Worldcrunch
NEW YORK — I am one of those privileged people who live in New York and have the chance to escape from the city on occasion. No matter how many loops a person bikes around Central Park, riding across the George Washington Bridge, and biking along the Hudson River, it’s not until you get out […]
The U.S.-based Seasteading Institute is pursuing the notion of “startup governments” and the opportunity for like-minded people to live in shared offshore communities. Could man-made island colonies be our future?
Wednesday’s killing of TV station WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward by fired station employee Vester Flanagan, left Virginia in a “state of shock,” as described by local daily The Roanoke Times Thursday, alongside a picture of a community vigil for the slain journalists. The live, on-camera shooting, together with its immediate diffusion […]
Remember Gattaca? The superb film describes the contrasting fates of two brothers, one of whom was genetically optimized at birth. A few years later, in another movie, The Island, a community of prisoners discovers one day they are nothing but clones of super-privileged people and that their sole purpose is to provide fresh organs as […]
BOGOTA — Spanglish: Is it a dialect? Ghetto talk? Whatever else it may be, Spanglish is now the brazen, no-nonsense fruit of two languages and cultures coexisting in the United States. It may sound a little crazy at times. For example, walking in a Latino area of New York one day, I saw a notice […]
CHINA DEVALUES YUAN AGAIN China’s central bank stunned global markets by cutting the yuan’s value against the dollar for a second day in a row, this time by 1.6% after deciding on a 1.9% devaluation Tuesday. It’s yet more evidence that the country’s economy may be in a worse state than the government claims. As […]
GOOGLE ANNOUNCES MAJOR SHAKEUP Google, arguably the most recognizable company in the world, has announced a surprising rebranding in which all of its business entities will exist under a new parent company called Alphabet. As part of the restructuring, Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai will become CEO of Google, and company founder Larry Page […]
St. Louis-Post Dispatch, Aug. 9, 2015 “A Painful Year,” the headline in Sunday’s front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reads, above a photo of Michael Brown Sr. pausing after a five-mile march from his son’s memorial in Ferguson, Mo. The otherwise peaceful protest march to commemorate Sunday’s one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death at […]
The Republican party’s top White House hopefuls gather tonight in Cleveland, Ohio for the first debate ahead of this year’s primaries. Real estate tycoon Donald Trump, who has made racist remarks about Mexicans and insulted former Republican nominee John McCain, is dominating the media circus — and leading in the polls, ahead of former Florida […]
OBAMA TO UNVEIL CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION PLAN U.S. President Barack Obama is set to unveil what he described as “the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken” to tackle climate change. The revised Clean Power Plan aims at cutting greenhouse gas emissions by almost one-third over the next 15 years and represents “the administration’s boldest […]
Photo: Amazon/ZUMA MAN DIES AS MIGRANTS STORM CHUNNEL A Sudanese man died overnight in the French city of Calais after some 1,500 migrants tried to storm the Channel Tunnel, or Chunnel, to reach the UK, Le Monde reports. French police believe he may have been crushed by a truck exiting one of the shuttles that […]
It gives new meaning to the concept “community policing.” The explosion of smartphones is allowing people to fight crime from their pocket, wherever they may be. We take a look at five crime-fighting apps from around the world: ITALY: STANDING UP TO THE MAFIA Addiopizzo, a citizen’s organization founded a decade ago on the Italian […]
New York Magazine, July 26, 2015 “Cosby: The Women, An Unwelcome Sisterhood,” the cover of New York Magazine‘s latest issue reads. In a striking black-and-white cover image, 35 women who say they were raped by comedian Bill Cosby are photographed together. The dates of their respective attacks are written below each woman. Among the alleged […]
WAIMEA — Everyday, Klayton Kubo, 49, does the same pilgrimage across his village of Waimea, on Kauai, an island in the Hawaiian archipelago. He takes the road along the river, parks his pickup on the roadside and climbs up the hill overlooking the agrochemicals factory. He stands there and observes. On the other side of […]
Photo: T. Pyle/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA/ZUMA TURKEY TARGETS ISIS IN SYRIA In a major escalation in the fight against ISIS, Turkey returned fire early today for the first time, sending F-16 fighter jets to bomb ISIS positions across the border with Syria, killing at least 35 ISIS militants. The retaliation comes after yesterday’s clashes near the […]
“The Earth has a cousin!” writes Canadian daily newspaper La Presse on the front-page headline of its Friday edition after NASA announced the discovery of Kepler-425b, one of the most Earth-like exoplanets identified so far. The planet was named after Kepler, the space telescope whose data enabled the discovery. Described as “Earth’s bigger, older cousin” […]
SEOUL — Young Chun is hardly the only U.S. citizen working as an English language teacher in South Korea. But he may the only one who landed the job after being forcibly recruited by the South Korean armed forces — and then shipped off to Afghanistan. Chun, 36, was born in the United States and grew up in Seattle, Washington. As one of the only Asian-Americans in his school, he remembers being bullied and discriminated against. “When I was in the States, I thought if I go to Korea, I’ll fit in,” he recalls. “But once I got to Korea, […]
“Nightmare For Our City” reads Friday’s front page of the Chattanooga Times Free Press from the Tennessee city of 173,000 after Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez, a 24-year-old man, killed four Marines and wounded two other people in a shooting at a military recruitment center and a reserve center. Abdulazeez was killed in a shootout with local […]
Photo: Arapahoe Co. Sheriff’s Department/ZUMAPRESS GREEK BAILOUT: NEW FUNDING, GERMAN ANGST The European Central Bank (ECB) is set to increase its aid to Greek banks by 900 million euros for a week, after the Greek parliament approved a new bailout program. MOTIVE UNCLEAR FOR KILLER OF 4 MARINES FBI officials said the motive of the […]
HISTORIC DEAL INKED ON IRAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM After years of on-again, off-again negotiations, Iran and six world powers agreed Tuesday to a deal to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for an end to crippling economic sanctions. Together with five negotiating partners, Russia, China, France, UK and Germany, American diplomats had demanded a framework […]
Le petit-fils (grandson) is back from his vacation through seven states in the southeastern United States. He tells me that the horse head hitching posts I saw in New Orleans 23 years ago are still there — though they’re not used by the innumerable carriage tours that have now invaded the city’s French Quarter.
From Facebook to Google, Baidu to VKontakte, the world’s biggest technology companies talk about their singular dedication to their users. Yet the road to becoming a global tech titan is inevitably lined with hard choices and conflicts of interest. Here are five prominent controversies where companies are accused of ceding to questionable demands of the […]
Since ascending to the papacy two years ago, Pope Francis has been quietly and not-so-quietly leaving his mark on the world, pursuing a number of ambitious foreign policy goals. His nine-day trip to Latin America that begins Sunday will be mostly focused on pastoral issues. But from Cuba to Vietnam, the Middle East and environmental […]
Photo: Li Muzi/Zuma EUROZONE RULES OUT TALKS BEFORE GREEK VOTE Finance Ministers of the Eurozone have ruled out any negotiations over a third Greek bailout before Sunday’s referendum, but divisions are starting to show between Germany and France, Le Monde reports. French President François Hollande said yesterday that an agreement had to be found “now, […]
MIAMI — Luis Flores has been on a roll of late, handling real estate deal after real estate deal and helping close, in the past 18 months, on no less than $1 billion worth of property. As the lawyer’s hot streak suggests, property investment has made a serious comeback in Miami, which is attracting capital […]
Six months after the revelation that computer hackers had targeted Sony, leading to the release of a range of confidential information, Fortune has published an extensive investigative piece about the failure that led to the massive breach of security. Read the first installment of the three-part series HERE. After the November revelations — which included […]
Too many nations and peoples with too many grievances. A wealth divide that grows deeper. A new (new) world order is needed, with the U.S. and China firmly in charge.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank that China is leading will launch with 57 founding members, but Japan isn’t among them. Its dependency on the U.S. is a symptom of its outdated thinking, and will leave it badly isolated.
Libération, June 24, 2015 French newspaper Libération and investigative website Mediapart released documents obtained by Wikileaks showing that the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) has spied on French presidents Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac and François Hollande. According to the documents first published by WikiLeaks late on Tuesday, and shared with the two French news […]
EU EXTENDS UKRAINE SANCTIONS European foreign ministers agreed yesterday to extend EU sanctions against Russia until the end of January 2016 “to complete implementation” of the shaky Minsk ceasefire agreements, EU Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic wrote on Twitter. The decision came as French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met President Vladimir […]
NEW ORLEANS — There are still gaping holes left by houses that disappeared forever. There are also the brownish lines, sad reminders of just how high the water level reached on Aug. 29, 2005. And yet 10 years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the song rising from New Orleans is not a melancholy one. […]
A chronicle of one organization’s determination to point Syrian refugees toward a better future through innovative education.
KERRY: QUASI COLD WAR U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was “concerned” and warned of a return “to a kind of Cold War status” after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the addition of more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to Russia’s nuclear arsenal. These new missiles will be “capable of overcoming any, […]
¡El Candidato! Jeb Bush Running For President, World Reaction by Worldcrunch
Italian PM Matteo Renzi has obtained Washington’s blessing to pursue its own dialogue with the Kremlin. Could Rome be the bridge to resolving the Ukraine crisis?
GREXIT BECOMES MORE LIKELY Greece is edging closer to default and a potential Eurozone exit after talks with international creditors broke down once again late yesterday, The Guardian reports. Tensions with Berlin appear to be ratcheting up after the parliamentary leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party said, “Greece needs to get back to reality.” […]
A persistent drought is threatening California’s storied vineyards, which employ hundreds of thousands in the Golden State alone. But there is still water, for now.
Au Revoir Dick Costolo, A Twitter World Trip by Worldcrunch
Cuban gays and lesbians once hid from police. But today, with help from the president’s daughter, Mariela Castro, LGBTs in Cuba are fighting for their rights.
It is politically reasonable for President Obama to want to focus on problems at home. But his fainthearted foreign policy approach has contributed to global volatility.