HAARETZ (Israel), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch GAZA CITY – Airstrikes carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces killed four militants Tuesday night in Gaza, reports BBC News. Israel military forces said three of the militants were hit overnight as they prepared to fire rockets. A fourth militant, reported to be a gunman from the Ezzedine […]
Author: Simon Benoit-Guyod
BENI – In the early morning hours, John Kasongo Muhowa, a tractor driver from North Kivu agricultural cooperative, is clearing the undergrowth, plowing up weeds around a two-hectare (5-acre) field where peanuts and corn will be planted. Twenty or so young men from the nearest town are waiting in line to use the tractor, one […]
KIGALI – There are preachers everywhere in the Rwandan capital. From minibuses to markets, from hospitals to the streets, all day, they try to get people to join their church. Early September, at the Nyabugogo market in Kigali, market-goers were surprised to see the Sainte-Famille parish priest. He had come to the market with worshippers […]
FOLHA DE S.PAULO (Brazil) Worldcrunch DE TERESINA – Federal Police in the northeastern state of Piauí are investigating allegations of a drugs-for-votes ring. Candidates for the city council in the capital Teresina used crack to lure dealers and addicts to vote for them, accuses a prominent lawyer in the region Lúcio Ribeiro, who heads the […]
UOL (Brazil), BBC Worldcrunch FLORIANOPOLIS – It all started when Brazilian student Isadora Faber, 13, decided to do her homework a bit differently. She exchanged paper and pencil for a Facebook page, where she began complaining about the conditions of her school. It didn’t take long for “Diario de Classe: A Verdade” (“School Diary: The […]
LA REPUBBLICA (Italy) Worldcrunch LECCE – Though Barcelona has “King Lionel Messi”, this week the Italian city of Lecce is rolling out the red carpet for Iya Traore (“The Prince of Paris”) and Abdellah (“Amsterdam’s Maradona”) to show off their tricky soccer skills at the Red Bull Street Style soccer world championship. Held in São […]
THE HINDU (India), BBC NEWS (UK), AL JAZEERA (Qatar) Worldcrunch NEW DEHLI – Opposition parties and trade unions in India have taken part in a daylong strike on Thursday over plans to open the country’s retail sector to global supermarket chains, reports BBC News. This measure announced last week by the government has triggered a […]
KIGALI – A customer and a bank clerk nearly came to blows recently in Kigali. The customer had asked the clerk to help him fill in the withdrawal slip in English, but the clerk refused. “How are we supposed to be able to fill in a document in English if you can’t do it yourself?” […]
Categories
Fire At Mexican Gas Plant Kills 26
LA JORNADA (Mexico), CNN (USA), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – An explosion followed by a fire at a gas plant in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas has killed at least 26 people, reports La Jornada. Mexico’s state oil company Pemex said the fire broke out at around lunch time Tuesday outside the […]
BARCELONA – Making headway through the streets of Barcelona, closed to traffic for the occasion, seemed almost impossible. A crowd of children, students, retired people, business owners, and the unemployed coming from every part of Catalonia had joined together to wave yellow-and-red flags and voice their support for the creation of an independent state for […]
WUHAN MORNING POST (China), CHINA TIMES (Taiwan) Worldcrunch BEIJING – These days, being a teacher in China comes with its perks. Not only would the position offer you absolute imperial authority, but you would also get lots of presents. Some very NICE presents. September 10 was Teacher’s Day, and on that day Chinese teachers are […]
CNN (USA), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch KABUL – Up to 12 people are reported to have been killed in a suicide bomb attack, which struck a bus near the Afghan capital, report BBC News. A 22-year-woman is believed to have driven a car filled with 300 kg of explosives into a mini […]
BBC NEWS (UK), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), LE MONDE (France), THE AUSTRALIAN, THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia) Worldcrunch BEIRUT – Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, has called for new protests over the controversial anti-Islam film which has sparked furor in the Muslim world. The religious and political leader called the […]
ECONOMIC OBSERVER, CHINA.ORG.CN (China) Worldcrunch BEIJING – Last week, Beijing authorities announced that 600,000 temporary residents had left the capital, bringing the total of the city’s migrant population down to 8,258,000 people, reports the Economic Observer. For the past decade, the non-resident population has gone up by nearly 400,000 people each year. In 2007, Beijing’s […]
It is a variant of the classic East-West confrontation. And in the conflict pitting Samsung against Apple, the Asian technology giant versus the American one, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Apple won the first round when a Californian court sentenced Samsung to pay more than $1 billion of compensatory damages for infringing patents. But the […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch Predicting earthquakes, floods, droughts and other assorted disasters is hardly an exact science. Still, as the just published 2012 WorldRiskReport notes, just how badly natural catastrophes hit comes down to how well prepared is the country’s government to respond. In a risk index that includes 173 countries, experts of the Bonn-based […]
DE TELEGRAAF (The Netherlands), BBC NEWS, THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch AMSTERDAM – Two Dutch centrist parties have secured an absolute parliamentary majority between them in Wednesday’s elections, reports The Guardian. VVD, the party of liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte, claimed victory with 41 seats, two more than center-left rivals Labor, which won 39. According to […]
BEIRUT – Sheikh Hani Fahs lives by the old route to the airport, near the entrance of Beirut’s Dahieh (“southern suburb”). This a Hezbollah stronghold. The Lebanese cleric has had a ringside seat over this main axis, which has often been blocked by angry demonstrators these past few months. Down the street, walls are covered […]
DAWN (Pakistan), TIMES OF INDIA (India), AL JAZEERA (Qatar) Worldcrunch KARACHI – At least 191 people were killed in two separate factory fires in the Pakistani cities of Karachi and Lahore. Officials said Wednesday that 166 people where killed after a fire broke out in a factory in the coastal megalopolis of Karachi, and dozens […]
BEIJING – From his pigeon house, Wan Lianxi overlooks a sea of misshapen roofs and walls overgrown with weeds. He recently added a corrugated plastic roof for shade. Wan started raising homing pigeons in downtown Beijing 40 years ago – when he was still a teenager. Today, he has about 100 of them. During races, […]
TIMES OF INDIA (India), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch NEW DEHLI – At least 28 people were killed after a bus plunged off a highway Monday night in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, reports BBC. The bus fell into a 500-foot-deep gorge in the Kangra valley, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the state […]
LE FIGARO, LIBERATION, EUROPE 1, AFP, FRANCE 24 (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – French newspapers are tracking tax exiles after Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man and head of luxury good giant LVMH, said Sunday he was seeking Belgian nationality. The luxury tycoon’s move to seek Belgian citizenship has caused outrage in a country hit by a […]
HAARETZ, THE JERUSALEM POST (Israel) Worldcrunch JERUSALEM – Three Palestinians were wounded early Monday in three successive Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in response to a rocket attack launched toward southern Israel from the Palestinian enclave, reports Haaretz. Israeli Air Force helicopters and F-16s were heard around midnight over the Gaza Strip, followed by […]
PARIS – The event was supposed to start on September 2 at 7 a.m. at the Josephine Baker swimming pool in Paris, on the banks of the Seine River. More than 3000 participants had signed up to take part in the swim that would take them up the Seine to the André-Citroën Park, west of […]
CHINA DAILY, XINHUA (China), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch BEIJING – A series of earthquakes in southwestern China on Friday killed at least 24 people and injured 150 more, reports BBC News. Chinese state media Xinhua said the 5.7 magnitude quake struck the border of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, with its epicenter located in the Yiliang […]
MADRID – Since September 1, undocumented immigrants in Spain are now excluded from public health care. Only pregnant women and minors can still enjoy free public coverage, which had long been available to all undocumented residents. Others can still get care in cases of emergency, but for basic medical treatment, immigrants in Spain illegally will […]
LES ECHOS (France), DIE WELT, DER SPIEGEL (Germany), IL SOLE 24 ORE (Italy) BLOOMBERG (US), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch FRANKFURT – Aiming to squelch speculation of an impending demise of the euro, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said policymakers have agreed to an unlimited bond-purchase program to regain control of interest rates in the […]
LE FIGARO (France), LA REPUBBLICA (Italy) Worldcrunch PARIS – World famous elite French chef Alain Ducasse has his own response to the economic crisis, which sounds oddly similar to a Burger King back-to-school offer. “Buy one, get one free…” is the offer available to food lovers in the world’s gastronomic powerhouse. From September 17 to […]
LA PRESSE, CBC (Canada), BBC NEWS, THE GUARDIAN (UK), CNN (USA) Worldcrunch MONTREAL – A gunman opened fire during a midnight victory rally for Quebec’s first female premier-elect Pauline Marois, killing one person and critically wounding another, reports CNN. The shooting cast a shadow over preliminary results indicating that the separatist Parti Quebecois was set […]
GOMA – There are more than a dozen Pygmy ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, making up between five and 10 percent of the country’s population. Traditionally these nomadic hunter-gatherers have lived in the Congolese rain forest, far removed from urban centers. But in recent years, Pygmies have been increasingly forced out of […]
BBC NEWS, THE GUARDIAN (UK), WASHINGTON POST, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (US) Worldcrunch MANAMA – A Bahraini civilian court has upheld jail sentences against 20 leaders of last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations, including eight prominent activists facing life in prison, reports BBC News. Among those convicted to life were Abdulhadi al Khawaja, who went on a 110-day […]
CNN (USA), BBC (UK), AL JAZEERA (Qatar) Worldcrunch PESHAWAR – At least four people were killed in a suicide bombing that hit a U.S. consular vehicle in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, reports Al Jazeera. The American embassy in Islamabad said that no U.S. citizens were killed in the attack, although there were conflicting accounts […]
TRIPOLI – Nafisa Muhammad knows all too well that vengeance is alive and well in post-revolution Libya. “One of my brothers was kidnapped by rebels from Misrata at Benghazi airport,” she says. “On his first day at a local detention center, he was beaten to death.” The 31-year-old woman now lives in a refugee camp […]
FRANCE INFO, LE FIGARO (France) Worldcrunch MARSEILLE – On the small island of Porquerolles on the French Riviera, the police have turned a blind eye to helmetless motorcyclists, reports Le Figaro. The person to blame is … the local prefect. Paul Mourier, the State’s representative in the Var department in Southern France, was repeatedly spotted […]
PALO ALTO – Daphne Koller has a grudge against school. As a child, Israeli-born Koller wanted to solve third degree equations and learn more about dancing, Ancient Greece and poetry. But like any other pupil, she had to follow the curriculum and adapt to the system. Her thirst for learning faced the limits of mainstream […]
Wandering around Scottish putting greens — this is how Pascal Bonvin, a 52-year old Credit Suisse executive, chose to improve his English language skills. He flew to Edinburgh early this summer to learn English with a private professor. Once his daily language class was over, Pascal Bovin swapped textbooks for golf clubs. Language lessons in […]
XINHUA (China), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch An explosion in a coal mine in southwest China has killed 19 people and left 28 trapped, reports Chinese news agency Xinhua. According to state media, rescue efforts are still underway to rescue the remaining miners, reports BBC News. The accident occurred Wednesday at around 6 p.m. at Xiojiawan […]
FUERA DE SERIE (Spain), LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch Spanish magazine Fuera de Serie has sparked controversy by depicting the U.S. first lady as a topless slave on its new cover. The cover features Michelle Obama’s face pasted over a famous 19th century French painting showing a slave with one breast exposed. The image was designed […]
Worldcrunch YEDIOTH AHRONOTH (Israel), LA STAMPA (Italy), THE IRISH TIMES (Ireland) JERUSALEM – The appointment of Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto as Papal Nuncio to Israel last week has sparked controversy in Jerusalem after it emerged that he was linked to the pedophile priests scandal that hit the Irish Catholic Church in 2005.. The country’s biggest-circulation daily […]
USA TODAY, CNN, NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch NEW ORLEANS – Hurricane Isaac made a second landfall in Louisiana early Wednesday with strong winds and torrential rains, providing the first real test of flood control systems and emergency services in New Orleans on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The storm first hit Port Fouchon […]