Worldcrunch
-OpEd- CAIRO – As Egypt sinks deeper into crisis, the main political parties, which are fighting for power, are now starting to talk about a “national dialogue.” If they are unable to reach an agreement, the army might have to step in. When he confused the democratic ideals of the Egyptian revolution with the political […]
A reversal in direction of the traditional route of remittance payments – now family members in Turkey are sending money to relatives in Germany.
NEW YORK TIMES, REUTERS, ATLANTIC WIRE (US) Worldcrunch BEIJING –The New York Times says that it has been repeatedly targeted by Chinese cyber-attacks over the past four months, following a report the newspaper had published detailing allegations of hidden wealth of China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. The American Newspaper claimed that these hacking attempts failed. […]
FRANCE FOOTBALL, AFP (France) LE SOIR (Belgium) Worldcrunch PARIS – When Qatar was chosen as the site for soccer’s World Cup in 2022, the sports world let out a collective: What?…Where?? But for the more cynical, the real question has always been: How? According to Paris-based sports weekly France Football, the answer to that last […]
-Editorial- PARIS – The problem with making statements when you are the President is that you have to follow through. Before the French intervention in Mali, President François Hollande said on Jan. 11 that in Mali, France had “no other purpose than to fight terrorism.” On Jan. 15, he revised his motives: now, on top […]
GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch LISBON – The images are in, and 45-year-old Hawaiian Garrett McNamara appears to have set an all-time record for biggest wave successfully surfed, taming what was reported to be a 90 to 100-foot monster swell Monday in Portugal. McNamara, an expert in riding these massive walls of water, held the previous record […]
TVNZ, NEW ZEALAND HERALD (New Zealand) Worldcrunch WELLINGTON – In order to adapt to the decreasing volume of posted items, the New Zealand Post is considering cutting mail delivery from six to three days a week to allow “greater flexibility” in its services, according to the New Zealand Herald. Although Communications and Information Technology Minister […]
BLOOMBERG, VELO NEWS (USA), THE INDEPENDENT (UK) Worldcrunch AIGLE – The UCI (International Cycling Union), has given in to World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and American Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and disbanded its independent commission on the Lance Armstrong affair, opting instead to create a “truth and reconciliation panel” that looks more broadly at investigating the culture […]
GENEVA – It’s called simply, “Human Brain Project” (HBP), and it is as audacious as it is ambitious: 256 individual labs scattered across 24 countries in order to create a virtual human brain. Though only officially awarded a one-billion-euro grant Monday by the European Union, the debate around the endeavor has been brewing for years […]
After a nearly 10 percent jump in obesity, the first efforts have been launched at educating Congolese about both diet and exercise. But skinny to many means sick — and poor.
BEIJING – French Minister of Economy Pierre Moscovici was recently in Beijing to convince Chinese officials that the French debate over the transfer of the nuclear technology to China was nothing to worry about. “We are discussing the way the strategic clauses will be applied in regard to technology transfer and intellectual property,” said Moscovici. […]
REUTERS, BEERSHEBA – Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has been in a coma for seven years, has surprised doctors by showing brain activity and a “certain degree of consciousness” for the first time since his debilitating stroke. The extent of the 84-year-old’s response is still limited as he cannot move any muscle, though […]
SAINT-NAZAIRE- “Business is slow these days, too slow…” says 34-year-old restaurant employee from Saint-Nazaire in western France, Cedric Derouin. As he dries drinking glasses, he talks about the consecutive closings of dozens of local businesses, the laying off of his only coworker a few months ago. He shares his uncertain future with the workers from […]
At an employement agency in southeastern Poland, notices offer a variety of job opportunities abroad. One particular post advertising agricultural work in Germany looks, at first glance, to be a good offer. The reality is very different. To be able to send people to work abroad, Polish employement agencies need to be signed into a […]
GLOBAL TIMES, XINHUA (China), BBC (UK) Worldcrunch PYONGYANG – For the second straight day, North Korea has lashed out at its enemies, raising the stakes in the showdown over its nuclear program by warning Friday that new UN economic sanctions would amount to a “declaration of war.” The KCNA North Korean news agency, relayed a […]
PARIS – In the U.S., they are called the helicopter parents. These are the hyper-moms and uber-dads who hover relentlessly over their children, transforming themselves into personal assistants on the weekends: driving them to baseball or dance practice, Chinese lessons, screaming at the math teacher who had the nerve to give little darling a B […]
KCNA (North Korea), REUTERS, RT NEWS Worldcrunch PYONGYANG – North Korea raised its bellicose rhetoric to a new high Thursday, declaring that it now possesses enough fissile material to mount enriched plutonium on rocket heads, and is ready to test those nuclear missiles that would be “targeted” to reach the United States. “We are not […]
-Essay- RABAT – Along with Arabic, French has long been one of Morocco’s languages. It is the language of culture; it is the flipside of our identity — of our double identity, if you will, which is the result of a long coexistence and exchanges between generations. Even though Morocco has been independent from French […]
ITAR-TASS (Russia), CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Worldcrunch MOSCOW – The Kremlin has authorized scientists to finally reveal what they say are “trillions of carats” of diamonds located in a field in eastern Siberia that could forever change the market of the precious gem. The Russians have know since the 1970s of this 35-million-year-old and 62-mile wide […]
Sounds a bit like Mark Zuckerberg?
BANGKOK POST, THE NATION (Thailand), HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (USA) Worldcrunch BANGKOK – A Thailand criminal court convicted Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, the editor of the now-defunct Voice of Taksin magazine to 11 years in jail on Wednesday. Somyot, who is also a prominent Thai labor rights activist, was on trial for two counts of lese majeste for […]
Sources tell Le Monde that the Syria regime fired rockets with a non-lethal chemical agent during a deadly Dec. 23 attack in Homs. So why didn’t Western leaders follow through on their threats?
Algerian-born, French-bred Haim Amsalem is a member of the Knesset, and now the sworn enemy of the ultra-orthodox Shas party that he helped found.
SBS (Australia), WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – Barack Obama spoke for 19 minutes after taking the oath for his second term as President of the United States. The first African-American President was sworn in on Monday, which coincided with the day the nation celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King — […]
BERLIN – Asir’s life was preprogrammed. The North African Muslim was to be trained to be a jihadist in a Palestinian terrorist camp. There he would learn how to build bombs and kill non-believers. But just before he was due to leave, he started to have doubts. “I realized that there were several versions of […]
Many across the Arab region believed Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt was the path to a new unity to defy Israel and the U.S. in the region. A different reality is setting in.
TOULOUSE – Will we be forced to eat spiders, larvae, crickets and other creepy-crawlers in the near future? In the face of mounting demographic pressures, we may be faced with this question sooner rather than later. “With 20 billion cattle, twice the number of the 1980s, the earth has reached its maximum number of ruminants. […]
BBC, SKY NEWS (UK), SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), FRANCE 24, EURONEWS Worldcrunch ALGIERS – Foreign governments and news outlets were working Monday to verify the number of hostages killed during a bloody four-day Islamist terrorist seige of a gas treatment plant in southeastern Algeria. The Algerian government, which has been criticized by some for both […]
In the nation of Burundi, serious efforts are being made to make businesses more attractive to outside investors. Still, it ranks near the very bottom of global transparency rankings.
A reporter travels to the Thai-Burmese border to find the rebel army of the Mons, an ethnic minority for whom little has changed despite the opening up of the Myanmar regime.
In 1981, Issei Sagawa, a Japanese student in Paris killed and ate a fellow students. A French classmate stayed in touch with Sagawa, and now tries to make sense of the macabre.
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – Whether it is its solidly high price per ounce or maybe even the end-of-year visit of Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, to view British gold reserves at the Bank of England, conspiracy theories are proliferating around gold – particularly as (or so rumor has it) some kilo bars appeared in […]
SLATE AFRIQUE Worldcrunch ALGIERS – Amidst conflicting reports of the fate of perhaps hundreds of hostages from a showdown between an Islamist terror group and Algerian security forces, the Algerian government has released the first video of some of those freed at the gas treatment facility in the remote southern part of the country. There […]
ALGIERS – On Wednesday, an estimated 41 Western contractors were taken hostage inside the jointly run BP natural-gas facility in Amenas, in eastern Algeria, near the Libyan border. The man believed to be responsible for this assault goes by the name Mokhtar Belmokhtar – also known as Khaled Aboul Abbas – one of the region’s […]
PORT-AU-PRINCE – What’s left of Haiti’s dreams of reconstruction? Three years after the earthquake that devastated the country – one of the world’s poorest – 360,000 people are still living in displaced person camps and shantytowns. The cholera epidemic is spreading and more than 80% of the population is still living below the poverty line. […]
ANI (Mauritania), TSA, EL WATAN (Algeria), LE MONDE, L’EXPRESS (France), AP Worldcrunch ALGIERS – Confirmed information on the ground is still scant, but Algerian authorities do acknowledge that the assault against Islamist hostage takers was still ongoing Friday, more than 24 hours after it began at a gas treatment plant 1600 kilometers south of the […]
Jeff Bezos’ company has its head in the cloud.
PARIS – Computer services giant Atos called 2012 the year of evangelization of “Big Data.” Now, in 2013, it’s time we may all be converted. Big Data is the massive volume of digital data that is so large to process that it needs additional management tools and database processing applications. It is much more than […]
TSA, EL WATAN (Algeria), SUD OUEST, LE MONDE, NOUVEL OBS (France) ALGIERS – At least 25 Western hostages held at an Algerian gas facility have escaped Thursday. News reports say Americans and Japanese are among those freed. There are also unconfirmed reports that several of the hostages have been killed after Algerian security forces had […]
The terrorist attack and hostage-taking in neighboring Algeria is just one of the ways that France’s intervention in Mali could spread across Africa, and beyond.