Worldcrunch
RIO DE JANEIRO — Every night at around 9 o’clock, Fabiana Escobar sits down in front of the TV and watches her life play out on the small screen: whether the police haul her away or her husband cheats on her again; how she beats up his lover; how the cocaine goes out and the […]
POZNAN — We’re in an old bar mleczny, a so-called “milk bar,” a gastronomic remnant from Soviet times where workers could get fed for very little. The lunch at this dining spot, situated in the central city of Poznan, will capture the essence of what would be a two-week trip around Poland. Mind you, this […]
Many have hailed the innovations of Songdo, a planned community near the South Korean capital of Seoul. But the city, which once served as a set for the “Gangnam Style” music video, also has its critics.
Strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis are spreading across Ukraine, where armed conflict and market misgivings are making a bad situation even worse.
For the entire time that I was in the Caribbean on vacation, I was convinced I had lymphoma.
-Essay- “Germans are coconuts, Americans peaches…” In the German Studies department at the University of Michigan, this saying bounced around as a shorthand way for us to describe the supposed social differences between the two nationalities: Germans come with tough shells, but inside lies the sweetness of coconut milk. Americans, instead, are soft on the […]
Salary caps, financial compensation, and transfer preferential rights for weak teams level the playing field in the NFL and MLB. While Europe’s top soccer salaries spiral out of control, and the same teams always win.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Brussels, the de facto capital of the European Union, to discuss his own country’s de facto seat of power, Jerusalem. His visit to the city, the first by an Israeli prime minister in 22 years, comes just days after President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was moving […]
-Analysis- Exactly four years have passed since Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid icon, died at the age of 95. Over the course of his remarkable life, the South African became the embodiment of moral political leadership, forgiving his jailers and rising to the nation’s presidency. Sadly, Mandela’s successors, most notably current South African President Jacob Zuma, […]
Turkish schools are taking steps to cultivate a ‘pious generation’ by rewriting history and placing a greater emphasis on religion.
Now Vitali Shkliarov has headed home to oppose Vladimir Putin.
Islamists are known to target apostates. For the growing number of Muslim arrivals in Germany, a minority of those who have converted to Christianity say they are subject to attack.
Droves of customers stampeding through large department stores on Black Friday was once a uniquely American phenomena. But the traditional day-after Thanksgiving shopping sale event has recently gained traction in other countries that have no connection to the American holiday. The insatiable consumerism that fuels American capitalism, it seems, is a more viable export than […]
These days a certain four-letter expletive — arguably English’s naughtiest word — is bouncing around the European Court of Justice. But it’s not coming from potty-mouthed prosecutors: The obscenity lies at the heart of an unprecedented case over patenting vulgarity, Berlin-based daily Die Welt reports. It’s a case several years in the making. In 2015, […]
In the gruesome attack in Egypt on Nov. 17, 1997, three key elements came together that have driven Islamic terrorism over the past two decades.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s three decades in power may finally be over. Gunfire broke out late Tuesday in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare as military panzers moved in to prevent anyone from accessing government offices. At around 5 a.m. Wednesday, Maj. Gen. S.B. Moyo, a ranking member of the army, appeared on state television. “We […]
-Analysis- A political neophyte who launched his presidential campaign by railing against Mexican “rapists’ and “murderers’ was never supposed to win, especially against a seasoned stateswoman backed by her party’s establishment. Add to that unthinkable episodes, like his mocking a disabled reporter or the revelation of the infamous “grab ‘em by the p***y” recording, and […]
-Analysis- The headlines echo of the not-so-distant past this morning. Yesterday, media outlets around the globe began to report on the Paradise Papers, a massive leak of documents detailing the offshore investments of politicians, business tycoons, and corporations. Le Monde, which dedicated 12 journalists over the past year to the multi-outlet investigation, writes that the […]
-Essay- CAIRO — I had never really thought much about my position on the death penalty. After I watched the film The Life of David Gale, I started to ask myself how one might possibly work on an issue as difficult as this. I don’t remember if I watched the movie before or after going […]
A day after a suspected 29-year-old Uzbek national killed eight people and injured a dozen more with a rented pickup truck in Manhattan, newspapers around the world devoted their front pages to the worst terrorist attack in New York since 9/11. Here’s is how it looked in 11 different countries, including Argentina, home to five […]
A government crackdown on dissent in Turkish cinema is transforming filmmaking and destroying careers.
-Analysis- The Islamic State is now on the run in Syria and Iraq. Following the terror group’s defeat this summer in its self-declared Iraqi capital of Mosul, ISIS has now been driven from its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. This comes more than four years after ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his “Caliphate” from the […]
This year’s Frankfurt Book Fair was marred by violence amid protests against a far-right publishing house. It’s time to rethink our relationship with literature.
BERLIN — Sebastian Kurz was faster than Emmanuel Macron. Following the rapid rise of this year’s other young political superstar, Kurz’s victory Sunday in Austria“s parliamentary election was even more stunning — and swift. He needed only five months to pull off three unbelievable feats: to rebuild the washed-out Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) into a […]
-Analysis- Donald Trump, the world’s biggest cyberbully, has issued another Twitter threat. The target this time wasn’t North Korea’s “Rocket Man,” but another favorite: the media. Yesterday, hours after NBC News aired a report claiming the president wanted a “nearly tenfold” increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Trump took to social media to retaliate. In […]
Cold War-style propaganda isn’t helping the Kremlin win over young Russians. For that, President Vladimir Putin has turned to social media and its teenage fans.
A young American in Paris watches Trump in Las Vegas, in the shadow of Obama and Orlando — and Bush at Ground Zero.
The success of the far-right populist party Alternative for Germany in this week’s parliamentary elections has prompted comparisons to the rise of Nazism. There are in fact similarities, but also key differences. An overview.
Though Angela Merkel has secured a fourth term with Sunday’s election, the populist party Alternative for Germany will be the first far-right party since 1961 to enter parliament.
An online show called Drugslab gives viewers a first-hand account of what it’s like to take anything from mushrooms to ecstasy.
Miami’s beaches and boardwalks have become waterways. Houston’s highways looked like lakes just two weeks back, while halfway around the world boats were replacing buses as the streets of Mumbai were turned into rivers. The scientific literature has a clear explanation for these dramatic images: global warming is bringing more rain and more floods, and […]
For months, the news media couldn’t stop talking about them. But now the so-called ‘disenfranchised’ have again gone quiet. Did they ever really exist?
Milenio, Sept. 8, 2017 A massive earthquake struck off the coast of the Mexican state of Chiapas just after midnight, and Friday’s front page of the Mexican daily Milenio recorded its strength in bold, black letters: “8.2º Richter,” a once-in-a-century seismic event. Local authorities have already confirmed five fatalities. This figure will likely rise as […]
-Analysis- Educators have created well-worn “awareness’ strategies to combat everything from teen pregnancy to drug abuse. But this year, some schools are taking on a new spectre hanging over our impressionable youth: “fake news.” School officials in both Germany and Switzerland have developed tools to address the problem of bogus online articles, and to become […]
Take a bite out of this juicy scandal. In eastern Germany, there’s a contest for an “Apple Queen”, where the title goes to a lady who poses with the produce. For years, the town of Guben has bestowed the honor to a woman but last year, due to a lack of female entrants, local authorities […]
Mario Draghi didn’t give much away in his opening remarks at the 6th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences in southern Germany. In his highly anticipated speech Wednesday morning, the president of the European Central Bank kept mum on the most titillating topic in Europe: upcoming stimulus negotiations. However disappointing, his silence was not altogether surprising: […]
-Analysis- Even as the European Union has wavered on whether to let Turkey into its exclusive grouping, Ankara has flexed its muscles within the bloc. It has done so by using a shared tool and resource to fight crime: Interpol. Last Saturday, Spanish authorities arrested author Dogan Akhanli after Turkey issued an Interpol arrest warrant […]
*Note: grosse (große) means great in German…
Decades after the Khmer Rouge, the legacy of their brutal regime claims a new generation of victims.
-Analysis- PARIS — Wednesday will mark “Earth Overshoot Day,” the moment when humanity uses more of the Earth’s ecological resources than the planet can regenerate in a year. This awkwardly named annual event, first conceived by the UK think tank New Economics Foundation in 2006, is a way to track the accumulating effects of climate […]