Argentina’s electoral routine fosters inequality and injustice, enabling opportunists to cash in. It’s time for a new approach.
Author: Bertrand Hauger
Bertrand Hauger is a graduate of La Sorbonne Nouvelle school of bilingual journalism, and joined Worldcrunch after working briefly as a reporter in a local newspaper in his native eastern France. He now serves as Worldcrunch’s deputy editor-in-chief and director of content.
A Chinese housing developer recently hired AIDS patients to threaten people with infection so they would leave their homes. It seems shocking, but discrimination in China based on HIV status is actually legal, leaving many patients little employment choic
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The Lava Church
The expressionist style of Reykjavik’s Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland’s biggest church, can be initially unsettling. But it actually suits this land of volcanoes and geysers.
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Your Prophet Is Not My Prophet
A French-Algerian writer launches a loud and clear message for whoever carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine.
Intellectual property laws in China are used (or simply ignored) for the short-term interests of Chinese companies. But that must change if the nation wants to compete globally.
Forty-nine years ago, the gondola traffic jams on Venice“s Grand Canal somehow seemed more manageable than today.
The “devs” who code our digital world are so rarefied and vital they can dictate their own terms. Companies do anything to recruit them, but like birds, they tend to fly. A look at this singular species.
PARIS — There’s a nice trompe l’oeil mural on rue Nicolas Appert here in the 11th arrondissement. I once stood in front of it for a little while on my lunch break, trying to make sense of the artist’s visual tricks. Today, making sense of what happened on that street feels impossible: Twelve people, among […]
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The Philosopher’s Corner
I was a young philosophy teacher in eastern France when we went to Berlin, then divided in two. My wife took this picture of me at the crossroads between Leibnizstrasse and Kantsstrasse — though Spinoza has always been my favorite.
To the surprise of many, the family of legendary novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez sold his personal papers to the University of Texas. It’s nothing political – but all about posterity, and money of course.
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A Mouse In The Garden
When we went to Florida’s Cypress Gardens in the late 1980s, the botanical garden theme park was trying to survive, threatened as it was by a nearby rodent stealing all its visitors.
A surprising take on China’s approach to education, and what it means for the country’s future.
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The Little Angry Giant
The Dol Cathedral in northwestern France is missing one of its two towers. Some say it’s because an angry giant once threw a menhir — Brittany’s trademark standing stone — that decapitated the cathedral before landing in a field. The Menhir de Champ-Dolent weighs 150 tons, so it’s fair to say that little boy wasn’t […]
Guatemala-born Internet activist Gloria Alvarez believes that today’s protest movements contain, as politics always has, the seeds of future complacency, arrogance and corruption.
SINGAPORE — Jashodaben Modi arrives at the police station sitting on the luggage rack of her brother’s motor bike. A simple woman, she wears a white cotton sari with an orange top underneath, wire frame glasses, and her grey hair in a braid. She wants to lodge a complaint with the police of the Mehsana […]
CAIRO — Yasmine Hamed worked hard to save money for her marriage five years ago. But by the time her daughter Jannah was old enough for school, she realized that the savings race would have to start all over. Hamed had stopped working as a secretary after bouncing between two jobs so she could finally […]
Modern feminism is too focused on the image of feminists themselves, rather than renewing debate of the movement’s core principles. What can be done about feminism fatigue.
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A Fruitful Trip
Driving on the rugged roads of Northern Greece in our valiant Simca Aronde, we stumbled upon a couple of quaint surprises — enormous piles of watermelons, for instance.
JANUARY Israel Ariel Sharon, former prime minister Portugal Eusebio, soccer player United States Phil Everly, musician FEBRUARY Spain Paco de Lucia, Flamenco guitarist United States Shirley Temple, child actress United States Philip Seymour Hoffman, actor MARCH Spain Adolfo Suarez, former prime minister United States L’Wren Scott, fashion designer France Alain Resnais, filmmaker APRIL United Kingdom […]
-OpEd- BEIJING — Lawyers are undeniably critical to any society that values judicial due process. The fact that they are still marginalized in China is another notable sign that the country’s justice system is still fledgling compared to its Western counterparts. After 30 years of legal construction and judicial development since China opened up in […]
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Playlist: 2014 Music Farewells
From rock’n’roll pioneers to soul legends and flamenco gods, here’s Worldcrunch’s tribute playlist to 16 of the great musicians who died in 2014. Joe Cocker — Night Calls Phil Everly, Everly Brothers — All I Have To Do Is Dream Paco de Lucia — Impetu & Panaderos Tommy Ramone, The Ramones — I Don’t Want […]
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Whisky On The Menu
After it was burned down during the 1990s, Dublin’s Old Jameson Distillery re-opened in 1997 as a tourist attraction, guiding visitors through the stages of whisky making. I even had dinner inside the beautiful distillery — although, for some reason, I’m having trouble remembering what I ate that night …
The Argentine embassy in Paris has gathered pictures and objects that piece together the life of Eva Peron, the loved and loathed first lady who became a “mother” to the poor in 1940s.
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The Royal Game
Chess has been a favorite hobby of mine long before 1963, when I took part in the Franche-Comté regional finals in Besançon. (I finished third.)
Travel for Iranians is hard, which is why the young have found hosting foreigners is a way to explore the world vicariously. The latest twist to the private breaking of Iran’s myriad restrictions.
The past few years have seen Switzerland forced to reveal secret banking details to national authorities. That means a brutal job for the bankers of Geneva
Ukraine’s Pro-Russian Separatists Are Bad News For Russia The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, located on the Moldovan border with Ukraine, has relied on Russia for the past two decades. A perfect example of potential new burdens for Moscow. — KOMMERSANT In India, The World’s First Vegetarian City After monks went on a hunger strike to push […]
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The Invisible Invader
Although it was built to protect the Chinese Empire against military incursions, the Great Wall of China faces a more insidious enemy: erosion caused by sandstorms, which has chipped away at the massive structure for centuries. I witnessed the potency of the assault when I went there almost 20 years ago: The haze in the […]
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My Bogus Marriage To A Refugee Friend
Germany is tracking the growing number of so-called “protective” marriages, arranged among friends to avoid an immigrant being sent back to poverty and peril in their home country.
Why do our hands wander toward our faces: stroking chins, scratching eyebrows, rubbing noses? German researchers have discovered the neurology and psychology at play.
Is this the rise of another Hugo Chavez for Latin America?
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The Mother Of Music
It’s in this picturesque town hall of St. Gilgen, on the shores of Lake Wolfgangsee, that the birth of Anna Maria Walburga Pertl was registered in 1720. The name rings no bell? Well then, you’ll recognize her son’s: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A heartwrenching court case in France poses thorny questions as the very meaning of family evolves more quickly than the legal system, or even the experts, can keep up with.
JERUSALEM — I was walking down Via Dolorosa — the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem. In front of me were three young Germans. They found the whole thing laughable, and kept confirming this to each other by pointing out all the stupid details. “Here, look, we’re at the next station. What does it say […]
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Sea Foam, Beer Foam
Becici, a sea resort near Budva in western Montenegro, boasts one of the most beautiful beaches in the country — and the hotel from whose terrace I snapped this picture offered one of the best beers I’ve ever had.
Here are some of the best stories we ran this year, from our fair-minded but ever subjective staff of journalists, translators and editors. Crunchers united! From Ukraine To Syria, Mercenaries With A Cause Hurriyet / TURKEY Le Monde / GUINEA, SIERRA LEONE, LIBERIA Süddeutsche Zeitung / GERMANY Economic Observer / CHINA Kommersant / RUSSIA, UKRAINE […]
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The Island Weavers
I’ve already told you about the knitting abilities of Peruvian men and women. But the Uru people living on Lake Titicaca take it to a whole other lever: Not only do they use bundles of dried reeds to make boats like the one on this slide — but they weave the artificial islets themselves!
Despite FARC declaring a ceasefire, peace won’t come to Colombia until warring parties in decades of civil war admit to all the people they’ve kidnapped, tortured and killed.
For the second straight year, there is an unwelcome Christmas visitor in northern Argentina. A variety of piranha fish called palometas have returned for a second year to bite Argentine swimmers in the Paraná River, near the city of Posadas. On Christmas day last year, some 60 people were attacked by the palometa piranha, an […]
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Not So Eternal Flame
The Raj Ghat memorial in Delhi is a black marble platform that marks the spot of Mahatma Gandhi’s cremation. Comparing my slide to recent pictures, I noticed that an eternal flame was now burning on one end of the memorial; it doesn’t look like it was there when we visited the monument.