The recent dual suicide of Bernard and Georgette Cazes at Paris’ landmark Lutetia Hotel is a symbolic nod to the right-to-die movement, but also a melancholic reminder of eternal love.
Author: Patrick Randall
Life is about to get even bleaker in Homs, as the third winter arrives since the city fell into the center of the Syrian civil war.
SANTIAGO – Latin America has a long and checkered history of technological innovation spreading with the confusion and occasional lawlessness of the Wild West. This is particularly troubling now with the spread of drone technology, as more and more of the unmanned craft are hovering around the region with no regulations to speak of. In […]
PYONGYANG — Mounted on the façade of the new Haedanghwa complex is a giant screen broadcasting slick propaganda messages. Just across the way, the “people’s ice rink” glimmers with its wavy modernist roof. On the opposite bank of the Taedong River, a dozen of 50-story-high residential buildings completed last year have helped give this area […]
Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: The Rolling Stones’ “Angie” is turning 40 this year — and we’ve thought about it every time we’ve published an article on German Chancellor Angela Merkel…
The Edward Snowden leaks on the NSA spying structure reveal an intelligence approach driven by the fear of the unknown … and the “unknown unknowns.”
A woman’s extraordinary courage, a teen couple’s illegal kiss, and more stories that made the police blotter around the world…
Destination: Moscow. Setting out from Beijing, I had the choice of two passenger railway lines to connect to the famed Trans-Siberian. One of the lines, the K19, goes through the border town of Manzhouli, while the other, the K3, arrives via Mongolia. Beijing-Manchuria: familiar, strange and quiet For most Chinese railway passengers, it is a […]
KUWAIT CITY — Juan Valdez coffee shops, as familiar in some Latin American cities as Starbucks is elsewhere, opened their first franchise shop in Kuwait this month. The inauguration heralds the firm’s arrival in the cash-rich market of the Middle East, a region also believed to be key in cultural and branding terms. The chain […]
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Snapshot Of The World, Nov. 19-26
Japan’s new island, the Champs-Élysées alight for Christmas, and protests in the Ukraine are among this week’s featured photographs.
With echos of the Truman Show, medical staff pose as neighbors and bartenders in this groundbreaking Dutch institution to treat dementia.
A Le Monde reporter takes us behind the scenes of Geneva’s marathon, high-stakes negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
Social policy and mentality both must change for China to face its looming demographic crisis. Beijing’s recent decision to loosen its one-child policy is just a start.
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China’s Car Market Is Humming Again
BEIJING — China’s automobile market is now expected to see double-digit growth by the end of this year, after two consecutive years’ of relatively low growth. According to data published last week by the China Automobile Association, for the first 10 months of 2013, China’s car sales totaled 17.8 million vehicles, with a growth rate […]
Photo: Dave Hitchborne Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: The American R’n’B singer Pharrell Williams released the world’s first 24-hour long music video at midnight on Thursday, for his song “Happy.” The video played on 24HoursOfHappy.com and started out with Williams walking around […]
BOGOTA — Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian politician held hostage by FARC guerrillas for six years in the jungle, may return from self-imposed exile and become a candidate in the 2014 presidential election, Colombia’s El Pais newspaper reported. The country’s Green Alliance began to gauge her interest in returning to Colombian politics in recent weeks, and […]
A Miss Italia contestant arrested, French newspaper shooting, child porn ring and other news around the world this week…
One full year has past since peace talks opened between the Colombian government and the rebel forces after decades of war. But behind the slow pace, there are real reasons for hope.
People escaping the Communist bloc used to try to cross from Bulgaria into Turkey. Now, immigrants, including many refugees from the war in Syria, cross the other way.
CAIRO — “Have you seen this? The streets are so filthy, it’s disgusting!” Suzie Greiss doesn’t even live in one of Cairo’s notoriously poor corners, but rather in the middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, where the head of Egypt’s Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) says she can no longer stand the filth that […]
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 FINAL IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS BEGIN The last round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program began this morning in Vienna with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif confident that a deal could be reached before next Monday’s deadline if the other six world powers don’t make “excessive demands,” AFP reports. The BBC […]
There are many victims in the civil war in Syria. One woman in the capital, whose husband and children have managed to flee to Egpyt, suffers a particular kind of fear and solitude.
Different views on ecology, religion and the human body help explain a stunning boom in modern men and women choosing to be cremated instead of a traditional burial.
Photo: Conner Jay – Santa Rosa Press/ZUMA Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: November 18th will mark the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged” performance in New York. Because you also might have worn long greasy hair and cardigans at one point in […]
Police are monitoring traffic from a small wooden gatehouse in eastern Vientiane, on the outskirts of the Laotian capital. It was here nearly one year ago, opposite the Indian embassy, that 62-year-old Sombath Somphone mysteriously disappeared. The rural development promoter and farmers’ rights activist hasn’t been heard from since. On Dec. 15, 2012, Somphone was […]
KIEV — So Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is still a prisoner — and Ukraine’s future as part of the European Union hangs in the balance. The Ukrainian Parliament balked Wednesday night on any decision to release the opposition leader, who has been jailed since 2011. Meanwhile, the EU has sent Kiev a clear […]
When it comes to offering comfort and counseling to parents dealing with their Internet-era teenagers, the French government is shelling out major cash.
Bad guys and the cops who chase them… from Russia and Mexico, to Belgium and Australia. Freeze!
Photo: Kris Krüg Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: The hard rock band Motörhead released their 21st album, Aftershock, last October, 36 years after their 1977 debut album, Motörhead, came to give the British rock “n” roll a raging new life. At the […]
Among only five Latin Americans on Forbes Magazine’s presitigious annual index of the most powerful is El Chapo, a legendary Mexican drug kingpin poisoning the entire region.
Though she knew she would never walk again, it didn’t mean she couldn’t climb.
BERLIN — During his election campaign, Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani had criticized his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s aggressive behavior towards the West. He claimed that Iran needed to moderate its tone in order to win the West’s trust about its nuclear program. Since his election victory, Rouhani has launched an unprecedented charm offensive on the […]
The teacher is a shopkeeper who volunteers his time to kids who otherwise would be shut out from any education.
A German perspective on the mind-boggling modern art discovery this week in Munich – one more sign that the Nazi past is fading into history.
NADOR — Papa Africa carefully wraps his only possession, a cooking pot, in a cover. He then climbs up to the top of a tree to hang it. “It’s because of the police. When they come, they burn and break everything,” he explains as he jumps back to the ground. Next stop is the “Tranquilo,” […]
Cameron on UK press, Colombian rapper on Bieber graffiti, NSA, Mozambique and other words that drove the news this past week.. (cover photo: bes z)
Photo: Adam Kliczek Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: As a tribute to Lou Reed, who died on October 27, the Parisian contemporary art museum Fondation Cartier released, for the first time, a video of Lou Reed and fellow former Velvet Underground member […]
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Redefining Death Through The Ages
Technological advances and ethical questions have forced societies to constantly redraw the thin line between life and death. (Happy Dia de Muertos!)
Often victms of human encroachment, these animals have been left without their mothers. But it is also humans who help teach them they can swing from branches.