Worldcrunch
DENVER – Political experts keep telling us there are no undecided voters this time around. Such received wisdom is reason alone to go look for them. With less than a month left before the U.S. presidential election, statistically there must be at least a handful of undecided voters inside the walls of Cherry Creek, an […]
CNN, WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE DAILY CALLER (US) Worldcrunch Joe Biden and Paul Ryan battled through a tough vice presidential debate Thursday, with commentators largely suggesting that the result was a draw. Immediate polls showed that voters were split on who won the debate with CNN putting Ryan at 48% and Biden on 44%. CNBC […]
Worldcrunch One-third of the world population now has access to the Internet, according to the U.N.’s telecommunications agency. The International Telecommunications Union released its annual report, Measuring the Information Society, on Thursday. The agency’s top-ranked country for information and telecommunication technology was South Korea, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland. There are seven billion […]
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS, REUTERS Worldcrunch Researchers from France and the United States have discovered a planet twice the size of the Earth, but far denser, which appears to be one-third constituted of diamond, Reuters reported Thursday. Yale researcher Nikku Madhusudhan and Olivier Mousis of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie in Toulouse, France, […]
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, WASHINGTON POST, CNN, SALON (USA) Worldcrunch The U.S. unemployment rate fell below 8% for the first time in nearly four years, according to the September jobs report released on Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate decreased to 7.8% in September, while total non-farm employment rose by […]
RUSSIA TODAY (Russia), BLOOMBERG, REUTERS, FOREIGN POLICY (USA), GLOBALWEBINDEX, TECH WEEK EUROPE (U.K.), IRISH TIMES (Ireland), DER SPIEGEL (Germany), MAIL AND GUARDIAN (South Africa) Worldcrunch PARIS – Facebook reached one billion users today. Now that one out of seven people on earth log on, the ubiquitous site has changed habits and affected lives worldwide. Here’s […]
CNN, CBS, NEW YORK TIMES (US) Worldcrunch Instant reaction polls, conducted late Wednesday night, showed Republican candidate Mitt Romney won the first presidential debate in Denver, in a performance expected to raise GOP hopes just one month before the election. According to a CNN/ORC poll of 430 people who watched the debate, 67% of registered […]
NEW YORK POST (U.S.), BFM (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch As the rhetorical rollercoaster that is the UN General Assembly draws to a close Friday, amidst some of those heartfelt, or sometimes excruciatingly awkward, moments, we have picked our 2012 All-Star Team of top performers. Mahmoud AhmadinejadBy now, we shouldn’t be surprised by the Iranian President’s blatant […]
CNN, LA TIMES, ABC NEWS, NY TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – The filmmaker behind the anti-Islamic video that has sparked violence across the globe was arrested on suspicion of violating the terms of his probation, including allegedly lying about his role in the film’s production, reports the Los Angeles Times. Federal Judge Suzanne H. […]
NFL.COM, AP, REUTERS (USA) Worldcrunch After two days of marathon negotiations, the National Football League (NFL) has reached an agreement to end a labor dispute with its regular game referees, ending three weeks of questionable calls that had threatened the integrity of the sport, Reuters reports. Welcome back regular refs; it’s been too long: yhoo.it/PqxvF7 […]
LE SOLEIL (Canada), POPULAR MECHANICS, SMITHSONIAN (USA), GUARDIAN (UK) Sure, fewer party balloons and squeaky-voice clown pranks would be a shame. But recent reports of a worldwide shortage of helium could also create supply problems in the production of some of the most advanced technologies, reports Quebec news site Le Soleil. Reserves of helium, a […]
ASTANA – Earlier this month, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev rolled out his new project for cooperation between the East and West — and it lacked neither ambition nor a healthy supply of alphabet-soup acronyms . A person close to President Nazarbayev’s administration said this was the most audacious of Kazakhstan’s recent foreign policy projects, unveiled […]
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, LA DAILY NEWS, LA TIMES, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (USA), LE MONDE (France), TWITTER Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – Quality television “is the only American product the Chinese haven’t figured out how to make,” joked host Jimmy Kimmel, presiding over the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday. The list of nominees may have been impressive, writes […]
MOSCOW – U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland has announced that Washington would close the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) offices in Russia. Nuland said that it was the Russian government forcing the closure, a charge the Kremlin denies. “Like all foreign agencies that provide financing to Russian NGOs, USAID needs to follow […]
NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, MOTHER JONES (US), FINANCIAL TIMES (UK) Mitt Romney’s campaign team hastily scrambled together a press conference late Monday night to respond to a leaked video, in which the Republican candidate labels 47% of Americans as “people who pay no income tax” and are “dependent upon government.” Romney said he stands […]
-Analysis- SANTIAGO – If Mitt Romney’s Mexican father had been deported or had not been able to enter the United States in July 1912, the Republican candidate would not have been born in Detroit in March 1947, Bain Capital would not have existed and, most probably, the citizens of the state of Massachusetts would not […]
EL PAIS (Spain), ITWIRE, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), THE GUARDIAN (UK), M.I.C. GADGET (HONG KONG), LIBERATION (France), MASHABLE (U.S.) Worldcrunch Apple has lost its magic, writes El Pais on Thursday. The Spanish daily asks what happened to the sparkle, where are the surprises with the release of the latest iPhone model? The much anticipated presentation […]
DER SPIEGEL (Germany), LE FIGARO (France), THE GUARDIAN (UK), POLITICO (US) Worldcrunch According to new international polling data, the majority of Europeans would like to see Barack Obama voted in for a second term. Meanwhile, his Republican opponent Mitt Romney is still a virtual unknown across the pond. Der Spiegel reported Wednesday that according to […]
-Analysis- MOSCOW – The Russia Arctic Coast is one of the dirtiest places on earth. According to the most conservative estimates, the shores of the Arctic Ocean are littered with 4 million tons of industrial and construction waste, part of which is toxic. More than 20,000 pieces of electronics are strewn across the Russian Arctic […]
A French reporter travels to the heart of the most pivotal swing state in the Obama v. Romney showdown where economic uncertainty is the only sure thing.
NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch NEW YORK – Eleven years after 9/11, a writer with unprecedented access to pertinent classified documents says the Bush Administration ignored multiple “direct warnings” that Al Qaeda was planning to strike on American soil leading up to the Sep. 11, 2001 attack. In a piece published in the Op-Ed pages […]
THE GUARDIAN (UK), LE FIGARO (France), WALL ST. JOURNAL (U.S.) Worldcrunch The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has risen to the top spot of the annual QS University World Rankings. Last year’s top two universities, Cambridge and Harvard, both lost out to the science and technology university, being bumped down to second and third place […]
LE MONDE (France), THENEXTWEB (USA) Worldcrunch A group called AntiSec, linked to international hacker movement Anonymous, claims that it has broken into an FBI computer to obtain the User IDs of 12 million Apple iPad and iPhone owners, which include private user data. Apple has declared that it has nothing to do with any collection […]
For months, free smartphone instant messaging service WhatsApp has been topping the download charts. It is a favorite application for both iPhone and Android users. To the annoyance of cell phone providers, WhatsApp has become a kind of quasi replacement for the old fee-based SMS. According to WhatsApp developers, their servers handle over 10 billion […]
NEW YORK TIMES, TWITTER Worldcrunch US President Barack Obama took to the stage Thursday to officially accept the Democratic nomination for a second term in office. Delivering his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte, North Carolina, his promise to America was a far cry from the exuberant speeches along the 2008 […]
CHARLOTTE – No, Obamania is not a thing of the past, quite the opposite in fact. Michelle and Barack hugging, Barack with his dog Bo, the complete family portrait… all plastered on t-shirts, books, photos, pajamas, pins, badges, mugs, cushions and posters. “Business is picking up fast,” says Delia, who has sold more than 400 […]
BEIJING – Conduct a survey anywhere in the world and ask respondents to describe the United States with one word, many will surely choose the word “arrogant.” In their view, this superpower has become synonymous with conceit and a bald sense of superiority. In Lord Acton’s famous words: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Typically, such people […]
PALO ALTO – Daphne Koller has a grudge against school. As a child, Israeli-born Koller wanted to solve third degree equations and learn more about dancing, Ancient Greece and poetry. But like any other pupil, she had to follow the curriculum and adapt to the system. Her thirst for learning faced the limits of mainstream […]
FUERA DE SERIE (Spain), LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch Spanish magazine Fuera de Serie has sparked controversy by depicting the U.S. first lady as a topless slave on its new cover. The cover features Michelle Obama’s face pasted over a famous 19th century French painting showing a slave with one breast exposed. The image was designed […]
USA TODAY, CNN, NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch NEW ORLEANS – Hurricane Isaac made a second landfall in Louisiana early Wednesday with strong winds and torrential rains, providing the first real test of flood control systems and emergency services in New Orleans on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The storm first hit Port Fouchon […]
CNN, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER (US), REUTERS Worldcrunch Residents in New Orleans are rushing to complete last-minute preparations, bracing themselves for Tropical Storm Isaac, which will begin to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast late Tuesday, as forecasters set to upgrade it to Hurricane status. The Tropical Storm is gaining strength, poised to become a “robust” hurricane […]
CNN, NEW YORK TIMES (US) REUTERS Tropical storm Isaac raged into the Gulf of Mexico Monday, threatening to become a hurricane and make landfall in Louisiana, almost seven years to the day after Hurricane Katrina decimated southeastern American cities and towns. Governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have declared states of emergency, with Alabama Governor […]
Worldcrunch PARIS – Neil Armstrong has died at the age of 82. The American astronaut was not only the pride of the U.S. space program, he was the first earthling to touch the planet’s only moon. As such, the whole world — or at least its major press outlets — reacted largely in unison to […]
SLATE.FR, LE FIGARO (France), ASSOCIATED PRESS (U.S.) Worldcrunch The cycling world was awash with speculation on Friday that American cyclist Lance Armstrong could be stripped of his seven consecutive Tour de France titles, after announcing he was giving up the fight against doping charges from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Le Figaro reports that only […]
CNN, WASHINGTON POST, USA TODAY (USA), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch Photo: Diana Nyad MIAMI – US Swimmer Diana Nyad ended her bid to cross from Cuba to Florida after suffering severe jellyfish stings, reports CNN. The endurance swimmer, who will turn 63 on Wednesday, was pulled from the water early Tuesday morning, reports CNN. A […]
NEW YORK TIMES, LOS ANGELES TIMES, VARIETY, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (USA) Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – Tony Scott, the British-born director of high-octane blockbusters like Top Gun and Days of Thunder, jumped to his death from a Los Angeles bridge on Sunday. He was 68, reports the New York Times. NOOOOOOO!!! #TonyScott Why??? Thanks for doing a […]
Over 150 years ago the Gold Rush began in California. It made some people very rich, but most people who were a part of it were only enriched by the experience. Today, the state is making people dream again – but this time it’s silicon, not gold, that’s making them see big. The half-metal is […]
ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS, NASA (USA) Worldcrunch PASADENA – The NASA Curiosity robotic exploration vehicle successfully landed on Mars early on Monday morning at 5:30 a.m. GMT, a historic event that prompted relief and excitement within the scientific community. The Curiosity rover will spend the next two years looking for traces of life on the red […]
MASHABLE (USA), BBC NEWS, DAILY MAIL (UK) Worldcrunch The number of fake accounts on Facebook is roughly the size of Egypt’s population and larger than most of the world’s countries, reports Mashable: 83.09 million. The astonishing figure makes up 8.7% of all Facebook’s 995 million active viewers, says the Daily Mail. According to the London […]
SALON, QUORA, KQ 103, CBS CLEVELAND (USA), HERALD SUN (Australia) Worldcrunch On Monday, writes Salon, Missy Franklin competed in two Olympic races in 15 minutes. She barely had time to get from one pool to the next, let alone make a pit stop along the way. Which made the website wonder: Since toilet trips can […]