Worldcrunch
TEHRAN — When a major political leader dies, the labels and comparisons acquired over a lifetime can tell us much about both the leader and the nation itself. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a veteran of the 1979 Iranian Revolution who later evolved into a reformist, has been called over the years everything, from the “General of […]
MUNICH — Grief is demonstrative resistance against loss. Cemeteries and funerals are ways to combat death, preserving the lives of the departed by allowing people to remember them. Death, we are told, is a part of life. But those who went earlier this month to the cemetery on All Hallows, All Souls Day, will have […]
-Farewell- Foreigners who visit Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India that’s home to stunning Hindu temples and a robust economy, would often puzzle over the matronly woman draped in a sari watching over them from posters and billboards seemingly splashed on every street. There’s even a statue of her in blood. She was born […]
The death of Cuba’s Fidel Castro offers an early glimpse at how U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will need to balance his pro-growth economic plans and allegiance to business with the hard-line campaign pledges that helped him win the election. Trump has promised to reverse the improved U.S. relations with Cuba forged by President Barack Obama over the past two years unless the Caribbean nation met his demands for more political and religious freedoms. Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, reiterated that message on Sunday in an interview on Fox News. Priebus said the U.S. needed “a better deal” from […]
The promise of eternal life gets a boost from the latest technologies, but there are troubling questions that go beyond science.
“The King is dead,” writes the Post Today on its black-and-white front page Friday, a day after Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej died in Bangkok at age 88. Having spent 70 years as head of state, King Bhumidol was the world’s longest-reigning monarch, as well as the longest-reigning monarch in Thai history. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha […]
Our linear, utilitarian view of time may be simply a construct of this modern, materialist civilization. What’s the rush? What does it mean?
MUNICH — Traffic collisions. Heart attacks. Even terrorist attacks. Tragedies strike every day, tearing people away from their loved ones forever. But events like this have a collateral impact beyond the victim’s next of kin. They also affect the messengers, the proverbial bearers of bad news. People with certain chosen specific vocations — police officers, […]
American forensics researchers place human corpses in so-called “body farms” to study their decomposition for a variety of sometimes surprising reasons.
Prince, the American music icon and virtuoso instrumentalist behind “Kiss” and “Purple Rain” died Thursday at his home in the Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen. He was 57. After the immediate outpouring of online tributes from fans and celebrities alike, the world’s newspapers Friday bid farewell to Prince Rogers Nelson — a.k.a. The Kid, The Artist […]
“Patricio Aylwin, president of the peaceful transition to democracy, died,” reads Wednesday’s front page of the Chilean establishment newspaper El Mercurio. The former head of state (1990-1994) died Tuesday in his Santiago home surrounded by his family. He was 97. Aylwin, a law professor and leader of the centrist Christian Democratic Party for over half […]
We have a tendency to extol our late loved ones for having “fought” against the illnesses that struck them. But those who peacefully succumb to terminal disease are no less brave.
Near the western coast of Turkey, a humble imam recites too many lonely prayers in a cemetery that is filling with nameless victims of the perilous migrant route to Europe.
NEW YORK — Umberto Eco died last month in his Milan apartment, among his 30,000 books. He wrote many of them himself, and these books were translated into more than 30 different languages. He had them all. Even when translated into foreign languages, Eco owned them, because he worked hard with every single translator. He […]
Islamist terrorists from Boko Haram razed a small village and two camps nearby Saturday in northwestern Nigeria, bombing and setting fire to huts in an attack that killed at least 86 people, officials say. On its front page Monday, Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust features photos of a child after the attack, and those of charred […]
UN TO RELIEVE STARVING SYRIAN CITY The United Nations is expected to send an aid convoy to the Syrian town of Madaya, where at least 23 people have recently starved to death. About 42,000 people in Madaya have had little to no access to food for the past two weeks, after government forces sealed off […]
PARIS — With 20 to 25 burials a day on average, the iconic Père Lachaise Cemetery is used to a steady pace of funerals — but these ceremonies are different. On Monday, the largest cemetery in Paris was partially closed for two hours to allow 19 employees to meet with a psychologist about the trauma […]
La Tercera, Dec. 9, 2015 “Environmentalist entrepreneur Douglas Tompkins dies,” writes Santiago-based daily La Tercera on its front page Wednesday, after U.S. conservationist and North Face Inc. founder Douglas Tompkins died in a kayaking accident, in his adopted country of Chile. Tompkins, 72, was kayaking with five others on General Carrera Lake in far southern […]
Much of what we think we know about sadness is still based on what the father of pychoanalysis wrote 100 years ago, but psychologists and brain researchers are starting to discover more about the feeling’s true mechanisms.
Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud ordered a swift investigation, as well as a safety review, after Thursday’s stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage site of Mina which left at least 717 people dead and 863 hurt. On its Friday front page, Saudi daily Al Yaum quotes the king as saying that “the massive development […]
Brooklyn lost its hip hop king 18 years ago today. On March 9, 1997, Notorious B.I.G was shot to death over on the west coast, after attending a party in Los Angeles. He was promoting his second album, Life After Death, which would be released on March 25 and soon reach No. 1 in the […]
Though many voters believed they were electing a pro-human rights president, Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, has demonstrated no mercy in executions, even for drug trafficking.
Another more environmentally friendly option for what to do with the dearly departed has been legalized in a few U.S. states, with several European countries now considering it as well.
“The Good King leaves, Salman becomes Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” Asharq Al-Awsat writes on its front page after King of Saudi Arabia Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud died early Friday at age 90, three weeks after being hospitalized for pneumonia. One of the many sons of Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi […]
JANUARY Israel Ariel Sharon, former prime minister Portugal Eusebio, soccer player United States Phil Everly, musician FEBRUARY Spain Paco de Lucia, Flamenco guitarist United States Shirley Temple, child actress United States Philip Seymour Hoffman, actor MARCH Spain Adolfo Suarez, former prime minister United States L’Wren Scott, fashion designer France Alain Resnais, filmmaker APRIL United Kingdom […]
From rock’n’roll pioneers to soul legends and flamenco gods, here’s Worldcrunch’s tribute playlist to 16 of the great musicians who died in 2014. Joe Cocker — Night Calls Phil Everly, Everly Brothers — All I Have To Do Is Dream Paco de Lucia — Impetu & Panaderos Tommy Ramone, The Ramones — I Don’t Want […]
Bidding farewell to those who died this past month.
In Munich, a bizarre case of a woman who refused to bury her mother is raising a series of practical and legal questions.
It’s a rare but hardly new question: what should airline staff do when a passenger dies mid-flight? Legend has it that British Airways used to use the ‘vodka tonic’ approach.
In the end, it has nothing to do with God. From biblical times to crusades and jihad, self-proclaimed “holy wars” are actually driven by power, territory and economic interests.
The Toraja people in Southern Sulawesi, Indonesia, are famous for their elaborate funeral rites. Not only do they tend to mummify the deceased — they also store coffins in caves carved up on rocky cliffs and place a wooden effigy of the departed, called Tau tau, to guard the burial site. Spooky.
GAZA — A dramatic video has emerged that captures — in a very different way — the horror of Gaza parents facing the death of their children in the ongoing assault by the Israeli military. In this video, (SEE BELOW) posted late Wednesday by al-Quds news in Jerusalem, a Gazan mother finds her young son, […]
A young tennis champion, a controversial Polish general and an influent author were among those to whom we bid farewell this past month.
KERMANSHAH — It looks like a bank heist that took a very bad turn. Police of the Kermanshah province in western Iran suspect that a unidentified man’s body found in a bank ventilation shaft belonged to a would-be thief who suffocated there overnight. Employees of a branch of the Bank Saderat (the Exports Bank) called […]
Even if you don’t judge him South America’s greatest writer, there’s no denying that his life lived with joy and principle is the stuff of modern legend for a country, and continent.
Adios Gabo! From Bogota to Warsaw and beyond, the passing of the great Colombian writer is marked with Page One features.
Amid an ongoing public debate in France on end-of-life palliative care, doctors tell Le Monde how they secretly help their patients die.
The American-invented dream of averting the finality of death by freezing one’s body is a world unto its own. Now it’s spreading to the UK, France and beyond.
MUNICH – After soccer star Robert Enke took his own life in November 2009, public dismay at the news was considerable. At a memorial service in the Marktkirche church the next day, followed by a funeral march in Hannover attended by some 35,000 people, fans were out in force for the German national soccer team’s […]