Worldcrunch
-Analysis- BEIJING — There is a popular Chinese television series called “Tiger Mom: My Sweat, Your Success” that has prompted no shortage of debate in China. Indeed, discussion has even extended to Chinese people living in America, where the concept of Tiger Moms made waves after the publication of a book in by a hard-driving […]
Twenty-eight years ago, my wife and I entered the future: Not only did we travel by plane for the first time, but we got to visit Spaceship Earth, in Disney World“s EPCOT Center. The time machine-themed narration played during the ride, penned by science fiction author Ray Bradbury, was narrated by the news broadcaster Walter […]
At least four people have been killed in Texas over the past three days as the state has been hit by a series of storms. The Houston Chronicle described Wednesday what it called a region “on weather steroids.” In Mexico, at least 13 people were also killed as a tornado struck the border town of […]
ISIS KILLS CIVILIANS IN PALMYRA ISIS has killed about 400 civilians in Palmyra since overtaking the Syrian city last Wednesday, Syrian state TV reports. Activists also say that as many as 300 Syrian soldiers and people loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have been hunted down and killed, Al Jazeera reports. $7 BILLION Today marks the […]
In the first half of the 20th century, French cabaret singer Maurice Chevalier was a huge star in the United States, eventually earning the right to put his footprints and handprints in the concrete blocks on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame. A fluent English speaker — unlike me, unfortunately — he always put on […]
-OpEd SANTIAGO — Over the past half-century, two fundamental social changes have taken place in the United States around the issue of race. One was the end of segregation laws that explicitly discriminated against African-Americans, and the other was the decline in racial prejudices. Polls show that such racist sentiments among individuals persist today in […]
MALAYSIA AND INDONESIA TO RESCUE MIGRANTS Malaysia and Indonesia have pledged to provide temporary shelter to the estimated 7,000 migrants believed to be stranded at sea, a move that AP characterizes as “a potential breakthrough in the humanitarian crisis confronting Southeast Asia.” Most of the migrants are members of the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority in […]
USA Today, May 20, 2015 USA Today dedicated most of its front page to David Letterman and the last episode of his Late Show slated for Wednesday night. Having hosted talk shows on NBC and CBS for more than 30 years, the affably sarcastic Indiana native has decided to retire. To honor Letterman, USA Today […]
PALO ALTO — Tucked away on Waverley Street in Palo Alto, California, the house where Steve Jobs used to live is an inconspicuous brick Tudor with rambling roses climbing all over. As one of the residential areas favored by Silicon Valley software engineers, a big house here usually costs well above $10 million. Over the […]
Dave International: 8 “Lettermans’ From Around… par Worldcrunch
25,500 FLEE ISIS-OCCUPIED RAMADI At least 25,000 people have fled Ramadi, Iraq, after ISIS fighters captured it from government forces after fierce clashes Sunday that killed at least 500 people, the UN reports. EXTRA! “I won’t be Charlie Hebdo anymore, but I will still be Charlie,” the cover headline in today’s Libération reads, quoting Charlie […]
MIGRANT CRISIS WORSENS IN SE ASIA “Out at sea with nowhere to go,” reads today’s front-page headline in Malaysian daily The Star, alongside a photo of Rohingya migrants, a persecuted minority, waiting on a boat adrift off the coast of Thailand. According to the UN, about 6,000 refugees fleeing Myanmar (also known as Burma) and […]
RESCUE OPS RESUME AFTER SECOND NEPAL QUAKE EPISODE Rescue teams have resumed their quest to find survivors in devastated Nepal, after yesterday’s 7.3-magnitude earthquake. It came less than three weeks after an even more violent one that destroyed part of the impoverished country and killed more than 8,000 people, AFP reports. Reports say at least […]
THE UK VOTES Britons are voting today in what The Guardian describes as the United Kingdom’s most unpredictable general elections in decades, as Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party and opponent Ed Miliband’s Labour Party remained even in the latest opinion polls, which has been the case for months. Neither party is expected to win […]
The American beverage giant has tried to pursue customers interested in healthier and more traditional beverages. But can they sell tea to the Chinese?
NEW YORK — Four different credit and bank cards, an International press card, a health insurance card and a gym membership card, a monthly MetroCard for the New York subway, a couple of prepaid international phone cards — probably expired — and $32 in cash. In the inside pocket, my Italian driver’s license and a […]
It is time to start asking harder questions about the world’s largest company, both how it runs its business and how it conditions our lives.
BAGUIO — In South Korea, learning English is a national obsession. Families pay billions of dollars a year on extra curricular education so their children can enroll in top universities and later land high-paying jobs that require good English skills. But it’s not always affordable at home, which is why the Philippines, where English is one of the two official languages, has become one of Korea’s top destinations for overseas language education. Like almost every other South Korean high school student, 17-year-old Kang Tae-won spends every weekday evening at a private academy learning English. He believes his future depends on […]
In countries that once invested in free public university systems, higher education is increasingly becoming an investment option turned over to the private sector. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
NEPAL DEATH TOLL COULD REACH 10,000 As the Nepalese continue digging through rubble in search for survivors four days after its deadliest earthquake in decades, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala said today that the death toll could reach 10,000, Reuters reports. Confirmed figures this morning put the number at 4,349 people killed and more than 7,000 […]
“RIOTS ERUPT” Tuesday’s front page of The Baltimore Sun reads, above images of clashes and burning cars as the city descended into chaos Monday after two weeks of tensions over the alleged police killing of Freddie Gray. Violence started erupting just hours after the funeral for Gray, the 25-year-old Baltimore man who died April 19 […]
Though a shadow of its former self, the Ku Klux Klan has registered a small uptick since Barack Obama’s election and the Ferguson riots. Here’s how it looks from one senior member who lives in a Tennessee trailer.
The Eagle Mesa, the Sitting Hen, the Totem Pole, the Mittens … The sandstone buttes of Monument Valley lend themselves very well to man’s imagination. This here formation is called the Three Sisters, as it is supposed to resemble a Catholic nun facing her two pupils. To me it looks more like a gigantic “W” […]
REYKJAVIK — “Welcome to the Bloody Gate …” The solemn announcement is made by Asthor Agustsson, a local tour guide who could easily pass for a Viking warrior. The ten tourists with Agustsson appear awestruck, walking along a path that traverses two abrupt cliffs, covered in snow, with a large frozen lake in the distance. […]
TIME Magazine revealed, as it does every year, its list of the 100 most influential people in the world, with five different covers. Kanye West was chosen as head of the “Titans,” in the same category as his wife, Kim Kardashian. Representing the “Pioneers” is African-American ballet dancer Misty Copeland, accompanied by actresses Emma Watson […]
SUNKEN S. KOREAN FERRY TO BE RAISED South Korean President Park Geun-hye has promised to raise the sunken ferry Sewol to recover the nine bodies still missing, as the country commemorates the disaster’s one-year anniversary, Yonhap news agency reports. A total of 304 people, most of them high school students, died when the ship sank […]
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 (watch below) on her campaign website, the former […]
U.S. AND CUBA MAKE HISTORY IN PANAMA U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez met last night in Panama City in what represented the highest-level meeting between the two countries in more than 50 years. The meeting preceded the Summit of the Americas, which begins there today. A U.S. State […]
The Obama administration says, try talking to truculent states instead of squeezing or bombing them. In its own way, this is an eminently imperial approach.
An entire industry has been built to exploit Chinese couples desperate desire for their children to obtain U.S. or Canadian passports. But because the process requires both operators and clients to distort the truth, homeland security has launched a crack
U.S. BOOSTS WEAPON DELIVERY TO SAUDI-LED COALITION The U.S. is speeding up its weapon deliveries and intelligence sharing with the Saudi-led coalition against Houthi rebels in Yemen, as the toll in the latest Middle East war begins to mount. Al Arabiya reported on U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s press conference in the Saudi […]
The New York Times, April 8, 2015 A white South Carolina police officer has been charged with murder after shooting dead an apparently unarmed black man who was running away from him. The incident happened after a routine traffic stop Saturday in North Charleston and was filmed by a witness. The video, published by The […]
PARIS — First there was the campus. Next up Facebook city. The size of the “Zee town” project Mark Zuckerberg announced in February surprised many: For an estimated $200 billion, the king of social networks plans to build what will essentialy be an entire town — a 200-acre development in California’s Silicon Valley featuring supermarkets, […]
A HUMANITARIAN DISASTER IN YEMEN The fighting in Yemen is creating a humanitarian disaster, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said yesterday. Hundreds of people have been killed in ongoing clashes between Yemeni militias backed by a Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels, Reuters reports. ON THIS DAY An eruption of Mount Vesuvius devastated Naples 109 […]
French writer François-René de Chateaubriand“s journey to North America had generations yearning for the romantic scenery he described: “Now and then, in the distance, you could hear the solemn rumble of the Niagara cataract, which, in the quiet of the night, echoed in the desert wilderness and died out through the lonely forests.” Unfortunately, visitors […]
The hard-packed sand at Daytona Beach makes it easy for cars to ride on the beach — something of a Florida tradition that started long ago, with horses and buggies. I had just the perfect view from my hotel room of some of the modern riders, who now have to pay for the shoreline cruise.
As the video below puts it perfectly, “Jackson 5 and Bach were funky way before Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk”,” we’d say even funkier, by far.
In New Orleans, we were granted access to a warehouse where they keep the papier-mâché heads of the famous figures destined for the Mardi Gras floats. Granted, Reagan is pretty well done. We were stumped on the one in the middle; as for the one on the right, if we had been in France, I […]
Our Song du Jour is these goats giving it all they’ve got to Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer.”