Worldcrunch
FEZ – It is the fourth stage of the Tour du Maroc bicycle race, and we are somewhere between Guercif and Fez. Since this morning, the wind has not stopped sweeping this stretch of road, and the cyclists with it. Everyone is pedaling in slow motion, at about 15 kilometers per hour. Some of the […]
IRNA (Iran), AP, BBC Worldcrunch TEHRAN – By midday Wednesday more than 80 aftershocks had been registered in southwestern Iran following a 6.1 magnitude earthquake that killed at least 37 people and injured 850. Twelve villages were completely destroyed by the quake, forcing thousands of terrified residents to spend the night in the open, according […]
SOFIA – While Cyprus was in the middle of a financial crisis, the court of Limassol, the island’s second largest city, made a ruling that largely went unnoticed. Yet it was a judicial first. On March 28, the Cyprus court condemned a 24-year-old Swedish-Lebanese man, Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, to four years in prison for helping […]
AFP, REUTERS, AL JAZEERA Worldcrunch TEHRAN – Iran unveiled on Tuesday a new uranium production facility and two extraction mines, a few days after talks with world powers on its disputed nuclear program ended in a deadlock, reports AFP. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Iran now controlled the entire chain of nuclear energy production — and […]
Bono, Bowie, and the Rolling Stones, not to mention Apple, Google and Microsoft keep an address in the Netherlands, which doesn’t tax profits by foreigners. What do locals say?
Worldcrunch Margaret Thatcher, baroness of Kesteven, died on Monday, from a stroke at the age of 87. The iconic leader of the Conservative Party, Thatcher served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 up to her resignation in 1990. The Soviet Press gave her the nickname the “Iron Lady” for her toughness, and […]
PARIS – The combination of the Arab Spring and the economic crisis in southern Europe has led to a quiet panic spreading in hospitals across the Mediterranean Basin. “With the disorganization of medical services, the number of infections resisting most known antibiotics has literally exploded,” says professor Patrice Nordmann, chief of the bacteriology-virology-parasitology department at […]
HINDUSTAN TIMES, FIRST POST (India), BBC (UK) Worldcrunch MUMBAI – As many as 40 people were killed, including 11 children, in the collapse of a building illegally under construction near Mumbai, police said Friday. Dozens of people were injured in the disaster late Thursday night, The Hindustan Times reported, as authorities continued searching for others […]
AFP, LE MONDE (France), HAARETZ (Israel) Worldcrunch PARIS – The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has admitted to having plagiarized and lied, after it emerged that several parts of his book Forty Jewish Meditations were taken from other sources, reports Le Monde. “The plagiarizing unmasked on the Internet is true,” Bernheim wrote in a […]
SANTIAGO – “The visible web is the tip of the iceberg,” says Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix, a search engine for the Deep Web (DW). One of Kosmix’ investors is none other than Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. The iceberg sounds daunting, but Rajaraman seems to know what he’s talking about. How is it possible […]
SINA WEIBO (China), TEALEAF NATION (China), LE MONDE (France), ASAHI SHIMBUN (Japan), NPR (U.S.A.) Worldcrunch BEIJING – The Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Congress concluded with 59-year-old Xi Jinping being officially chosen as head of state. The decision at the weeklong meeting was in no way a surprise but came as the culmination of the months […]
TOKYO – The conflict between Japan and China over the sovereignty of the inhabited Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in Chinese) is symptomatic of Tokyo’s diplomatic weakness. In its duel with Beijing, Japan appears isolated in its claim and abandoned by its allies. The United States announced that the islands were covered by the U.S.-Japan security treaty, […]
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY, BBC (U.K.), DER SPIEGEL (Germany) Worldcrunch LONDON – A long-term international study of wild Atlantic salmon has discovered that large numbers of free-ranging salmon are being killed by parasitic sea lice, the BBC has reported. Sea lice, which attach themselves to salmon and then eat their flesh, blood and tissue, […]
PARIS – The file will be at the top of the pile on the president’s desk. It is the singular priority for the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA – a political hot potato, a diplomatic puzzle, and a strategic nightmare. It is stamped “danger,” “highly explosive,” and could mean a new war in […]
His name is Xi Jinping (pronounced Shee Jin-ping). The future Chinese leader was born into privilege as a child of the “red dynasty.” His father was an old revolutionary companion of Mao’s. But after his father’s fall into disgrace, Xi experienced poverty, prison and the hardships of peasant life. What kind of leader will he […]
EL PAÍS (Spain), AFP (France), THE LOCAL (Sweden), TORONTO STAR (Canada), MAIL AND GUARDIAN (South Africa) Worldcrunch Gay rights has had a great run the past 24 hours. In the U.S. elections Tuesday, Maryland and Maine voted yes to gay marriage in referendums, with final results still pending on a similar measure in Washington state. […]
-Analysis- Barack Obama’s reelection to a second term in the White House is in spectacular contradiction to the trend in Western politics since the beginning of the current economic crisis. One after another, Western leaders have been dumped by voters who have made them pay for the effects of the crisis and the austerity measures […]
PARIS – Naive or arrogant? Daring or cautious? Four years after he entered the White House, Obama remains an enigma. Naive or cunning?“I never saw someone so competitive. What is the only thing that Barack Obama hates more than losing? Losing twice,” confides Robert Gibbs, his former press advisor. But Obama wants to win fair […]
BBC, GUARDIAN (UK), DIE WELT, FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINER ZEITUNG (Germany), LES ECHOS (France) Worldcrunch ATHENS – Greek unions are staging “the mother of all strikes” as Parliament votes on another round of budget cuts, writes the Guardian. The bankrupt Greek government is facing a tough job: convince the Greek people that austerity measures are necessary. “This […]
GULFNEWS.com (Dubai), EL WATAN (Algeria), FASO.net (Burkina Faso), BBC (UK), JEUNE AFRIQUE (France) Worldcrunch The situation in the north of Mali is provoking increasing anxiety in its neighbors. Fundamentalist Islamic rebels close to Al Qaeda have taken over the region, while the Mali government now controls only one-third of the country. The United Nations Security […]
THE AUSTRALIAN, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), LES ECHOS (France), WALL STREET JOURNAL (USA) Worldcrunch SYDNEY – In a major blow to the ratings industry, the Federal Court of Australia ruled on Monday that Standard & Poor’s had misled investors by giving its most trusted rating to instruments that S&P knew to be faulty, the Australian […]
SPRINGFIELD – Whenever he has half an hour free, Joe goes into the yard of his little house to split logs. “It’s fun for me. It’s the only thing that really gets my mind off the election.” In the living room there is a pool table, a bearskin on the wall, and his tools. “I […]
TURIN – It may not be wartime, but the economic crisis is changing basic facts of life. And in some cases, changing them backward in time. One notable change is that Italian women are rediscovering jobs as domestic helpers (housecleaners and care givers), that had been taken over in recent years by a virtual labor […]
WASHINGTON – As Mitt Romney would say, it’s a particularly well-stuffed “binder full of women.” The 2012 vintage of candidates for public office is one of the best — at least in terms of quantity. More women are running for Congress this year than ever before. The newspapers are comparing it to the 1992 so-called […]
HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT (Germany), DUTCH NEWS (Netherlands) Since May 2012, selling marijuana to non-Dutch buyers has been illegal in the south of the Netherlands. This measure came into law in an effort to prevent large numbers of foreigners, especially Germans, from crossing the border specifically to buy drugs. Dutch buyers had to show a “weedpass” to […]
LE MONDE (France), ANSA, MISNA (Italy) Worldcrunch TRIPOLI – Some 100 armed men stormed Libya’s parliament late Tuesday, preventing the confirmation of 30 cabinet members for the new government of prime minister Ali Zeidan, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Fighters have invaded parliament several times before, each time bringing proceedings to a halt. “This has […]
THE TIMES, THE TELEGRAPH, THE MIRROR (U.K.), ABC (U.S.), Worldcrunch In his new book Running My Life, Sebastian Coe, the former track star who led Britain’s move to secure the 2012 Olympics for London, recounts the final sprint to see who would host the Summer Games. Coe says Paris was the favorite of the Olympic […]
PARIS – The new tablets and smartphones have blurred the boundaries between businesses and their employees, partners and customers. The danger of computer piracy has never been so great. The threat is invisible but incessant, as the recent large-scale attack on British bank HSBC shows. In information technology, we live in a time of fantastic […]
KIEV POST (Ukraine), INTERNEWS EURASIA (U.S.), DIE ZEIT (Germany), BBC NEWS (U.K.), HURRIYET (Turkey) Worldcrunch KIEV – The Russia-friendly Party of Regions of incumbent president Viktor Yanukovych was claiming victory Monday in the closely watched Ukraine parliamentary elections. Together with its Communist party allies, the Regions party says it will have a simple majority in […]
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE, WUNDERGROUND.COM, BALTIMORE SUN, STRATFORD PATCH (U.S.), INDEPENDENT (U.K.), STERN (Germany) Worldcrunch NEW YORK – As day breaks, Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the east coast of the United States, with schools, stock exchanges, airports, subways and a presidential election on lockdown, as residents and rescue personnel brace for what may be […]
Were they the “right rats?” The controversial study by Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen, on the toxicity of genetically modified NK603 corn and the weed killer Roundup, has raised a host of questions concerning the type of rodent used in the experiment. Is the Sprague-Dawley rat appropriate for two-year feeding experiments, when this […]
-Essay- PARIS – If we ask the French what they don’t understand about the U.S. elections, we are spoiled for choices. Having seen French commentary on the Obama-Romney duel, the most pointed area of incomprehension is “what it means to be an American Republican.” We just can’t seem to wrap our French brains around this […]
AFP, ASIANEWS, IRRAWADDY (Burma), REUTERS, AL JAZEERA (Qatar), Worldcrunch A crisis is building in western Burma where one of the world’s largest groups of stateless people, the Muslim Rohingya, are being burned out of their villages by Buddhist Burmese nationalists. Since Sunday, several people have been killed and hundreds of homes have been burned. Thousands […]
JERUSALEM POST (Israel), NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, AFP (France), REUTERS (U.S.), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), AHRAM ONLINE (Egypt), LIBERTÉ ALGÉRIE (Algeria) Worldcrunch JERUSALEM – An informal ceasefire brokered by new Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was holding in most places Thursday between the Palestinian group Hamas and the Israeli army, the Jerusalem Post reported. The truce comes after three […]
LE PARISIEN, LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, LE FIGARO (France) PARIS – Parisians strolling along the chic Place de l’Alma and the Bastille are running straight into a huge new billboard (3 by 6-meter, or almost 10 by 20-feet) featuring saucy photos of four presidents of France: François Hollande, the current head of state, and predecessors Nicolas […]
STERN, SPIEGEL ONLINE (Germany), DIARIO CÓRDOBA (Spain), LA STAMPA (Italy), IZVESTIA/RIA NOVOSTI (Russia), CENTRAL NEWS (Japan), PEOPLE.COM (China), EPOCH TIMES (Chinese-language, U.S.) Worldcrunch From Chinese labs to German geology groups, the aftershocks are being felt across the global scientific community. Earlier this week, six seismologists and an official in the Italian city of L’Aquila were […]
LIBERTY TIMES, UNITED DAILY NEWS (Taiwan) Worldcrunch Arson is suspected in an overnight hospital fire in Taiwan that has killed 12 people, the Liberty Times reports. Police say a suspect has been arrested. The fire at North Gate Hospital in Tainan, one of Taiwan’s largest cities, began around 3:30 a.m.. Two other patients are still […]