Worldcrunch
HEARTBREAKING IMAGES SHOW HORROR OF MIGRANT CRISIS Shocking photographs of the body of a Syrian toddler, whose body had washed up on a Turkish beach after his family’s failed attempt to reach Europe, are sparking global outcry. The first of the images shows a Syrian boy identified as Aylan Kurdi, 3, face down on the […]
PARIS — Shocking photographs of the body of a Syrian toddler, whose body had washed up on a Turkish beach after his family’s failed attempt to reach Europe, are sparking global outcry. Will the publication of the hard-to-look-at images mark a turning point in raising global consciousness of the plight of refugees? The series of […]
MIGRANT PROTEST IN BUDAPEST As many as 2,000 migrants are stranded outside Budapest’s Eastern railway station and are protesting against the Hungarian police after the government banned any access to the station to those who are neither Hungarian nor tourists, Die Welt reports. Describing the “squalid” conditions in which these migrants are waiting on the […]
MIGRANT TRAINS BLOCKED IN BUDAPEST Photo: Sven Hoppe/DPA/ZUMA Thousands of asylum seekers — mostly Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war — have reached Munich, in Germany, and Vienna, in Austria, after leaving the Hungarian capital of Budapest by train Monday in what German daily Die Welt cited as the biggest movement of people in Europe […]
El Tiempo, August 18, 2015 An already critical economic situation is spiraling out of control in Venezuela, with newspaper El Tiempo reporting that “the word “cheap” is disappearing from the Venezuelan vocabulary.” In the northern city of Puerto La Cruz, a kilo of tomatoes or onions can cost a whopping 400 bolivars ($63), double what […]
STUTTGART — Experts are hailing it as a global novelty, and inventors are celebrating it as the “innovation of an era.” The new euro coins that will be released in spring 2016 have a ring of blue plastic minted into them, and the oddity is expected to make them a desirable export. Coins are typically […]
The Church is hugely wealthy and exempt from almost all taxes. But its charitable works are crucial in Greece, ravaged by financial crisis and an inept public sector.
“Wounded, He Continues Until Further Notice,” writes left-leaning Greek daily Efimerida ton Syntakton on the front-page headline of its Thursday edition after the Greek parliament approved a package of tough measures leading a third bailout deal. The he in question is Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who won a bittersweet approval late Wednesday of the […]
CARUARU — For months now, water taps in some of northeastern Brazil’s cities have been running dry. Not during certain hours of the day. Or certain days of the week. But all the time. Morning and night. Day after day, with the exception of just two days per month. And it’s not just residents being […]
As oil and commodities prices drop and the U.S. dollar is revalued, Latin American economies must prepare for life with less hard cash.
Le Soir, June 29, 2015 The European and Greek flags billow beside each other under the headline “Disunion” on the front page of today’s Le Soir, a Brussels-based daily. Negotiations between Athens and its European creditors collapsed over the weekend, plunging the continent into a new depth of uncertainty and crisis. After European officials rejected […]
Monday’s front page of Germany’s leading financial daily the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shows Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis dashing to a cabinet meeting at the Maximos Mansion, seat of the Greek prime minister. As European Union and Greek leaders struggle to reach a deal to keep Greece in the Eurozone, the German daily describes Varoufakis’ […]
Corriere della Sera, June 10, 2015 Hot on the heels of the recent — and Russia-less — G7 meeting in Germany, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Italy on Wednesday, highlighting the way that business ties could be a way out of Moscow’s standoff with the West. In an interview published Wednesday in Corriere della […]
-Op-Ed- SAO PAULO — Two studies published in recent months show how inequality around the world is becoming even more obscene than before. One such study is the UBS report on the rich that focuses on capital. The figures involved are predictably shocking, but one element in particular caught our attention: The wealth owned by […]
 Die Welt, June 9, 2015 “G7 agrees to ambitious climate goals,” reads the front page of German daily Die Welt“s Tuesday edition. The Group of Seven talks have ended in the German mountain resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen with a photo op worthy of the Sound of Music (which was filmed in the nearby Austrian Alps). […]
The government’s failure to address crime, corruption and declining living standards risks true social upheaval. But Enrique Pena Nieto just sits on the ball.
Saying that a starred rating in the Bible of fine dining actually turns off locals, Donatella restaurant in Oviglio has decided to give back the precious star.
PARIS — Up to 8,000 Rohingya, a long-persecuted Burmese minority, are still reportedly stranded on rickety boats in deplorable and perilous conditions, weeks after being abandoned by human traffickers in the Andaman Sea. Denied safe passage on the shores of countries in the region, the plight of this Muslim ethnic group is however just one […]
Vanguard, April 29, 2015 Nigerian troops fighting against Islamist group Boko Haram announced the rescue of 293 girls and women held hostage by the jihadists, newspaper Vanguard reports on Wednesday. It’s unclear how many, if any, of those rescued were among the 200 girls abducted in a school in Chibok in April 2014 that captured […]
SAUDI ARABIA CALLS HALT TO YEMEN STRIKES, THEN STRIKES AGAIN Hopes that the Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Arab countries was ending its “Decisive Storm” campaign in Yemen were short-lived after reports of more airstrikes against Houthi Shia rebels emerged Wednesday morning, less than a day after Riyadh had indicated a halt to attacks. A local […]
France lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in facing fundamental changes to the nature of work. The old model dominated by wage labor just can’t compete.
With scant help common from Frankfurt, a group of French intellectuals is calling for online donations to help the Greek people. Desperate times indeed.
ATHENS — In her beautiful Athens offices, billionaire Gianna Angelopoulos nurses a large cigar and calls it like she sees it on the promise of the radical-left Syriza party to levy new taxes to avoid the country going bankrup. “It’s gonna take balls,” says the 60-year-old. The wealth of her and husband Theodore is estimated […]
Despite the ruble’s freefall, a shaky economy and growing international isolation, cosmetics companies and the beauty industry at large can rest easy that Russian women will buy what they’re selling.
Far from the murders and intrigue swirling at the Kremlin, or the war rumbling in Ukraine, most of Russia lives in a strange post-Soviet state of denial like one finds in the city of Yelets.
-OpEd- MUNICH — Talk to a Greek person about the difficult situation their country faces and you’re likely to hear some pretty astounding things. Some argue, for example, that the financial collapse came at the right moment, that without it Greece wouldn’t have been pressured into the reforms needed to halt its downward spiral. But […]
Demonizing the rich, a pastime of Colombia’s political Left, doesn’t help social progress. Yes, the rich must pay a high share of taxes, but capital and opportunity cross borders like never before.
Yes, an open mind in Europe is necessary, but debt reduction isn’t even in the Greeks’ own interest. It’s time to change the way Greece works.
Damascus regime’s counter-insurrection chief has become a cult hero for his battlefield prowess. But Bashar al-Assad is unlikely to stand for long for worship of anyone else but himself.
Grave doubts about the health and capacity of longtime President Bouteflika are pulling Algeria apart at the seams. Who’s in charge? What happens next in this pivotal North African country?
The neoliberal global system shows remarkable staying power. A German critic of the system explains how the so-called ‘sharing economy’ is the ultimate trick and triumph of capitalism.
-OpEd- PARIS — We French love our rentrée littéraire. But with the launch of this year’s new literary season, dedicated in part to the memory of our American World War II allies, a new war is erupting. And the alliances seem to be changing. U.S.-based Trojan horse Amazon started the fight by targeting major French […]
The Russian President is again one step ahead of the U.S. and Europe, and many have begun to wonder if sanctions are even worth it. And then there is the question: where to after Ukraine?
-Analysis- PARIS — What can Europe do after Kiev’s desperate call for help in dealing with the invasion of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, where separatists are gaining control? Let’s leave aside for the moment the hypothesis of military aid. European defense doesn’t exist. What’s more, we run the risk of escalation — an imbalance […]
MOSCOW — The war in eastern Ukraine is being fought on several fronts — with deathly weapons and munitions on the one hand, and with competing interpretations of reality on the other. As the conflict drags on, it’s increasingly becoming a propaganda war. From the beginning, the Russian media has taken an active part in […]
Why are American “vulture” funds taking such a hard line on Argentina’s debt? It may have something to do with the political influence finance wield in the United States.
DOUMA — Thousands of Syrians have lost limbs during the country’s three-year war. Here in the Damascus suburbs, two men have opened a workshop where functioning prosthetics are fashioned out of found materials. When Omar al-Ahmad celebrated his 13th birthday this year, he didn’t mark the milestone by shopping for new clothes with his father in downtown Damascus, coveting — as he would have done before the war — the uniform of his favorite soccer team on a mannequin in a shop window. Instead, his gift was the right arm of a mannequin, fished out of rubble by his father […]
Lower visibility, a falling ruble and rising inflation: The Ukrainian crisis is taking its toll on the Russian economy.
Iran is facing the risk of “critical” water shortages if the country does not dramatically cut water use, Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian declared in a speech to the Iranian parliament. Citing several years of drought, climate change and increased population, Chitchian told legislators on Sunday that usage needed to drop by by 40%. Average annual […]
BERLIN — It looked as if a great moment might be in the making: German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Polish colleague Radoslaw Sikorski had teamed up with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, and the trio flew to Kiev for joint talks with the then-Ukrainian government and opposition. At the time violence on Maidan […]