LIBERATION, LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, L’EXPRESS, FRANCE INFO (France), REFORMACOM (Mexico) Worldcrunch Florence Cassez, a French woman sentenced to 60 years in jail in Mexico for kidnapping, is on her way back to France. Cassez, 38, is expected to land in Thursday afternoon in Paris, where she will be welcomed by France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs […]
Category: Geopolitics
AP, CNN, REUTERS, WASHINGTON POST (U.S.) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON- The Pentagon plans to outline details Thursday of a groundbreaking decision to lift a ban on women in front line combat service. This is the second historic reversal of longstanding military bans by outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, following the 2011 repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell […]
KCNA (North Korea), REUTERS, RT NEWS Worldcrunch PYONGYANG – North Korea raised its bellicose rhetoric to a new high Thursday, declaring that it now possesses enough fissile material to mount enriched plutonium on rocket heads, and is ready to test those nuclear missiles that would be “targeted” to reach the United States. “We are not […]
Barack Obama’s longtime campaign guru David Axelrod has a new client: Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. Axelrod slipped into Rome to meet privately with Monti, 69, a political centrist and longtime university professor and European Union Commissioner, who served one year as caretaker Prime Minister. Monti is now in his first campaign for higher office, […]
-Editorial- BUENOS AIRES – There is much to criticize the Cuban government about, but its decision to allow its citizens to travel abroad without the infamous “white card” exit visa, deserves applause. Since January 14, Cubans are allowed travel abroad, just like citizens of any other democratic country – with a valid passport and a […]
GENEVA TALKS CONTINUE OVER SYRIA’S FUTURELakhdar Brahimi, the UN mediator for peace in Syria, will hold separate meetings with representatives of the Syrian government and of the opposition in a bid to bring them to the negotiating table ahead of tomorrow’s talks in Geneva. According to the BBC, it’s still not clear whether the two […]
JERUSALEM POST, HAARETZ (Israel), BBC NEWS (UK), CNN, NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu“s narrow victory for a third term as Israel’s prime minister will force him to reach out to the surprise centrist challenger as he now faces the complex task of forming a new coalition. Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu right-wing […]
BANGKOK POST, THE NATION (Thailand), HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (USA) Worldcrunch BANGKOK – A Thailand criminal court convicted Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, the editor of the now-defunct Voice of Taksin magazine to 11 years in jail on Wednesday. Somyot, who is also a prominent Thai labor rights activist, was on trial for two counts of lese majeste for […]
Sources tell Le Monde that the Syria regime fired rockets with a non-lethal chemical agent during a deadly Dec. 23 attack in Homs. So why didn’t Western leaders follow through on their threats?
BBC, THE GUARDIAN, THE TELEGRAPH (UK), THE NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch LONDON – UK Prime Minister David Cameron has opened the door to a national referendum to allow voters to decide whether to pull Britain out of the European Union. During a much anticipated speech Wednesday in London, Cameron said that if he is […]
Algerian-born, French-bred Haim Amsalem is a member of the Knesset, and now the sworn enemy of the ultra-orthodox Shas party that he helped found.
GENEVA 2 PEACE CONFERENCE OPENS UKRAINE PROTESTS TURN DEADLY Officials say at least two protesters have died in Kiev, as the violent fights with the police continue to escalate. According to The Kyiv Post, there may have been a third victim, after two were killed by gunfire, with one apparently shot four times. The reported […]
PARIS MATCH (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS – The Islamist militant group behind the deadly hostage crisis at an Algerian gas plant that killed dozens of foreigners last week has threatened to carry out new attacks, especially against France. In a phone call to French weekly magazine Paris Match, a spokesman for Mokhtar Belmokhtar – the […]
SBS (Australia), WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – Barack Obama spoke for 19 minutes after taking the oath for his second term as President of the United States. The first African-American President was sworn in on Monday, which coincided with the day the nation celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King — […]
AFP, WALL STREET JOURNAL, JAPAN TIMES (Japan) Worldcrunch TOKYO – Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said during a meeting that elderly people should “hurry up and die.” Taro Aso. Photo Sebastian Derungs “Heaven forbid if you are forced to live on when you want to die. You cannot sleep well when you think it’s all […]
BERLIN – Asir’s life was preprogrammed. The North African Muslim was to be trained to be a jihadist in a Palestinian terrorist camp. There he would learn how to build bombs and kill non-believers. But just before he was due to leave, he started to have doubts. “I realized that there were several versions of […]
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. […]
PRESSURE MOUNTING ON ASSAD AHEAD OF GENEVA 2 CLASHES CONTINUE IN KIEV Violent clashes continued in Kiev for the second night in a row, with pro-EU protesters torching vehicles and throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police, who replied with plastic bullets and stones, Ria Novosti reports. The protest movement, which started in November, was recently […]
BBC, SKY NEWS (UK), SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), FRANCE 24, EURONEWS Worldcrunch ALGIERS – Foreign governments and news outlets were working Monday to verify the number of hostages killed during a bloody four-day Islamist terrorist seige of a gas treatment plant in southeastern Algeria. The Algerian government, which has been criticized by some for both […]
UN INVITES IRAN TO GENEVA 2, SYRIAN OPPOSITION THREATENS BOYCOTT SERIES OF BAGHDAD EXPLOSIONS KILL DOZENS At least 24 people died and another 58 were injured in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad after it was hit by half a dozen explosions, Reuters reports. YANUKOVYCH TO NEGOTIATE WITH PRO-EU OPPOSITIONUkraine President Viktor Yanukovych has agreed to […]
A reporter travels to the Thai-Burmese border to find the rebel army of the Mons, an ethnic minority for whom little has changed despite the opening up of the Myanmar regime.
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – Whether it is its solidly high price per ounce or maybe even the end-of-year visit of Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, to view British gold reserves at the Bank of England, conspiracy theories are proliferating around gold – particularly as (or so rumor has it) some kilo bars appeared in […]
SLATE AFRIQUE Worldcrunch ALGIERS – Amidst conflicting reports of the fate of perhaps hundreds of hostages from a showdown between an Islamist terror group and Algerian security forces, the Algerian government has released the first video of some of those freed at the gas treatment facility in the remote southern part of the country. There […]
ALGIERS – On Wednesday, an estimated 41 Western contractors were taken hostage inside the jointly run BP natural-gas facility in Amenas, in eastern Algeria, near the Libyan border. The man believed to be responsible for this assault goes by the name Mokhtar Belmokhtar – also known as Khaled Aboul Abbas – one of the region’s […]
PORT-AU-PRINCE – What’s left of Haiti’s dreams of reconstruction? Three years after the earthquake that devastated the country – one of the world’s poorest – 360,000 people are still living in displaced person camps and shantytowns. The cholera epidemic is spreading and more than 80% of the population is still living below the poverty line. […]
ANI (Mauritania), TSA, EL WATAN (Algeria), LE MONDE, L’EXPRESS (France), AP Worldcrunch ALGIERS – Confirmed information on the ground is still scant, but Algerian authorities do acknowledge that the assault against Islamist hostage takers was still ongoing Friday, more than 24 hours after it began at a gas treatment plant 1600 kilometers south of the […]
BBC, ESPN (U.S.), THE GUARDIAN, THE TELEGRAPH (U.K.) Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – During an exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday night, Lance Armstrong has admitted that he did, in fact, take performance enhancing drugs during all seven Tour de France wins. The BBC callex it the most sophisticated, professional and successful doping program that […]
PROCESO (Mexico), AMERICA ECONOMIA (Latin America) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – It is being hailed as the first-ever Mexican counterpart to the CIA. But for this new “superministry” of government, established secretly over the past few weeks by just-installed President Enrique Peña Nieto, the main targets are the powerful and bloody organized crime networks that control […]
TSA, EL WATAN (Algeria), SUD OUEST, LE MONDE, NOUVEL OBS (France) ALGIERS – At least 25 Western hostages held at an Algerian gas facility have escaped Thursday. News reports say Americans and Japanese are among those freed. There are also unconfirmed reports that several of the hostages have been killed after Algerian security forces had […]
The terrorist attack and hostage-taking in neighboring Algeria is just one of the ways that France’s intervention in Mali could spread across Africa, and beyond.
SYRIAN OBSERVATORY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (UK), AL ARABIYA (UAE) Worldcrunch Reports emerged Thursday that pro-Assad forces killed more than 100 people earlier this week, including women and children, on farmland on the outskirts of Syria’s central city of Homs. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), forces loyal to President Bashar al […]
AP, BBC, DAILY YOMIURI, KYODO (Japan) Worldcrunch TOKYO – Amidst continuing safety concerns, airlines and regulators have grounded the majority of Boeing’s flagship 787 Dreamliner planes around the world, reports the BBC. By Thursday, chief air safety agencies in Europe, the United States, Japan and elsewhere had ordered flights halted. The 787 is the newest […]
PLANS FOR CEASEFIRE IN ALEPPOSyrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem announced at joint press conference with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that Syria had given Russia plans for a ceasefire in the northern city of Aleppo, RT reports. He also said that, if successful, the plan could be implemented in other cities and that the government […]
EL WATAN (Algeria), LE MONDE, AFP (France) Worldcrunch Two people were killed and as many as 41 Westerners were taken hostage in an attack Wednesday by an Islamist group at a gas treatment facility in Algeria. A British citizen and an Algerian are believed to be dead and six other people wounded in the assault […]
EURONEWS, AFP, LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch MOGADISHU – Somali Islamist militants announced on Wednesday that they had decided to execute a French hostage they have been holding since 2009, reports the AFP. French DGSE secret-service commandos launched a raid last Saturday in an bid to rescue French intelligence agent Denis Allex, but the attempt failed, […]
EL WATAN NEWS, REUTERS ARABIC, AL AHRAM (Egypt) Worldcrunch CAIRO – The death toll has risen to 20 in a train crash near Egypt’s capital, the second deadly rail accident in two months. The crash in the city of Giza late Monday has also left more than 170 injured, Reuters reports. On November 17 in […]
AP, XINHUA (China) Worldcrunch ZHENXIONG – Chinese authorities have offered a rare apology after cremating the remains of 46 victims of last Friday’s deadly landslide, before even consulting with their families. The AP reports that Hu Jianpu, deputy dead of Zhenxiong county in China’s Yunnan province, told state broadcaster CCTV “We did that because we […]
BBC (UK), DAWN (Pakistan) Worldcrunch ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on corruption allegations. Ashraf has been accused of accepting bribes during his term as minister for water and power in 2010. Authorities have 24 hours to take him into custody, along with 15 others included […]
France’s just launched military intervention in Mali has earned the old colonial power praise from those fearing Islamist extremists. The fight, however, has only just begun.
From its founding, the Muslim Brotherhood has been hostile, yet not completely rigid, toward the Jewish State. Now, will President Morsi invite Egyptian Jews to return home?