinated between the United States and its allies to help vetted Free Syrian Army groups in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. Now that Russia has entered the war in support of Assad, they are taking on a greater significance than was originally intended. […]
Saturday’s bombings in Turkey’s capital may be the worst in the nation’s history, with a toll approaching 100 dead. Some point the finger at President Erdogan’s ruling AKP party.
While officials in the Argentine city of Bariloche insist it was never a “Nazi refuge,” a tidy little tourist business is growing around visits to local sites associated with Nazi war criminals like Mengele and Eichmann.
WASHINGTON — Tattoos dedicated to Lucifer, traces of alcohol and various drugs, lots of wounds: The recently unveiled autopsy report for the nine victims of a gunfight in Waco, Texas include all the elements needed to preserve the dark legend of American bikers. On Aug. 6, a week before the report went public, Republican Party […]
Moscow’s decision to enter the Syrian conflict with bombing raids may bring smiles to the Assad regime. On the ground, ordinary Syrians are paying the price.
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Rome Mayor Quits Amid Pressure
Il Messaggero, Oct. 9, 2015 The resignation of Ignazio Marino, Rome’s embattled mayor, dominated headlines in Italy on Friday after months of rising political tensions in the capital and within the center-left Democratic party of both the mayor and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. “Marino, A Surrender Amid Venom,” was the front-page headline in the Rome […]
BHAKTAPUR — With one arm, Rabindra Puri slowly clears a pile of rubble, followed by a second, and a third, until a statuette of the god Shiva appears. He delicately wipes the object’s dust-covered face, then puts it on a stretcher so that it can be carried away and placed in a locked cabin nearby. […]