MING PAO, THE STANDARD (Hong Kong), LIBERTY TIMES (Taiwan), EPOCH TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch HONG KONG – Is Hong Kong nostalgic for British colonial times? Hundreds of people turned up in front of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Hong Kong earlier this week to mark China’s National Day. They were waving red-white-and-blue […]
Author: Jeff Israely
The former East Germany is still considered to be a hotbed of neo-Nazism. Still, the movement to oppose the extremists is growing even stronger – to the point that leaders in the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) know that when they stage their public gatherings and marches more opponents will be in attendance […]
HURRIYET, RADIKAL (Turkey), AL JAZEERA (Qatar) Worldcrunch ANKARA – Turkish artillery has continued to target Syria for a second straight day, in retaliation for the shelling of a Turkish town that killed five people. Wednesday’s deadly mortar fire heightened tensions as it marked the first time that Turkish citizens have been killed as a result […]
YANGZHI RIVER DAILY, CHINA DAILY (China) , EPOCH TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch (BEIJING) – The Chinese Communist Party has recently come up with a new bright idea on how to curb rampant corruption among China’s officialdom: training courses on how to identify conspicuous consumption. By organizing “appraisal lessons of luxury goods and artifacts,” the cadres of […]
While debate continues about controversial new national education reforms, hundreds of children in the southeast province of Hakkari have been locked out of their schools due to a major teacher shortage, the Dogan News Agency (DHA) reported. The 2012-2013 Turkish academic year kicked off on Sep. 17 with the implementation of the new 4+4+4 education […]
CLARIN (Argentina) BARCELONA – For his adoring fans, superstar soccer player Lionel Messi can do no wrong – at least when he is on the pitch. But what about when he’s out of uniform? Watch as the Barcelona FC forward mistakes teammate Thiago Alcântara’s car for his own: The incident occurred just after a team […]
XINHUA (China), UNITED DAILY, CHINA TIMES (Taiwan) Worldcrunch TAIPEI – The Taiwanese are famous for being hard-working and creative when it comes to business. And thus the ongoing dispute between China and Japan has turned into an opportunity for the busy brains of Taiwan businessmen. While the boycott of Japanese goods is growing, an emphasis […]
SÃO PAULO – Eight cyclists surround a black car stopping at a red light on Paulista Avenue, a major thoroughfare in São Paulo. The driver, who the cyclists had spotted committing traffic infractions, is told that he is being filmed. He immediately speeds away from the bikes — running the red light. He hits a […]
BRUSSELS – Greece needs at least two more years and an additional 30 billion euros in order to be able to meet the targets set for it by the euro zone countries, European sources tell Süddeutsche Zeitung. When – and indeed if – the country gets money from the second bailout package is unclear. In […]
Putting the right spin on your words is a science. Obviously, the civil servants who owe a fiduciary duty to the public have an urgent need to master this subject. And it helps to shift the blame on someone else, a child, a spouse, or a convenient foreigner will do. Two weeks ago Yang Dacai, […]
Many years ago, when Italian military service was still compulsory, the army subjected its new conscripts to a general culture test with various types of questions. One asked: “Who is Leonardo?,” which prompted a surprising range of responses. Someone, it seems, even replied “The pope.” The artist behind the most famous painting in the world, […]
DIE WELT, DER SPIEGEL (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – German politician Julia Schramm, 26, is a member of the national executive committee of the Pirate Party, which has built a strong following for its crusade for Internet freedom and an end to copyright law. But soon after the publication last week of Schramm’s new book called […]
AL MASRY AL YOUM, MASRAWY (Egypt) Worldcrunch CAIRO – Social networks bristled with rage last week when city workers in the capital began painting over graffiti near Tahrir Square, including some iconic images and writings commemorating the 2011 Revolution. Now Cairo’s mayor Osama Kamel has conceded that the clean-up of the walls of Mohamed Mahmoud […]
RIO DE JANEIRO – 10 employees from the Rio 2016 Olympic Committee were fired for stealing confidential information from their counterparts at the London committee during the Games this past summer. This is the first scandal involving the next Olympics, which is still three years and 11 months away. The two committees of the British […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch MUNICH – Some seven million people are expected to turn up for Oktoberfest in the southern German city of Munich. What has been the world’s biggest popular fete since 1810 kicked off Saturday in the Schottenhamel beer tent, the oldest party tent on the Theresienwiese fairgrounds. Die Welt asked Christian Schottenhamel, […]
LOIBOR SIRET – Laly Lichtenfeld has reason to be cautious. White outsiders have left some painful memories in this region of vast plains in the north of Tanzania. Thousands of people were expropriated to create the nearby national parks of Tarangire and Manyara, as well as the Serengeti, further north on the Kenyan border. In […]
REUTERS, AFP, DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch SINGAPORE — Held back by the financial crisis in Europe, world trade will grow by a meager 2.5 percent this year, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said on Friday. Reuters reports the WTO cut the 2012 estimate (originally set at 3.7 percent growth in April). “I see the risk […]
-OP-ED- In China, anti-Japanese sentiment is running very high. The call for a military occupation of the Diaoyu Islands is popular among the public. Managing Sino-Japanese relations and maintaining peace in the East China Sea has become a matter of urgency. China and Japan’s conflicting claims over the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands have always […]
LA VANGUARDIA (Spain), CLARIN (Argentina) Worldcrunch An 80-year-old Spanish woman’s botched restoration of a 19th-century Jesus Christ mural, which made international headlines last month, may wind up an accidental gold mine. Lawyers for Cecilia Gimenez say their client may seek to copyright the now world-(in)famous image. While the holy (and sloppy) handiwork sparked outrage among […]
ISTANBUL – As children in Istanbul packed their bags this week to start a new school year, protests broke out against the controversial “4+4+4” education reform, recently implemented by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Large crowds gathered outside the Istanbul imam hatip religious schools on Fatih Street to protest the new education system […]
SHANGHAI – The Shanghai hairy crab, also known as the Chinese mitten crab, is considered a great delicacy in China. But, not so much in Germany where each year from late summer to early autumn mature Chinese mitten crabs begin their migration up the Elbe River. As they travel to the North Sea to get […]
CAIRO – At this very moment, Americans are piling into movie theaters, cheering through their popcorn at the notion of the Islamic prophet as a goat-romancing child molester, and sending “The Innocence of Muslims” to the top of the box office charts. This evil must be stopped at all costs, or at least, “before the […]
LIBERTY TIMES, UNITED DAILY NEWS (Taiwan), BBC Worldcrunch BEIJING– Some 20,000 irate Chinese protesters besieged the Japanese embassy in Beijing on Saturday, venting their anger over the Diaoyu Islands dispute that has created the most combustible conflict between the two Asian powers in memory. The demonstrators climbed trees, burned the Japanese flag, shouted that the […]
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (USA), CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY (Taiwan) Worldcrunch The United States has become the primary destination for Chinese students wishing to study abroad, receiving more than 170,000 students over the past two years. That shouldn’t really surprise anyone. The real news is the wave heading in the other direction: the multiplying numbers of […]
A French reporter travels to the heart of the most pivotal swing state in the Obama v. Romney showdown where economic uncertainty is the only sure thing.
Maged, a young officer who’s defected from the Syrian police, says his countrymen often never even knew each others’ religious and tribal backgrounds. “We used to live in peace,” he says, recalling life before the past year of violence. “But the regime has managed to breed sectarianism in people.” Syria has not yet turned into […]
NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch NEW YORK – Eleven years after 9/11, a writer with unprecedented access to pertinent classified documents says the Bush Administration ignored multiple “direct warnings” that Al Qaeda was planning to strike on American soil leading up to the Sep. 11, 2001 attack. In a piece published in the Op-Ed pages […]
BERLIN – Even the ever competent European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi stumbled when he was asked how he was dealing with the fact that the Germans had reservations about his latest moves. That’s because the journalist at last week’s press conference didn’t address him as “President Draghi,” but as “Herr Weidmann.” Of course, […]
IL MATTINO (Italy) Worldcrunch ROME – With some quick thinking, she might have found a good response when the Carabinieri officers pulled her over. Here’s my seeing-eye dog’s license… It’s a Google car… Oh, am I in the car? I thought this was the elevator… Apparently the 66-year-old woman from the central Italian town of […]
US spy chief Patraeus makes low-profile visits to Ankara and Jerusalem, aiming to repair damage between two key U.S. allies.
RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazil’s largest mining company Vale has developed, in partnership with the University of São Paulo (USP), a method to identify bacteria and fungi capable of “eating” copper. What exactly does that mean and why does it matter? Now with this process, waste generated by copper processing — one of the steps […]
NEW YORK – Turkey intends to keep up its diplomatic efforts to establish a buffer zone in Syria, despite the United Nations’ failure last week to reach a resolution at the Security Council meeting on Thursday. “How long are we going to sit and watch while an entire generation is being wiped out by random […]
BERLIN – Six years ago, shortly after Daniel Alter became one of the first Jews to be made a rabbi in Germany after the Holocaust, he said that he thought for a long time about how to explain to his daughter why there were relatively few Jews in Germany. He told Die Welt: “To tell […]
HURRIYET, RADIKAL (Turkey) Worldcrunch ISTANBUL -There was hope that Turkey’s top technology experts could provide some clarity in the ongoing OdaTV case that’s roiled the country’s media and government elite for the past 18 months. But the long-awaited computer files report by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, TUBITAK, has only fed more […]
Worldcrunch PARIS – Neil Armstrong has died at the age of 82. The American astronaut was not only the pride of the U.S. space program, he was the first earthling to touch the planet’s only moon. As such, the whole world — or at least its major press outlets — reacted largely in unison to […]
BERLIN – In the debate in Germany over circumcision, you often hear people say jokingly that if cutting the foreskin off a baby boy’s penis for religious reasons is outlawed then piercing little girls’ earlobes shouldn’t be allowed either. But that’s just the scenario that may be shaping up. After a Cologne court ruled in […]
New age limits, coupled with the lowering of minimum age of certain government jobs, has dovetailed with a general celebration of youth in burgeoning China