WorldcrunchBertrand 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.
CHINA AND TAIWAN MEET FOR HISTORIC GOVERNMENT TALKS Representatives of the China and Taiwan governments met today in the Eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, the first face-to-face meeting of cross-strait officials since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, which saw the separation of the two states. While no official agenda was released […]
BBC NEWS (UK), TIMES OF INDIA, HINDUSTAN TIMES (India) Worldcrunch ALLAHABAD – At least 36 pilgrims on their way back from the world’s largest religious festival in northern India have died in a stampede late Sunday. The death toll may rise again, as dozens of other injured were in a critical condition after the stampede […]
A landslide last month in Zhenxiong County in southwestern China killed 46 villagers. Once the bodies were recovered, the local authority — without any prior agreement from family members — cremated them. This set off a storm of protest from relatives of the deceased, and widespread criticism from the public. Zhenxiong authorities sparked further outrage […]
SECOND ROUND OF SYRIAN PEACE TALKS BEGIN The Syrian government and opposition representatives are meeting in Geneva for the second round of peace negotiations, during which Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi is expected to meet separately with both delegations, AFP reports. The talks come as civilians from the besieged city of Homs were evacuated during […]
ISTANBUL – Four heavily made-up, peroxide blondes are sitting on a talk show set. In broken German, they’re trying to prove that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is wrong. It’s a particularly bizarre bit of religious propaganda – but since 2011 creationist theories have been packaged this way for Western viewers and broadcast by the […]
Documents reveal how American intelligence officers turned a secret training center for Polish security forces into one of the controversial “black site” prisons for terrorism suspects.
FRANCE 24 (France), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), REUTERS Worldcrunch Tunisia’s ruling Islamic Ennahda party has rejected Prime Minister Hamdi Jebali’s proposal to dissolve the government in a bid to restore calm after the killing of opposition leader Chokri Belaid in Tunis. Hours after Wednesday morning’s assassination, which sent protesters onto the streets across Tunisia, Jebali had […]
AP, EL UNIVERSAL (Mexico), NEWS.COM.AU (Australia), INDEPENDENT.IE (Ireland) Worldcrunch The big news arrived in America’s mailbox on Wednesday: the U.S. Postal Service will end Saturday delivery service starting this summer, responding to budget cuts and the growing use of the Internet for long-distance communication. AP has the news from Washington. Not surprisingly, changes to postal […]
TUNISIALIVE, MOSAïQUE FM (Tunisia), BBC NEWS (UK), AFP Worldcrunch TUNIS – Chokri Belaid, a senior leader in Tunisia“s left-leaning opposition Democratic Patriotic party, was shot dead as he was leaving his house in Tunis. “My brother was assassinated. I am desperate and depressed,” Belaid’s brother Abdelmajid Belaid told the Agence France Presse news agency. Chokri […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – German clothes shoppers have started going for bright colors, after years of opting for safe gray or navy blue. So retailers – who were taken by surprise – had no choice but to act quickly to place large follow-up orders. But according to the National Association Of German Textile […]
Pennies may not change anyone’s life, but at least it helps President Dilma fulfill a campaign promise.
THE KOREA TIMES (South Korea), URIMINZOKKIRI (North Korea), AFP Worldcrunch North Korea, which is expected to carry out a third nuclear test any day now, has released a video depicting a city that resembles New York under missile attack. The footage shows a dream sequence, set to the tune of Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie’s […]
TAWASOL, (Saudi Arabia), AL-ARABIYA (UAE), AL MOHEET (Egypt) Worldcrunch RIYADH – A Saudi cleric says babies and young girls should be covered from head to toe as a way of protecting them from sexual abuse. Sheikh Abdullah Mohamed Daoud made his statement on the al-Madj satellite station in October last year, but the video was […]
U.S. CURBS DRONE STRIKES IN PAKISTAN AMID PEACE TALKS The United States has sharply reduced its drone strikes following a request from the Pakistani government, which is currently pursuing peace talks with the Taliban, The Washington Post quotes U.S. officials as saying. This does not, however, mark an end to such attacks to prevent imminent […]
BERLIN – Winegrower Barbara Banke of the Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates in California doesn’t just love the sun because it ripens grapes. The sunnier it is, the lower the winery’s electricity and gas bills are. And those savings are possible because of the large mirrors mounted on the football-field-sized tin roof of the winery’s production facility […]
The dispute over the Diaoyu islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku islands, is prompting some Japanese firms to consider closing Chinese operations. They quickly run into roadblocks.
KARZAI HAD SECRET MEETINGS WITH THE TALIBAN Afghan President Hamid Karzai has held covert negotiations with Taliban officials, aimed at forging a peace agreement without the participation of Western allies, The New York Times reports. The discovery of these meetings seems to explain Karzai’s recent combative behavior toward the U.S., the Times reports, citing his […]
XINHUA, JIANGXI, GLOBAL TIMES (China), WANT DAILY (Taiwan) JIANGXI – The Chinese New Year is the worst holiday to be single in China – the family pressure is too intense. “With or without money, get married to have a better New Year,” goes the Chinese proverb. The Chinese New Year– also called the Spring Festival […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch HAMBURG – German researchers are developing a long-lasting battery that could solve one of the biggest problems of the energy transition, reports Die Welt. The German government is aiming for electrical power in Germany to be 80% from renewable energy sources like wind and solar by the year 2050. However, this […]
WORLDCRUNCH Worldcrunch PARIS – When David Beckham announced that he had signed a five-month contract with France’s Paris Saint-Germain soccer club, millions of fans of both Monsieur and Madame Spice started fantasizing about the Beckhams moving from the city of angels to the city of lights. As it turns out, Becks and Posh’s kids are […]
SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – When Germany talks about social networks, it is usually talking about Facebook and Twitter, not about YouTube. And yet the video platform, with its 800 million daily users, is certainly in the Facebook league and is used by many more people than Twitter. The fact that YouTube has become […]
LE PARISIEN, LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR (France), THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch PARIS – French troops have taken control of the airport in the town of Kidal, one of the last major rebel strongholds in northern Mali. French Armed Forces spokesman Thierry Burkhard confirmed Wednesday that French troops had landed overnight in Kidal – the third biggest […]
GOOGLE MAPS (USA) Worldcrunch Thanks to its community of “citizen cartographers” who joined forces on Google Map Maker, Google says in a blog post, the U.S.-based Internet giant has managed to give its maps of North Korea a tremendous overhaul – including an updated bird’s eye-view of some the country’s most secretive locations, i.e. prison […]
UKRAINE PARLIAMENT DEBATES AMNESTY FOR PROTESTERS The Ukrainian Parliament is expected to debate an amnesty for pro-EU protesters who are being detained after the recent clashes in Kiev and other cities around the country, German news agency DPA reports. According to the capital’s Deputy Mayor Anatoly Golubchenko, the property damage from the ongoing protests in […]
AL AHRAM (Egypt), MASRAWY (Egypt), AL-MASRY AL-YOUM (Egypt) Worldcrunch CAIRO – As Al-Masry Al-Youm describes it on Monday, President Mohammed Morsi’s latest speech to the nation, meant to calm Egypt after days of deadly unrest, only “added fuel to the fire.” The Egyptian President announced the state of emergency Sunday night in the major Canal […]
UKRAINE PM RESIGNS Ukraine Prime Minister Mykola Azarov offered his resignation early Tuesday in an effort to end the country’s political crisis. This was followed by news that the Ukrainian Parliament had voted to repeal nine of the 12 anti-protest laws that reignited the anti-government protests two weeks ago. SYRIAN DEFENSE MINISTER’S HOMETOWN BOMBED According […]
FRANCE 24, FRANCE TV INFO, AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS – French forces, supported by the Mali army have captured both the rebel strongholds of Timbuktu and Gao in a fast-moving offensive against Al Qaeda-linked fighters occupying northern Mali. Battling together to loosen the grip of Islamist fighters in the country’s north, French […]
SYRIA TALKS TO FOCUS ON TRANSITION Talks about Syria’s future are due to continue today in Geneva and will focus on the thorny issue of power transfer, amid reports that the Israeli air force bombed a Syrian base in the town of Latakia. Yesterday, both parties agreed to let women and children leave the besieged […]
BERLIN – Social networks like Facebook make many things easier. You can find out right away if Alex got the job or not, and you can not only read about Marie’s vacation, but you can also see all those pictures of her on the beach, too. There’s also a downside to this. Researchers have conducted […]
Some 1.2 million were forced to relocate by China’s massive Three Gorges project. Moving to unfamiliar land, many of these internal migrants struggle. Some tell another story.
UNITED DAILY NEWS, RADIO TAIWAN INTERNATIONAL (Taiwan) Worldcrunch TAIPEI – “Just by smelling it, I can tell where it comes from and what its quality is…” This unique touch of boastfulness comes from You Qi-Cheng, who runs condom manufacturer Fuji Latex. Mr. You’s claim of olfactory prowess quickly circualated on the Chinese Internet, after the […]
As tensions increase again on the Korean Peninsula, and China rethinking its rapport with Pyongyang, a reset could be in order between Seoul and Beijing.
“Behind the closet are those wives imprisoned in an unhappy marriage…” A Chinese woman used her personal blog to describe life as the wife of a gay man, before her husband decided finally to come out. According to a report conducted in 2005 by Liu Dalin, a prominent sexologist, 90% of Chinese homosexual and bisexual […]
LIBERATION, LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, L’EXPRESS, FRANCE INFO (France), REFORMACOM (Mexico) Worldcrunch Florence Cassez, a French woman sentenced to 60 years in jail in Mexico for kidnapping, is on her way back to France. Cassez, 38, is expected to land in Thursday afternoon in Paris, where she will be welcomed by France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs […]
JERUSALEM POST, HAARETZ (Israel), BBC NEWS (UK), CNN, NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu“s narrow victory for a third term as Israel’s prime minister will force him to reach out to the surprise centrist challenger as he now faces the complex task of forming a new coalition. Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu right-wing […]
A Chinese reporter crosses the border to take the pulse of the closed-off nation, where young North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may have begun to loosen things up ever so slightly.
GENEVA 2 PEACE CONFERENCE OPENS UKRAINE PROTESTS TURN DEADLY Officials say at least two protesters have died in Kiev, as the violent fights with the police continue to escalate. According to The Kyiv Post, there may have been a third victim, after two were killed by gunfire, with one apparently shot four times. The reported […]
NICOSIA – The moment you arrive in Cyprus you sense something about the little eastern Mediterranean island that sets it apart from its European neighbors. There are an unusual number of men in suits carrying briefcases. And the bright billboards on the streets leading from the airport have Cyrillic writing on them. Some of the […]
PARIS MATCH (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS – The Islamist militant group behind the deadly hostage crisis at an Algerian gas plant that killed dozens of foreigners last week has threatened to carry out new attacks, especially against France. In a phone call to French weekly magazine Paris Match, a spokesman for Mokhtar Belmokhtar – the […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch It’s a different kind of toxic emission, but scientists have indeed measured the environmental impact of the methane gases let out by flatulent livestock. And now the President of Germany’s Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Jochen Flasbarth, wants farmers to shoulder more responsibility for climate protection. “In the medium term we could […]