Italian Valentina Simeone’s eyes were opened by her six months at Tehran University, yet another breakthrough in relations between Iran and the West.
Author: Giacomo
London-born Italian journalist and translator. Currently an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley in the Class of 2017, with a double major in Political Science and Political Economy and a contributor at Worldcrunch. I've lived in six different countries on four continents and have a strong interest in current events, geopolitics, and economics. Previously worked for The Jakarta Globe, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and The Daily Californian.
VIZCATÁN DEL ENE — Deep in the Peruvian Andes, a valley dominated by the drug trade now finds itself at the heart of a resurgent Marxist insurgency. The valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, known as the Vraem, was the scene of an April 11 attack by the Shining Path that left eight […]
Among the many potential applications are the defense of digital copyright for photographers, and the end of the hassle of online passwords.
The sixth-century Saint Catherine’s Monastery is a treasured Christian pilgrimage site in a region increasingly controlled by ISIS.
At the futuristic Enosis wine lab, the Genesis robot brings wine into the 21st century.
After gains by regime troops, with Russian air support, calm and nightlife have returned to the capital. And locals are back to betting on Assad’s survival.
GUADALAJARA — Mexico”s state of Jalisco is experiencing a violent crime wave against women. Mexico City-based daily El Universal reports that the number of murders of women, also known as femicides, rose to 150 there in 2015, part of a troubling rise in killings since 2009, when only 58 were recorded. While the notoriously violent […]
CASABLANCA — With one proposal to criminalize tobacco and another to legalize marijuana, Moroccan politics these days is smoking. Casablanca-based daily Aujourd’hui Le Maroc reports that the governing Justice and Development Party (PJD) is proposing a law that would prohibit the sale and consumption of tobacco from hookah water pipes across the country. The moderate […]
JAKARTA — Amid violent anti-Uber protests by taxi drivers in the Indonesian capital, the country’s largest taxi company is trying to defeat its app-based American competitor with an innovative approach: uberize itself. Leading Indonesian magazine Tempo reports that the Blue Bird taxi company is seeking to shift its business model to a car-sharing service, competing […]
The renewed relations with the U.S. may have been prompted by the Cuban revolutionaries’ connection with Pope Francis.
HAVANA — President Barack Obama’s historic three-day visit to Cuba heralds the long-awaited end of the Cold War in Latin America, 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and 15 months since the two erstwhile foes announced their surprise rapprochement. Newspapers in the region, and beyond, covered Obama’s visit — the first by […]
GASR GARABULLI — Migrant #322 slowly lifts his head and opens his eyes. The long shadow of the sun, punctuated by the jail’s metal bars, bathes the cement walls as the blue sky seeps through the metal grate ceiling. It’s silent in the cells, except for the faint sound of children crying in the distance […]
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Passions Flare Over Bullfighting In Valencia
VALENCIA — Supporters of traditional bullfighting are seeing red in Spain, with tens of thousands taking to the streets this week in Valencia to protest cuts to government subsidies for the controversial sport. Attendees chanted “liberty” as they gathered in front of the local city hall, with the march culminating at the nearby Plaza de […]
Moscow is quietly working toward a federal future for war-torn Syria, with a central government but the nation divided into three different ethnic zones. It’s a nod to Kurdish ambitions and lessons from the Balkans.
When the owners of the tiny, unspoiled island of Budelli went bankrupt and a would-be New Zealand buyer’s bid failed, middle school students stepped in, starting an ambitious global fundraising campaign that has gone viral.
The village of Sutera was facing demographic doom as young people have been leaving for generations. Then locals started to wonder about those migrants coming to Italy.
Many locals in Lebanon’s capital are firm Hezbollah and Assad loyalists, seeing the Islamist militia that supports the Syrian regime and fights ISIS on the ground as their ultimate protector against the civil war raging across the border.
ROME — Italian soldiers and antiquity experts alike will help lead a new dedicated UN peacekeeping force designed to protect and restore the world’s cultural monuments exposed to war and other conflicts. Italian daily Corriere della Sera reports that the taskforce, the first of its kind, will be composed of 30 Italian paramilitary troops and […]
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Oil Spill In Peru Pollutes Amazon
CHIRIACO — A devastating oil spill in the Peruvian Amazon is spreading weeks after it began on January 25th. Lima-based daily El Comercio reports that the spill has affected two Peruvian provinces in the Amazon region, polluting farmland, rivers and forests. Some 3,000 barrels of oil burst from a pipeline began running through protection barriers […]
A visit on the eve of the 500th anniversary of the neighborhood where Jews were forced to live, giving the world the culture, confinement and indignity of the ghetto.
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Is A New Arab Spring Simmering In Algeria?
OUED EL MA — High tensions persist in Algeria, a week after police and security forces violently cracked down on protests in the impoverished central town of Oued El Ma. Algiers-based daily El Watan reports that the violent crackdown laid waste to houses and businesses and left the town largely devastated, and what the daily […]
DAKAR — A cartoon of an early 20th-century Senegalese Muslim leader has sparked a nationwide uproar, with the vignette criticized by civilians and political leaders alike. The Paris-based African news magazine Jeune Afrique published a cartoon of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride Brotherhood, last week in which a passing Westerner asks why the […]
The Seguso family’s passion for glasswork burns brightly, even after 23 generations dedicated to the same painstaking but breathtaking craft.
In the faraway verdant landscape of Easter Island, isolated in the Pacific Ocean, lives a rare type of bacteria that could be the key to curing a host of debilitating illnesses. Rapamycin, named for what the indigenous call the island it is found on — Rapa Nui — is used to produce an antibiotic named […]
With six European Union countries instituting new border controls, the end of three decades of free movement comes with a heavy price.
TURIN — In Brussels, it doesn’t matter if your 8-year-olds have a smartphone in their pockets with more computing power than the Rosetta space probe. The European Union passed a regulation this month that raised the legal age for the use of social media to 16, requiring parental consent before teenagers can open Facebook, Instagram, […]
A look inside Huawei’s HQ in Shenzen, the Silicon Valley of China, where plans are being laid to overtake Apple and Samsung.
Ahead of Sunday’s talks in Rome on the Libyan crisis, the U.S. and Italy stress that a lasting solution to the ISIS threat must include Arab allies — and Moscow.
In our increasingly digital world, people often feel the need to disconnect from the Internet for a dose of silence and breath of fresh air. Worldcrunch has reported recent stories from Brazil to California, about the hunt for “digital detox” solutions. With the help of the Internet (!), we’ve tracked down five other examples of […]
The Quirimbas islands in northwestern Mozambique is the front line in the war on over-fishing.
PARIS — As investigators follow possible leads from Syria to Greece and Belgium, Friday’s deadly and meticulously coordinated assault in Paris was no doubt very much a European attack. Governments across the continent are busy taking measures to enhance security against a growing threat of similar coordinated terror assaults. FRANCE French authorities carried out anti-terror […]
A series of seemingly coordinated terror attacks left more than 120 people dead in Paris on Friday evening. In what has been described as the most deadly act of terrorism in French history, the attacks took place in seven locations, including shootings inside a concert hall and cafés in central Paris and a bombing outside […]
Average age: 65. The one immigrant family in town had a baby girl, the first birth in a decade — and they’re already making plans to leave.
Activists on the small Pacific island, with their legendary statues, are taking concrete actions to obtain more autonomy from Chile. But does full independence make sense?
BEIRUT — An Italian diplomat once said that “the darkest corners of a crisis can be the most illuminating in understanding geopolitical dynamics.” This is where Lebanon finds itself: One of the few Middle Eastern countries that is not at war, yet one suffering in the trenches nonetheless. These days Lebanon is far from the […]
MORELIA — The violence-plagued state of Michoacán on Mexico’s central Pacific coast has risen to become the center of narcotics production in the country, according to an investigative report by leading Mexican newspaper El Universal. Mexico is the world’s leading supplier of methamphetamines, as identified in a 2014 UN report . And Michoacán, where some […]
This week we shine the spotlight on Malaysia: CURRENCY AND CARS While other emerging-market currencies in Asia are halting their slide, the Malaysian ringgit is continuing its precipitous fall, Malaysian financial newspaper the Edge reports. The Malaysian currency has experienced a steady depreciation for months against the U.S. dollar. Despite a minor rally recently, it’s […]
ROME — Bordeaux or Borolo? Burgundy or Chianti? Yes, please! Though some have distinct preferences, most wine lovers around the world wish nothing but success to French and Italian winemakers alike. Still, the two European nations have something of an ongoing rivalry, both about the quality and quantity of the wines they put on the […]
JAKARTA — When Indonesian President Joko Widodo was elected last year on a platform to clean up rampant corruption in the nation of 250 million, no one thought it would be easy. Well, it’s proving to be even harder than that. The country’s powerful Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) has targeted members of the Indonesian parliament, with […]
Grim accusations from a United Nations probe that Brazilian police use extrajudicial murder to clear out youth gangs in Rio de Janeiro ahead of next year’s Olympics.