Worldcrunch
Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: The Rolling Stones’ “Angie” is turning 40 this year — and we’ve thought about it every time we’ve published an article on German Chancellor Angela Merkel…
Japan’s new island, the Champs-Élysées alight for Christmas, and protests in the Ukraine are among this week’s featured photographs.
Friday, November 14, 2014 G20 IN AUSTRALIA The summit season continues with a meeting of the G20 this weekend in Australia, where Prime Minister Tony Abbott is hoping to postpone climate change talk in favor of focusing on a growth target, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. But his wish will likely be challenged by U.S. […]
Photo: Kris Krüg Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: The hard rock band Motörhead released their 21st album, Aftershock, last October, 36 years after their 1977 debut album, Motörhead, came to give the British rock “n” roll a raging new life. At the […]
Friday, November 7, 2014 OBAMA PENS LETTER TO IRAN’S KHAMENEI U.S. President Barack Obama secretly wrote a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last month, which The Wall Street Journal reports “appeared aimed both at buttressing” the anti-ISIS campaign and “nudging Iran’s religious leader closer to a nuclear deal.” Obama reportedly stressed that the […]
Iraq’s rising death toll, a Nazi art stash recovery and other events of the past seven days are summed up by the numbers… (cover photo: Jorge Franganillo)
As India launched its first spacecraft today in a bid to become the fourth national space agency to reach Mars, we went exploring other space programs around the world. Obviously, there’s the big kahunas — NASA and Roscosmos and the European Space Agency — and some surprisingly smaller national programs. There are also others we […]
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch Pick: On Thursday, the British punk band Buzzcocks played a gig in Paris, as part of the “Europunk” exhibition in the French capital. Although putting the punk movement in a museum may seem paradoxical at the least, it […]
A quick trip around the world in six photographs, from London and Paris to Tokyo and Kabul…
A quick tour around the world of news, by the numbers: from Mad Cow Disease and Brazilian price gouging to U.S. government shutdown costs and a suspect donation by BMW in Germany…
Balloons, Ben Franklin, Banksy share center stage in our photographic wrap of the past seven days…
NOBEL WINNERS: MALALA AND SATYARTHIMalala Yousafzai, the now-17-year-old Pakistani activist shot by the Taliban on her way to school in 2012, has won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize alongside Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, the Nobel committee announced this morning. “Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzai has already fought for several years for the right […]
So-called “click farms” in India, beer in Germany and one very long flight are among the ways the world was quantified this past week. Take the tour of the news in numbers. (photo: David Bleasdale)
ISIS CONTROLS ONE-THIRD OF KOBANIDespite airstrikes targeting ISIS fighters in and around the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, the jihadist group has seized more than one-third of the city, Reuters quotes the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying. While Turkey’s inaction as the battle unfolds on its border has been heavily criticized, Turkish Foreign […]
PARIS – The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose global ranking of schooling levels has become a reliable source of national pride and shame, has now set out to measure how different countries in the developed world stack up in adult skills. (Read this piece by OECD’s Andreas Schleicher, who has spearheaded both […]
Orangutan activists, trespassing veterans and Chinese floods are among this week’s most striking photographs.
ISIS ADVANCES INTO KOBANIISIS fighters advanced into the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani overnight after a three-week siege and amid intense street fighting with the Kurds, and are now occupying southwestern neighborhoods, Reuters reports. Karwan Zebari, a representative of the Kurdish regional government, told the BBC that the town could fall into ISIS hands unless […]
ISIS ASSAULT OF KOBANI CONTINUESISIS fighters are gaining ground in Syria’s Kurdish town of Kobani, on Turkey’s border, forcing a wave of Kurdish civilians to try to cross into Turkey, where the police repeatedly used tear gas to disperse them and the press. Those who managed to cross the border told Guardian journalists stories of […]
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. (photo: Khaled – David Bascunana) Worldcrunch Pick: “Knock, knock. – Who’s there? – The. – The who? – Yes.” Our pick of the week is The Who’s “Quadrophenia.” Oct 19 will mark the 40th anniversary of the British band’s […]
AUSTRALIA APPROVES ANTI-ISIS STRIKESAustralia has become the latest country to join the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS. Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s cabinet approved Iraq strikes against the group, the BBC reports. The Turkish parliament also voted yesterday to send troops to Iraq and Syria, and to allow foreign forces to use its territory for operations. But […]
TURKEY EXPECTED TO JOIN ANTI-ISIS COALITIONToday could see the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition expand, as the Turkish Parliament is expected to vote on whether to send Turkish troops into Iraq and Syria to fight against the terrorists and whether to allow foreign troops to use Turkish military bases, newspaper Today’s Zaman reports. Turkish President Recep Tayyip […]
A quick tour of the week’s news (and otherwise) from an old blood sport in Spain to a rising island in Pakistan and 15 hands that went up in New York City. And more…
KURDS LAUNCH ISIS OFFENSIVEKurdish Peshmerga fighters are attacking ISIS on three fronts in northern Iraq and are gaining territory on the border with Syria, AFP quotes senior Kurdish officers as saying. Meanwhile, Turkey has sent 35 armored vehicles, including a dozen tanks, to the border with Syria, where fights around the Syrian Kurdish town of […]
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldrunch’s pick of the week is the British pop band Pulp. Its frontman Jarvis Cocker turned 50 this month, so we thought we’d celebrate his birthday by listening to Pulp’s legendary single “Common People”, which was released in May […]
WILL UK JOIN ANTI-ISIS COALITION?All eyes will be on Westminster today, where the House of Commons will vote on what the British media are calling the “third Iraq war.” Members are expected to support the the anti-ISIS coalition with strikes in Iraq, though Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said these might be extended to Syria in […]
ISIS-CONTROLLED OIL REFINERIES TARGETEDThe U.S. Air Force and those of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have continued to hit ISIS targets in northern Syria, including 12 oil refineries captured by the jihadist group believed to generate up to $2 million per day in revenues, the BBC reports. Fourteen terrorist fighters and five civilians […]
Taking a measure of things lately, we can count a rejuvenated moon, Italian cell phone drivers, Chinese billionaires and more… (photo: dahlstroms)
Kenyan mall standoff, underwater concert, and a vigil in Pakistan are among this week’s featured photographs.
Animals are adorable. Usually. In a recent competition on YouTube, the blobfish was voted the ugliest animal in the world and is now the face of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society. But is it truly the least fairest of them all? We took a look and found some creatures that only a mother that ugly […]
Here are some of the songs topping the charts from music hot spots around the world. Worldcrunch’s pick of the week is a live performance of Nirvana playing “Scentless Apprentice,” which features on the band’s third and final studio album, In Utero. The footage, originally recorded in 1993, is being released amongst other never-before-seen performances […]
LONDON – Double-parked cars causing a traffic jam, mothers in a rush, a supervisor watching the gate: the usual end of a school day in South London. Except that the school is Iqra VA, a Muslim primary, and all the mothers are wearing the veil. Five of them even wear a niqab, the full veil […]
SCOTLAND SAYS “NO” TO INDEPENDENCEScotland voted to stay in the United Kingdom with 55.3% of voters rejecting independence. The results from all 32 council areas show the “No” side won with 2,001,926 votes to the 1,617,989 “Yes” votes. The independence campaign did score four big successes, though, winning 53% in the largest city of Glasgow, […]
SCOTLAND’S MOMENT OF TRUTHThe time has come for Scottish voters to decide whether they want to live in an independent Scotland or remain part of the United Kingdom. Polling stations will be open until 10 p.m. local time ,and the results are expected by tomorrow morning, though the counting could take longer than usual, as […]
This past week has seen a philosophy-related shooting, a Justin Bieber impostor, and more.
While You Slept Wednesday, September 17, 2014 LAST DAY OF CAMPAIGNING IN SCOTLAND Pro-independence and pro-union militants are campaigning for the last day in Scotland, with the latest polls ahead of tomorrow’s referendum giving the “No” to independence a slight lead, although more than 8% are still undecided, according to The Daily Mail. Newspapers across […]
What are the best ways to make our schools — and students — smarter? We don’t have the answer here. But it’s sure to include a healthy dose of looking beyond your own backyard for good ideas that may be working elsewhere. Good teachers and adequate funding are no doubt central. So too is equipping […]
U.S. STEPS UP ANTI-ISIS STRIKESWashington opened a new phase in its anti-ISIS campaign by launching airstrikes near Baghdad to help the Iraqi government regain territories it lost to the terrorist group, The New York Times reports. The newspaper also reported that ISIS is recruiting heavily in the poor neighborhoods of Turkey’s capital Ankara, from which […]