Worldcrunch
NGOZI – In the north of Burundi, new brands of “beer” have sprouted recently. They are produced locally in a multitude of small breweries or imported from neighboring countries in little plastic bags. These alcoholic beverages are three times less expensive than normal brews – $0.30 for 50ml – and very strong, containing up to […]
Forced marriages in this central Asian country are not simply about arrangements between families, but also strangers abducting women to be their wives.
LATEST ON UKRAINE BEIRUT HIT BY DEADLY BLAST At least six people have died and over 100 were left injured after twin explosions hit South Beirut, near the Kuwaiti embassy and the Iranian Cultural Chancellery, Al Arabiya reports. The southern part of the Lebanese capital, a Hezbollah stronghold, has been the target of many attacks […]
-OpEd- CAIRO – I believe the presence of armed gangs and the incidents of rape during Tahrir Square protests represent a serious problem. I do not just sympathize with the victims: women and revolutionaries who were, and still are, subjected to wide-scale suppression or abuse. I am concerned about two issues; the first of them […]
BUENOS AIRES – At 7 a.m., Norma Andia begins her radio show with an ambulance siren and a charming accent from the high plains of Bolivia. “Let’s go, are you listening to me? Why the long face, didn’t you get enough sleep? And you, yes I’m talking to you – don’t hurt your woman thinking […]
AL AHRAM (Egypt), MASRAWY (Egypt), AL-MASRY AL-YOUM (Egypt) Worldcrunch CAIRO – As Al-Masry Al-Youm describes it on Monday, President Mohammed Morsi’s latest speech to the nation, meant to calm Egypt after days of deadly unrest, only “added fuel to the fire.” The Egyptian President announced the state of emergency Sunday night in the major Canal […]
EL ESPECTADOR, EL MUNDO, EL TIEMPO (Colombia) Worldcrunch BOGOTA- Colombia’s FARC rebels have announced the end of a two-month unilateral ceasefire after the Colombian government refused to join the truce. Photo: FARC flag via Wikipedia The FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, declared the ceasefire when peace talks with the government began on Nov. […]
BBC, BELFAST TELEGRAPH (Northern Ireland), THE IRISH TIMES, RTE (Ireland) Worldcrunch BELFAST– The North Ireland capital of Belfast saw its fifth consecutive night of violence last night after a largely peaceful demonstration at City Hall erupted into riot. The Union flag over Belfast City Hall. Photo: Anosmia via Flickr The Belfast Telegraph reports that loyalist […]
International security experts are watching Nigeria “s radical Islamist movement Boko Haram with concern. The militant group has destabilized northern Nigeria and attracted the attention of other jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliates gaining strength in neighboring northern Mali. Boko Haram is highly diffuse. It has an important Islamic revival dimension, but also has political and […]
CAPITAL FM (Kenya), BBC NEWS (UK), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), REUTERS Worldcrunch NAIROBI – At least 30 people have been killed Friday in clashes between rival farming communities in the Tana River district on the Kenyan coast, reports BBC News. The attacks, that come after weeks of sharp tension between rival Pokomo and Orma communities occurred […]
EL NORTE (Mexico), CNN (USA), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – At least 17 people were killed in a Northern Mexico prison on Tuesday, reports El Norte. Eleven inmates and six guards died in a shootout as the prisoners attempted to escape the prison through tunnels, reports CNN. “The inmates started to shoot with […]
CALCUTTA– Captain Manpreet Jolly has not quite recovered yet. Nothing in his career at the Haldia port authority had prepared him for this. The captain was abducted by masked men in the middle of the night, and told at gunpoint to leave and never return to the port town. “We were at my assistant’s house […]
GLOBO ESPORTE, FOLHA DE S.P. (Brazil), FOX SPORTS, THE WASHINGTON POST (USA) SAO PAULO – With less than two years before the kick-off of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, things are not looking good for Brazilian soccer. Local team Sao Paulo FC were crowned the winners of the Copa Sudamericana final Wednesday, after Argentinan […]
SITTWE – If it weren’t for the flattened gaps in the standing rows of houses, Sittwe would seem like any typical Burmese city, with its decadent colonial façades. But the isolated blocks, leveled to the ground, are the price to pay for the apparent quiet: A brutal urban war begun last June that emptied the […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – A forensic analysis of the psychiatric and psychological profiles of 78 German Catholic priests accused of child abuse between 2000 and 2010 shows that only nine were pedophiles. Four showed homosexual tendencies towards adolescent boys. Of the remaining 65, 54% were heterosexuals, 37% were homosexual, and nine were bisexual. […]
FOLHA DE S.PAULO (Brazil) Worldcrunch SAO PAULO – One policeman is killed every 32 hours in Brazil, according to a new report by the State Public Security Department shows. Official statistics show that at least 229 police officers – from both civil and military police – were killed in Brazil this year, reports Brazilian daily […]
Last week at an unlicensed Montessori kindergarten in Taiyuan, in the western province of Shanxi, a teacher slapped a five-year-old girl in the face more than 70 times and kicked her twice because she didn’t manage to do her arithmetic. While an online video of the abuse was setting off a huge public outcry, another […]
AFP, ASIANEWS, IRRAWADDY (Burma), REUTERS, AL JAZEERA (Qatar), Worldcrunch A crisis is building in western Burma where one of the world’s largest groups of stateless people, the Muslim Rohingya, are being burned out of their villages by Buddhist Burmese nationalists. Since Sunday, several people have been killed and hundreds of homes have been burned. Thousands […]
CHIRANG – “Around 50 of them came and opened fire on our village.” Rebayal Ali still seems stunned, his eyes glazed over. His vest clings to his skinny torso because of the humidity, as the Muslim farmer tells Le Monde of his night of terror. It was July 23 in his village in Assam, a […]
CLARIN (Argentina) NEW YORK TIMES (U.S.) Worldcrunch BUENOS AIRES – To combat violence in soccer, both on and off the field, a new law in Argentina will require each top league team to have a security chief who reports directly to the Ministry of Defense, Clarin reports. The role must be filled by someone who […]
-Analysis- PARIS – In Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist, the shepherd Santiago travels to the ends of the earth seeking a treasure that was close by all along. And sometimes, too, we find the key to understanding what is happening in our country today by reading about things far away. Two scholarly articles published last […]
BONN – “You have to use violence to defend Islamic values?” asks the judge. “Yes, of course,” Murat K. replies. Five months after he attacked police officers with a knife, the 26-year-old Salafist came clean in the courtroom: it was his duty, he said, to wound the police officers. The officers in question are veterans, […]
TABOÃO DA SERRA – It was Tuesday, 2 a.m., and D. was lying on her sofa, trying to get some sleep. Bang…Bang…Bang. “It sounded like somebody was shooting inside here,” she recalled. D. crouched, waited for the shots to stop, and left home to check the street. She opened the front door and, three meters […]
CARACAS – After the tunnel that bores through one of the rocky hills that surround Caracas, the road bends, lined on either side with colorfully-painted homes, ending in one of the plazas of the 23 de Enero neighborhood. This corner of the capital is a bastion of support for incumbent Hugo Chavez, and one of […]
SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch Halfway into the 2012 edition, incidents of sexual abuse at Munich’s Oktoberfest are on the rise as compared to last year, Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reports One woman was raped behind a beer tent. “One rape is a rape too many,” says a report covering the first half of Oktoberfest by […]
MOSCOW – The question of whether or not citizens in Russia have the right to defend themselves if they are being beaten by police was taken up by the Supreme Court in June. The case came just after a large protest on May 6 that was marred by several police beatings. In regulations released soon […]
KATHERIMINI (Greece), THE GUARDIAN (UK), REUTERS Worldcrunch ATHENS – The three-month old Greek coalition government is facing its first anti-austerity general strike Wednesday, with disruptions bringing the country to a standstill. Greek public sector unions have called a strike that is likely to draw thousands of workers out into the street today to protest against […]
CAIRO – At this very moment, Americans are piling into movie theaters, cheering through their popcorn at the notion of the Islamic prophet as a goat-romancing child molester, and sending “The Innocence of Muslims” to the top of the box office charts. This evil must be stopped at all costs, or at least, “before the […]
BENI – Last June, with rebel groups trying to force him to enroll, Paluku managed to escape into the Rwenzori mountains, in northeastern Congo. Near his 20th birthday, this native of Eringeti, about 400 kilometers to the north of the Congolese capital, Goma, is hardly the only one to have fled a region where armed […]