Worldcrunch
The impacts of the impending Trump presidency, and its unscrupulous use of social media platforms, are already being felt internationally. Trump’s unprecedented comeback is becoming the playbook for how to capitalize on dissatisfaction and regain power.
As South Africa goes to the polls, Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress party is facing disillusionment among its voters, and risks losing its absolute majority in parliament. Corruption, crime and persistent social inequality are at the root of this disenchantment — and the memory of the liberation struggle is fading.
It took firefighters nearly three days to extinguish the blaze at the historic building in Cape Town, and the damage will persist as South Africans try to figure out how this happened, and what it says about the country’s struggle to reinforce its young democracy.
Having shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela, former President Frederik Willem de Klerk was largely credited with courageous leadership and a key role in dismantling apartheid. But his legacy, both before and after the transition, is decidedly mixed.
Among all the big numbers we’ll hear broadcast at the lavish ceremony for the opening of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, whether it’s the 5,000 people volunteering at the event or the 10,500 athletes competing in it, the number 10 will perhaps resonate most deeply with the world. That’s the number of members who comprise […]
CRUZ’S BIG WIN OVER TRUMP, SANDERS TOPS CLINTON The Republican party’s improbable presidential frontrunner Donald Trump suddenly looks vulnerable after a stinging double-digit loss to Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin primary. The New York Times reports that by early today Cruz had received 48% of the vote to 34% for Trump. Wisconsin also […]
COUNTRIES LAUNCH POST-PANAMA PAPERS PROBES After yesterday’s first reports into the massive leak of confidential documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca, known as “the Panama Papers,” several countries have launched investigations into allegations of money laundering and tax fraud, the BBC reports. Among those countries are Australia, Austria, France, Spain, the Netherlands and even Panama. […]
“What now for Zuma?” asks Cape Town-based, Afrikaans-language daily Die Burger on its front page Friday, a day after South Africa’s highest court ruled that President Jacob Zuma breached the constitution by upgrading his private home with government money. The embattled president still has 60 days to repay the estimated $23 million, but the verdict […]
N. KOREA FIRES MORE MISSILES North Korea fired a pair of ballistic missiles today from its eastern coast, the latest in a series of provocations that included a nuclear detonation in January and the launch, last month, of a long-range rocket. BRAZIL IMBROGLIO Brazil is barreling toward a full-blown constitutional crisis over President Dilma Rousseff’s […]
South African President Jacob Zuma is facing new accusations of influence peddling, in what may be the most perilous scandal of his political career. On its front page Friday, Cape-Town-based Afrikaans-language daily Die Burger asked if this was “The End?” for the South African leader. Senior public figures accused the Gupta family of close ties […]
Take 5 — Donald Trump’s Alter Egos, International par Worldcrunch
AL-QAEDA GAINS AMID YEMEN CHAOS Airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition against Yemen’s Houthi rebels have “indirectly helped empower al-Qaeda in ways the group had not enjoyed before” because the focus elsewhere leaves them “unopposed,” The New York Times writes. The jihadist group has seized a major airport, a military base and a significant oil terminal, […]
JOHANNESBURG – When Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president 19 years ago, he proclaimed that South Africa was entering “a covenant” to create a society that guaranteed human rights for both blacks and whites, “a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.” Mandela, who died on Thursday at the age of 95, […]