WorldcrunchSPOTLIGHT: WORLD, MEET MR. TRUMP (AGAIN) Every four years, people around the world get a glance at those odd political spectacles, typically hosted in some mid-sized American city they’ll never visit. The U.S. national party conventions tend to get slightly bemused coverage abroad: candidates’ family values on full display, gray-haired delegates dancing to Dixie bands […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — The Republican Party came to life as the bastion of “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Speech, Free Men.” It was a reformist party dedicated to stopping the spread of slavery and to fighting a “Slave Power” its founders saw as undermining free institutions. The new political organization grew out of the old Whigs and reflected the faith that Henry Clay and his admirer Abraham Lincoln had in the federal government’s ability to invest in fostering economic growth and expanding educational opportunity. Its partisans embodied what John C. Calhoun, slavery’s chief ideological defender, described disdainfully as “the national […]
A road trip and reflections from another New York-based Slovenian on a visit back to the homeland of the once Melanija Knavs, who could be the next American first lady.
Philippine Daily Inquirer, June 30th The Philippine Daily Inquirer issue Thursday features an epic montage of Rodrigo “Rudy” Duterte with the headline “Have no fear, Rudy is here.” The controversial 71 year-old former prosecutor and Davao City mayor was sworn in Thursday as the 16th President of the Philippines, succeeding Benigno Aquino III. Taking the […]
Signing a petition challenging Donald Trump’s right to run for U.S. president is one bad good idea. A novelist who lived through Balkan tragedies knows this well.
Europe has seen its relative economic and military power decline for decades, but its “soft power” has held strong. But even that is now at risk.
The worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history has proven to be a litmus test for the two top candidates in the race to the White House. When a gunman pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group opened fire at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and wounding 53 last weekend, the […]
SPOTLIGHT: BREXIT, VIOLENCE AND EUROPE’S PAST Tributes are pouring in for slain British lawmaker Jo Cox, 41, who was fatally stabbed and shot during a meeting yesterday with constituents in northern England. The mother of two young children, Cox was praised as a big-hearted defender of human rights and refugees and was most recently an […]
BOGOTÁ — For Latin America, the U.S. presidential elections have become a big-screen spectacle that affects the tone and register of local politics, in a region that combines democratic aspirations with an enduring admiration for its northern neighbor. The televised debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy generations ago began a process that has […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — What word comes to mind when you see the name Donald Trump? For some people, it might be “anger,” since he provokes it and stokes it. For others, it might be “ignorance,” since he knows so little and, like many unburdened by knowledge, is untroubled by facts. Some might say “fear,” since it would take some scary police tactics to push 11 million people over the border to Mexico. For me, none of those words suffices. I would say “betrayal.” It is the word that comes to mind almost on a nightly basis when I see some […]
SPOTLIGHT: PRIVATE LIVES, PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS A little Internet brush fire is spreading in China after a Beijing state-run newspaper published a long article saying that Taiwan’s new president Tsai Ing-wen is unfit for office because she is neither married nor a mother. Here’s a sample: “As a single female politician, she does not have the […]
SPOTLIGHT: TRUMP AND THE ‘SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP’ It was 1946 when Winston Churchill coined the term “special relationship” to describe the uniquely close ties between the U.S. and UK: diplomatic, military, cultural, linguistic, economic… and yes, historic. The transatlantic amity dates back to the mid-19th century, when the two countries — one the world’s dominant empire, […]
Are there clues to Donald Trump’s rise in the celluloid figure of Citizen Kane? It may be that the Orson Welles classic also points to the limits of the billionaire candidate.
CLINTON AND TRUMP WIN CRUCIAL NEW YORK VOTE Frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have moved significantly closer to winning their parties’ nomination after the two candidates clinched resounding victories in the New York primary. With final ballots tallied early Wednesday, Clinton got close to 58% of the vote in the Democratic race, while Trump […]
KABUL SUICIDE ATTACK KILLS DOZENS A powerful explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed at least 28 people this morning, AP quotes a government official as saying. According to the BBC, the suicide blast from a vehicle injured at least 329 people, some critically. Gunmen then stormed the area, and some news outlets are reporting that a […]
A Polish commentator notes that despite Clinton’s fitness for the job, many see her presidential ambitions through a bigoted lens. She’s not just a woman, but one who doesn’t know her place.
Barack Obama’s recent trip to Cuba and Argentina are the crowning achievement on his administration’s efforts to consolidate peaceful ties with and among Latin American countries.
The terrorists attacks in Brussels last week provided instant fodder for the U.S. presidential campaign. Republican front-runner Donald Trump had already boasted last month that he would order the U.S. military to “target the families of terrorists,” also pledging to reinstitute waterboarding and “a whole lot more” as a tactic to extract information from terrorists. […]
DETROIT — To reach the heart of the matter in Michigan on a late-winter evening, navigate out of downtown Detroit and drive 20 miles north on Interstate 94, and continue for seven miles, the darkening way lit by the flickering yellowish glow of American commerce, until you reach yet another strip mall at the corner of Schoenherr Road. There, in a storefront headquarters stuck between Buy Buy Baby and Long Tall Sally, members of the Macomb County Republican Party emerge from the cold to watch their presidential candidates debate again on television. In the vast suburban landscape above Detroit, Macomb […]
PARIS — Our usual spot at Parc Sainte-Périne to plop our blanket and sports equipment for a few hours of recreational escape was already taken when we arrived on Saturday. A group of about 10 young men were sprawled out on the patch, enjoying the sunshine and talking among themselves — in Arabic, I noticed. […]
It’s not just Donald Trump …
Take 5 — Donald Trump’s Alter Egos, International par Worldcrunch
KIM JONG-UN RAMPS UP NUCLEAR THREAT Raising his belligerent rhetoric again, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered the national military to prepare its nuclear warheads “to be fired at any moment,” Pyongyang’s state-run news agency KCNA reported today. The comments were made as Kim supervised military exercises involving newly developed rocket launchers that were […]
As he rewrites America’s political and media playbook, Donald Trump has also now moved swiftly to the center of the worldwide stage. Wins this week in seven of the 11 states holding primaries put the flamboyant billionaire one big step closer to the Republican nomination — and the world’s newspapers and magazines are dedicating ample […]
TRUMP WINS NEVADA CAUCUS Donald Trump has won the Nevada caucus with a comfortable margin (45.9% of the votes) over his nearest Republican rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, according to results reported this morning by The Washington Post. This third consecutive win by the American billionaire, after victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina, […]
“Trump Tells All,” reads the cover of this week’s edition of French right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles, which nabbed an exclusive interview with real estate mogul and 2016 Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump. “If I’d been at the Bataclan or one of the cafés, I would have opened fire,” Trump told the French magazine, when asked […]
Republican billionaire businessman and television celebrity Donald Trump and Democratic Senator and self-described socialist Bernie Sanders notched impressive wins in the New Hampshire presidential primaries on Tuesday. The Union Leader daily in the small northeastern state featured the two winning candidates on the top of its front page Wednesday, with further coverage on Hillary Clinton’s […]
TWO SURVIVORS FOUND AMID TAIWAN RUBBLE Photo: Zhang Guojun/Xinhua Taiwan rescuers have found two survivors in the rubble after Saturday’s magnitude 6.7 quake in which at least 37 people were killed, Xinhua reports. The two rescued victims were both found today, the beginning of the Chinese New Year. One of them, a woman, was found […]
Daily News, February 2, 2016 New York’s Daily News labeled Republican candidate Donald Trump a “dead clown walking” on its photoshopped front page Tuesday, as the New York billionaire came in second after Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucus. “In the end, bombastic bozo Donald Trump’s predictions of an Iowa victory were all a big, […]
Donald Trump’s brand of xenophobic patriotism belies basic values on which America was founded. Given the U.S.’s cultural sway, his election would weign on other countries facing similar issues.
Donald Trump travels to Las Vegas to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Trump International Casino, a day after calling The Wall Street Journal “garbage propaganda directed by an immigrant named Rupert Murdoch, who at 85 should be in a nursing home.” The man bringing together Trump and Putin is Silvio Berlusconi. That’s how […]
GUNMEN STORM PAKISTAN UNIVERSITY, DOZENS FEARED DEAD A group of gunmen killed at least 21 people and wounded more than 50 as they stormed the Bacha Khan University in Pakistan’s northwestern Charsadda District this morning, The Express Tribune reports. A security official quoted by Reuters said the death toll could rise to 40. Police have […]
LYNCHBURG — Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. stood before more than 10,000 of his students and some visitors on Monday morning and laid out the case for why conservative evangelicals like them should support a presidential candidate like Donald Trump – the cursing, self-promoting, thrice-married billionaire who bungles Bible references. It’s not that Trump is the most religious or pious of the candidates, Falwell said, although he described Trump as a “servant leader” who “lives a life of helping others, as Jesus taught.” It’s that Trump is a savvy businessman who “speaks the truth publicly, even if it is […]
Czech President Milos Zeman, Donald Trump and other over-the-top personalities may not offer any practical solutions to society’s problems, but they do have a function in an increasingly uniform political arena.
From politicians to entertainers and ordinary citizens, we take a quick look at some of the words that made news in 2015. “Je suis Charlie” is both a slogan and logo created by French art director Joachim Roncin in the wake of the Jan. 7 shooting at the Paris offices of the French satirical weekly […]
Hey Donald Trump, Hugo Chavez Would Be So Proud CHILE / America Economia, Aug. 25 Jihadism As Nihilism, An X-Ray Of Homegrown Terror In France FRANCE / Le Monde, Dec. 3 The Siberian Fasting Cleanse For Body And Mind RUSSIA / Le Temps, Aug. 17 El Chapo Escape, When Income Inequality Breeds Corruption MEXICO / […]
NOV. 13 ATTACKS COORDINATED IN REAL TIME The three terrorist commandos that carried out the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, killing 130 people, were being coordinated in real time by at least one unknown man in Belgium, Le Monde reports. The three groups were in contact with the coordinator throughout the night using cell phones […]
IRAN VIOLATED MISSILE BAN, UN SAYS A United Nations Security Council’s Panel of Experts has accused Iran of violating a UN resolution by test-firing a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead on Oct. 10, Al Jazeera reports. “On the basis of its analysis and findings, the Panel concludes that Emad launch is a violation […]
TURIN — Like in a comedy that suddenly turns into tragedy, a caricature of Silvio Berlusconi may become the next president of the United States. It’s not really shocking that Donald Trump would propose closing the Internet and the borders to Muslims, as Americans have grown sick and tired of President Obama’s babblings and potential […]
SYRIA’S OPPOSITION GROUPS MEET IN RIYADH Syrian armed and political opposition groups are set to meet in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh today as part of a three-day conference aimed at finding a common position ahead of potential peace talks with President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Al Jazeera reports. VERBATIM “I am hereby barring Donald Trump […]