WorldcrunchThis leading French daily newspaper Le Monde (“The World”) was founded in December 1944 in the aftermath of World War II. Today, it is distributed in 120 countries. In late 2010, a trio formed by Pierre Berge, Xavier Niel and Matthieu Pigasse took a controlling 64.5% stake in the newspaper.
MARRAKESH – In the French Quarter of Gueliz, past the trendy Café de la Poste, you need only walk down the street to see the soliciting for yourself. In this very European neighborhood, where youths gather around the McDonald’s, it is more visible than in the infamous Djemaa El-Fna Square, in Marrakesh’s old town. Here, […]
LUANDA – The curtain will soon be rung down for the last time at the Elinga Theater in Angola’s capital, Luanda. The theater, where many rebellious artists got their start, holds an important place in Angolan culture. But it will soon be destroyed, its pink walls reduced to rubble by bulldozers. Like so many old […]
KUNYANG – Li Jinsui is an ambitious man. He invested 250,000 euros of his own money in this insect factory, sitting amidst the hills of Kunyang, on the outskirts of Kunming, the capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan. With seven patents, production officially kicked off in 2009. Since then, no visitor comes by without […]
PARIS – For months, consumption has been stagnating, and purchasing power is not improving. Will the French, like the Spanish, start buying their yogurts one by one instead of in packs as a way to face the global financial crisis? Remarks by Jan Zijderveld, head of European operations for the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever, on the […]
-Analysis- Since the beginning of the crisis provoked by the Islamophobic film The Innocence of Muslims, the media have written about it from almost every angle: Coptic extremism, the danger of Salafism, the “arrogance” of the West, the “backwardness” of the Arab world, the shock of civilizations between the Sacred and Freedom of Speech, the […]
NAHA – In mid-September, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Ginowan, a town on the main island of the Japanese Okinawa archipelago. But these were not protests against the Chinese navy presence near the Senkaku Islands, (called Diaoyu by the Chinese), whose sovereignty is disputed between Japan and China. The Okinawans were protesting the […]
BUCHAREST – When he’s not glued to his computer screen, Stefan Cornea watches films on TV. At 18 years of age, this Bucharest high school student is fed up with politics, Romania and life in general. “There’s nothing to do here,” he says in a cynical tone. “It was better before. My parents have told […]
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 […]
-Analysis- For a week, Beijing and Tokyo have been challenging each other in the China Sea. They are playing a dangerous game in a high-risk zone. Any day now, an incident could degenerate into an armed confrontation. The U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is currently in Beijing trying to calm the waters. We are way […]
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 […]
PRAGUE – The Czechs have a strong taste for alcohol. They are the world’s foremost beer drinkers, and rank second for drinking hard liquor, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This love of alcohol has taken a tragic turn with the appearance on the Czech market of large quantity of adulterated vodka and rum. […]
NEW DELHI – As Texan oil companies move in, Rajasthan’s cows are starting to feel the pressure. The oil companies have started buying up the cows’ favorite food: guar, a long, green bean grown in the desert regions of India. Guar, which means “cow food” in Hindi, was also used in the food industry as […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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.
WELKOM – It’s a small open-air factory, impossible to spot from the road. You have to go into Thabong, the township in Welkom, three hours south of Johannesburg, to discover it in an old mining town in the G-Hostel, where a dozen workers are clustered, busy transforming rocks into gold. Behind the apparent disorder hides […]
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 […]
HONG KONG – This is the second improvised camp to appear in Hong Kong’s business district. As the last remaining diehards continue to occupy the atrium of the HSBC tower, school kids, students, parents and teachers have set up their own tents and mats outside the parliament buildings at the Tamar site, on Hong Kong’s […]
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 […]
JERUSALEM – It is almost prayer time in Ramot, the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in north Jerusalem, and men in black suits, white ties and black hats with wide brims are hurrying to the synagogue. On July 31, the 10-year-old “Tal Law” exempting ultra-Orthodox Jews from military duty expired, sparking a nationwide debate in Israel over the […]
BEIRUT – Elias, a 42-year-old Syrian, is chain smoking under the silent gaze of his children. This Christian farmer abandoned his lands, near the Lebanese border, leaving behind conflicts he felt had nothing to do with him, but tormented by the future of Syria and the fate of his minority religion there. Together with 20 […]
For a long time, the only people interested in Yemen were Joseph Kessel and Al-Qaida. After the revolution that brought down 32 years of dictatorship, the interest of the West quickly waned, abandoning the country to its difficult political transition. It is an exhausted country, without a vision nor a hope of something better and […]
RIO DE JANEIRO – She carries the weight of her people on her shoulders and that makes her beautiful. With her seashell and pearl necklace around the neck, her tanned tattooed skin, her feathers of different sizes and her bright and vividly colored skeins, Vangri Kaingang is a proud native and she’s not afraid to […]
PONDICHERRY – India’s coastline is in danger, not because of extraordinary monsoons or devastating tidal waves, but because of erosion, which day upon day, centimeter by centimeter, eats away at the coast. Every year, 75,000 hectares of cultivated earth and almost 35,000 buildings are gnawed or swallowed up by the sea. If erosion is a […]
TOKYO – Toru Hashimoto, the young and often controversial mayor of Osaka who shot to fame for his attacks on Japan’s central government and bureaucrats, has chosen a new target — but this time, attracting little sympathy from the Japanese youth. Last March, Hashimoto decided to take disciplinary action against government employees who did not […]
OP-ED – As the world’s eyes were focused on the Olympic Games in London and Bashar al-Assad’s killer tanks and planes battered Syria throughout the summer, Kofi Annan“s resignation went almost unnoticed. But when the UN peace envoy to Syria threw in the towel, it marked the end of a shameful fiasco. The affable Ghanaian […]
SANTO DOMINGO – In a soft voice, Elena Lorac tells her Kafkaesque story. Born 23 years ago in the midst of the Sabana Grande de Boya sugar cane plantations, 90 kilometers north of Santo Domingo, the young woman is stateless. Dominican authorities won’t give her a cedula (an ID card), using the excuse that her […]
TAIPEI – Flags have a particular knack for causing trouble in Taiwan, the de facto sovereign island state, which is nevertheless still lacking full sovereignty and therefore does not have much say in the matter when it comes to showing off its national colors. The Republic of China (the official name of Taiwan) is participating […]
Recent pictures of Kim Jong-un and his wife attending public events is just one sign that has insiders wondering whether North Korea has started to shift toward a ‘post-totalitarian’ regime.
In Iran, the shortage of poultry has become the symbol of the economic “war” imposed on the Iranian regime by the West to pressure the country into abandoning its nuclear program. Since a new round of European and American-led economic sanctions were enforced on July 1, the price of chicken has soared in Iran, rising […]
About a hundred cyclists streamed the streets of Hanoi on August 5 waving rainbow pennants and yelling “Support gay marriage!” Good Lord! Has prudish Vietnam initiated a sort of ‘social coming out,’ even before turning to democracy? The fact is that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a tightly controlled single-party state still shaped by Confucian […]
You probably know him…or her. Charming, manipulative, a smooth talker and guilt-tripper who ends up making you do what he (or she) wants. So-called “narcissistic perverts” are all around us, explains a growing body of psychological res