Worldcrunch
Welcome to Tuesday, where Peru’s contested election finally gets a winner, the Olympics bubble system is broken and another billionaire is blasting off for space. German daily Die Welt also explains why Asian countries, which were previously considered successful COVID tamers, are now struggling with new waves of infections. • Pedro Castillo declared winner of […]
Welcome to Tuesday, where global COVID-19 death toll surpasses 3 million, the Iran nuclear deal is back on the table, and a Soviet-produced Lord of the Rings is unearthed. Thanks to Die Welt, we also look at how the German auto industry is trying to keep up with Elon Musk. • Iran nuclear talks back […]
Welcome to Friday, where the hundreds of kidnapped Nigerian students have been freed, Russia has been banned from the Olympics and French police have made a high-profile arrest in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking probe. We also follow Yemen’s itinerant honey producers as they (and their bees) dodge the stings of the country’s ongoing civil […]
PARIS — Soon after arriving in Boston for my university studies, I began to notice people in wheelchairs and others with physical disabilities struggling to use the city’s public transportation system. It’s been almost two months since coming to Paris, and I have not seen a single person in a wheelchair use the city’s legendary […]
[dailymotion //www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x55f778 expand=1] Goodbye 2016: A Zapping Video Year In Review by Worldcrunch
Ever since the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore last year, the Black Lives Matter movement has been growing exponentially, both in citizen participation and in media attention. The Black Lives Matter cause was even exported abroad, with similar protests in Paris, Rio de Janeiro and other cities around the globe. Right now, much of […]
Rowdy Rio crowds are upsetting both athletes and fans. But it’s a passion born from soccer stadiums, and is what a South American Olympics should look (and sound) like.
SPOTLIGHT: TURKEY AND RUSSIA, REUNITED AGAINST THE WEST Russia and Turkey have historically straddled East And West, often in different ways and with different degrees of influence over the centuries. Right now, both countries appear crucial — and unpredictable as ever, each in the hands of imperious rulers. Thus all eyes today are on a […]
SPOTLIGHT: A FRENCH HERO AND THE REST OF US When a murderous truck hurtled down a promenade in the French city of Nice last week, slamming into innocent bystanders and leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake, a 49-year-old man riding his scooter nearby threw his life on the line to stop […]
SPOTLIGHT: STATE OF EMERGENCY, THE OBVIOUS ANSWER? If the whole world is always in a state of emergency, does that mean there’s no emergency? We’re not quite there yet, but an official “state of emergency” decree, with additional regulations and the granting of special police powers, is increasingly how governments react in times of crisis. […]
MOSCOW — Russian long jumper Darya Klishina has publicly thanked the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) for granting her entry into international tournaments, including the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Following the recent far-reaching doping scandal, which resulted in the disqualificaion of Russia’s entire track and field team, Klishina is the […]
IT’S CRUZ IN IOWA, CLINTON BY A HAIR In a humiliating upset for Donald Trump, evangelical Tea Party hero Sen. Ted Cruz won Iowa’s all-important GOP caucus with 28% of the vote last night, to Trump’s 24%. On the Democratic side, major media outlets are still characterizing the Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders matchup a “virtual tie.” […]
ISRAELIS KILL PALESTINIAN TODDLER An 18-month-old Palestinian boy was burned to death overnight when Israeli settlers set his family’s home in the West Bank city of Duma ablaze, Haaretz reports. The toddler’s mother, father and 4-year-old brother were seriously injured in the attack, which occurred at 4 am. The two masked attackers painted Hebrew graffiti […]
And apps could kill it forever …
HILLARY’S IN, AND THE WORLD REACTS Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Sunday announcement that she’s running in the 2016 presidential race, her second bid to become the first female U.S. president, drew news coverage from around the world, with one German newspaper even using the English headline, “The Very First Lady.” Via a short video on her […]
MAKHACHKALA — A woman is standing near the police cordons, looking into the dark space where the Golden Empire restaurant stood until a few moments earlier. First came the grenades, and then a car exploded in front of the entrance. All that’s left now is debris. When the woman repeatedly tries calling her sister, a […]
BEIJING — The Chinese capital likes to dazzle visitors with the biggest and best projects in the world. Consider, for example, the Olympic Park built for the 2008 games. It is spread over nearly 12 square kilometers, intersected by a canal that, seen from above, resembles a dragon. The park is an exhibition of the […]
SAO PAULO — Watch out William Tell wannabes: There’s a big group of archers training from dawn until dusk in the hopes of golden glory at the 2016 Olympic games in Rio. What makes them different from any other athletes training for the Olympics? Well, just a minor detail: Until very recently, they had been […]
Two weeks ahead of the naming of the 2020 Olympics location, as officials in Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo do last-minute bidding, protests rise in each city against the effects of hosting the Games.
Decades of unbridled industrialization has left much of China’s soil badly contaminated. Some are set to make millions cleaning it up.
CLARÍN (Argentina) Worldcrunch CARACAS – Venezuelan politics continues to attract the world’s attention. After the death of Hugo Chavez and the recent election of his no-less outspoken successor, Nicolas Maduro, eyes have now turned to the newly anointed Sports Minister: Alejandra Benítez, the Olympic fencer best known for posing nude just before last year’s London […]
BUSINESS DAY LIVE, MAIL & GUARDIAN, NEWS 24 (South Africa), THE GUARDIAN (UK) REUTERS Worldcrunch PRETORIA – Oscar Pistorius released a statement to a packed courtroom Tuesday denying he murdered his girlfriend, saying he was “desperately trying to protect Reeva” from what he thought was an intruder in his home when he fatally shot her […]
BEELD, MAIL & GUARDIAN (Africa), THE GUARDIAN (UK), REUTERS, NEW YORK TIMES (US) Worldcrunch PRETORIA – A sobbing Oscar Pistorius appeared in court Friday, as the South African double-amputee Olympic runner was formally charged with the murder of his model girlfriend. Appearing in front of the central magistrate’s court this morning, Pistorius broke down in […]
AFP, EYE WITNESS NEWS, NEWS24 (South Africa), REUTERS Worldcrunch PRETORIA– Oscar Pistorius, the South African double amputee who broke barriers for the disabled by competing in the London Olympics, has been charged on suspicion of killing his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his home early Thursday. South African police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Katlego Mogale said: […]
Nawal El Moutawakel was ignored by Morocco when competing in the 1984 Olympics — until gold made her a national hero. Now she’s looking to clear another hurdle or two.
ONS, BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch LONDON – Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported Thursday that the UK economy has emerged from recession, helped by the Olympic Games. In the three months from July to September, the country’s economy returned to growth at its fastest pace in five years, with its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) […]
RIO DE JANEIRO – 10 employees from the Rio 2016 Olympic Committee were fired for stealing confidential information from their counterparts at the London committee during the Games this past summer. This is the first scandal involving the next Olympics, which is still three years and 11 months away. The two committees of the British […]
THE TELEGRAPH, THE GUARDIAN (UK), LA TIMES (US) Worldcrunch An 11-year-old Brazilian boy born without feet has been invited to train at FC Barcelona’s youth academy. After impressing the Spanish football club during a TV appearance on Brazil’s TV Globo, the young whiz kid will travel to the Catalonian capital in September. The Telegraph reports […]
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 […]
The athletic potential of a nation relies on several cultural, social, biological, genetic and environmental factors. These are hard to dissociate and their role only partly explain the current Jamaican hegemony. First let me remind you that dignity, tolerance and respect are the best values and must serve here as guidelines. Exposing the correlations between […]
LE MONDE, FRANCE TV (France) Cuba’s dreams of winning Olympic gold in the pole vault today were left in shatters – after Lázaro Borges’ pole snapped into pieces. The 26-year-old slammed the pole into the ground when attempting to clear a height of 5.35 meters but ended up awkwardly crashing into the mat when the […]
RAI, LA REPUBBLICA (Italy) Worldcrunch It has become an Olympic tradition for an athlete or two or three to test positive for banned substances during or after the Games. Also traditional are the subsequent heartfelt denials, stone-faced defiance and/or mysterious disappearance of said suspected performance-enhanced athlete. This year, however, we have a new response: The […]
The Royal family, the English pound and driving on the left, none of these British characteristics seem to be in synch with the rest of the world. However, the British don’t particularly care what others might think. Their traditions have a special meaning for them. They are the most complicated, most contradictory, and most interesting […]
LAUSANNE – Inevitably, any question on the importance of science in sports brings up the topic of doping. “We tend to focus on the cheaters and not enough on clean athletes,” says Swiss judo champion Sergei Aschwanden, bronze medalist in Beijing. “What message do we want to send to young athletes? That doping is required […]
LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR (France) Worldcrunch Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt won gold in the Men’s 100 meter final in the London 2012 Olympics on Sunday, becoming only the second sprinter to win two consecutive 100m Olympic races. LONDRES 2012 – Usain BOLT double champion… par VideosMediaStudio Bolt shot to fame during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and […]
LE MONDE (France), LA REPUBBLICA (Italy), THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch PARIS – Do you find yourself cheering like mad for an athlete whose name you just heard for the first time? Are you passionately tuning into sports you never knew you cared about? And though the endless ads and omnipresent sponsors can be a drag, […]
LE TEMPS, APS, THE LOCAL, LE MATIN (Switzerland) Worldcrunch BERN – The Swiss Public Welfare Society (SSUP) has launched a contest to change Switzerland’s national lyrics by August 2015, reports Le Temps. According the newspaper, the association finds the existing lyrics too awkward and outdated — so much so that a majority of Swiss don’t […]