Worldcrunch
-Analysis- BOGOTÁ — A majority of gay and lesbian students in Colombia feel unsafe in school and almost a quarter of them miss classes because they fear getting bullied, a survey by two non-profits found. Sixty-seven percent of LGBT secondary schoolchildren feel unsafe at school, according to the poll by advocacy groups Colombia Diversa and […]
The black-on-pink drawing of a wide-eyed girl covering half her face with an open hand seems, at first glance, to be too cute, too pretty to convey the horror implanted in so many people’s minds by the ghastly gang-rape and murder of an Argentine teenager. And yet in recent days, the stylish image and the […]
New signs from Poland that racism and xenophobia are on the rise. A Polish lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Jerzy Kochanowski, was beat up on a tram in Warsaw for speaking German to a professor from another university, Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reports. An inebriated man near Kochanowski reportedly told him not to speak […]
Decades of war between FARC guerrillas and the government seem to have made aggression a widespread social trait in Colombia that’s reflected in cases of domestic violence, bullying at school and a tendency to talk tough. The peace deal could help
MANILA — Heavy clouds in the sky over Manila, soon it will start to rain. Jennilyn Olayres must hurry up if she wants to whisper a few more words to her fiancé. How she’s feeling, what she has been up to all day long. And that she’s really mad at him. What a bastard for […]
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — Turkey’s government and the media that support it have an odd attitude when it comes to violent acts carried out by ISIS: It’s as if the “cultural/ideological dialects” of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government somehow malfunction. For starters, the government has a hard time condemning the vicious massacres carried […]
A sad bit of irony to the deadly assault on police Thursday night is that the Dallas police department had made great strides in reducing cases of excessive use of force.
Violent death is a regular ocurrence in Rio’s infamous slums. But that doesn’t make it any less excruciating for the families of the departed.
Chased from their homes and communities, many transgender women in Colombia seek refuge in a four-block area in Santa Fe, in downtown Bogotá.
SPOTLIGHT: GOOD AND BAD NEWS FOR THE PLANET Breathe in … Last year, an estimated 147 gigawatts was added to the world’s renewable power capacity — the largest such global rise ever recorded, making it an “extraordinary” year for renewable energies. According to the Renewables 2016 Global Status Report, investment in green energies around the […]
Amid more and more incidents of bullying in China, schools and the legal system appear to be doing very little to stop it.
CAIRO — International Women’s Day is celebrated around the world on March 8. Egypt celebrates Egyptian Women’s Day on March 16, and March 9 marks the infamous day when members of the Armed Forces performed virginity tests on female protestors detained in Tahrir Square in 2011 — a crime no one has been held accountable […]
La Prensa, Feb. 12, 2016 “Welcome!” reads Friday’s front page of Mexico City-based daily La Prensa, greeting Pope Francis as he’s set for an afternoon arrival in Mexico for his first visit as pontiff. Ahead of his five-day trip, which includes a visit to a prison in the crime-riddled city of Ciudad Juarez, the Pope […]
NORTH KOREA CLAIMS FIRST H-BOMB TEST Photo: Yonhap News/ImageCollect/Newscom/ZUMA North Korea claimed Wednesday it had successfully conducted its first hydrogen-bomb test, with the regime’s official television network hailing the move as “a world-startling event to be specially recorded in the national history.” VERBATIM “We know we can’t stop every act of violence, every act of […]
In Brazil, where you’re born not only affects how you live, but can also have an enormous impact on how long you’ll live. The results of the latest report from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, published in Folha de S. Paulo, show that life expectancy in the country of samba varies from what […]
Like cases reported in India, Afghanistan and some Middle Eastern countries, gender-based violence that leads to mutilation and disfiguration is also a brutal reality in Brazil.
Representatives and victims in the Congo are pushing back on ancient traditions that render women without rights after the deaths of their husbands, even prohibiting them from eating or drinking when they want.
TEL AVIV— The recent wave of violence and Mahmoud Abbas’ threats to dismantle the Palestinian Authority could represent not just a security emergency for Israel, but also an economic nightmare. More than 1,000 factories in the West Bank rely solely on the manpower of Palestinian workers. And they’re just a small part of the financial […]
Law enforcement agencies that bring cases to court, and the administrators who act as court overseers, have far more power and influence than judges, who are often pressured to render false verdicts. How it works, and why the system needs overhauling.
SAN SALVADOR — Crime-ridden El Salvador is having a particularly bloody year. Facing the power of the “Mara” street gangs, the Central American country has already counted a “record” 4,427 homicides from January to Sept. 8, the country’s Institute of Legal Medicine, or state coroners, has reported. The figure was expected to top 5,000 by […]
The bloody dispersal of Cairo’s sit-ins two years ago marked a decisive end to the Muslim Brotherhood’s political ascendancy. The group now is in crisis, its membership divided over its ultimate direction.
Amid the seeming complacency or incompetence of the government, drug-related violence and criminals acting with impunity are creating an all-too-familiar atmosphere of fear.
Videos and pictures showing female police officers violently reprimanding alleged harassers over the Eid holiday weekend in Egypt drew both praise and scorn.
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 […]
BUENOS AIRES — José Ignacio Bergoglio, the nephew of Pope Francis, was attacked Wednesday night by a band of armed thieves as he and his girlfriend were about to enter their home in the Argentine capital, Clarín reports. The thieves forced the couple inside at gunpoint at around 10 p.m. local time in the apartment […]
Once the world’s murder capital, the Mexican city that borders with El Paso, Texas, has seen crime plummet. But deeper problems still persist.
TWO NEPAL CHILDREN RESCUED Photo: Qin Qing/Xinhua/ZUMA A 15-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl were rescued alive from the rubble in Nepal earlier today after being trapped for five days following Saturday’s devastating earthquake, Reuters reports. FRENCH SOLDIERS ACCUSED OF CHILD RAPE French daily Le Parisien reacts to the revelation of accusations that 16 French […]
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 […]
GARABULLI — Two unfinished houses on the sand, facing a Mediterranean sea in shades of grey. So this is where they left from. According to various Libyan sources, the vessel carrying more than 800 people left Libya on what became its fateful crossing between Saturday April 18 and Sunday 19 from this long stretch of […]
EMERGENCY EU SUMMIT AFTER MIGRANT TRAGEDY European Union leaders are holding an emergency summit in Luxembourg to discuss a common response to the ongoing migrant crisis. But the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini warned ahead of the meeting that there was “no easy solution, no magic solution,” the BBC reports. This comes just one […]
Cumhuriyet, April 7, 2015 “Half Democracy,” Tuesday’s front page of Turkey’s center-left daily Cumhuriyet reads, after the government imposed a nationwide ban on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook Monday. The accompanying picture depicts a man divided between “CENSORSHIP” and “VIOLENCE.” Turkish authorities have now lifted the ban, which had been implemented in an attempt to prevent […]
Thousands of protesters, including French President Francois Hollande, took to the streets of Tunis Sunday for an anti-terrorism march in response to the March 18 attack at Tunis’ Bardo Museum that left 22 dead. On its front page Monday, the Tunisian daily Attounissia features a picture of Hollande demonstrating alongside Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, […]
A record 53 French police officers committed suicide last year. The Courbat, a health facility, treats officers suffering from burnout, depression and alcoholism with a very specific therapy.
Though the country’s major scouting associations say the practice of “Pflocken,” in which children are tied down, isn’t acceptable, the timeworn practice continues.
GOMA — Teachers raping their students is tragically all too common in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But in the eastern region of South Kivu, it is a reality that is now finally being confronted, with the establishment of local committees in which parents, education officials and students report and track sexual assaults in […]
WALIKALE — They swapped their firearms for spades, machettes and hoes. Until very recently, the young people here used to be members of armed groups in Congo’s North Kivu that boasted names such as Kifua Fua (Stuck-out Chest) or Raia Mutomboki (Revolutionary People). But on this Saturday in early November, they are repairing a road […]
MUNICH — It began nearly a year ago, on the weekend after Christmas. On Saturday night, unidentified individuals broke into a church in the Cologne district of Porz-Urbach. They broke open the safe in the sacristy and got hold of the key to the church. They ended up stealing money from the collection boxes, liturgical […]
SEOUL — Six South Korean soldiers have been accused of killing one of their fellow conscripts. Yoon Seung-joo, 20, died earlier this year after being force-fed and beaten. Abuse within South Korea’s military ranks has long been a problem. A recent survey of soldiers revealed about 4,000 allegations of violence that went unreported. It’s a time that almost all South Korean men dread. The moment when they begin their mandatory service in their country’s armed forces. Kim Tae-Haw joined the ranks of Korea’s riot police when he began his conscription ten years ago. “I didn’t want to go to the […]
A dozen baboons escaped Sunday from Benghazi’s zoo and roamed around the city amid deadly clashes between the army and anti-government militias that have killed more than 300 people in the past three weeks. All but two were returned to their enclosures by Tuesday — but not before they baffled residents and posed for pictures […]