EL PAÍS, VANGUARDIA, CORREO (Spain), GUARDIAN (U.K.), DER SPIEGEL (Germany) Worldcrunch BILBAO – Two Basque independence parties have triumphed in regional elections in northern Spain’s Basque country this weekend, the latest sign of growing separatist sentiment in crisis-plagued Europe. The two parties together took nearly two-thirds of the vote, 48 of the 75 Basque legislative […]
Category: Geopolitics
AP, BBC NEWS (UK), AL JAZEERA (Qatar) Worldcrunch BEIRUT – Overnight clashes in Lebanon have killed at least three people in the northern city of Tripoli and left dozens injured, following the funeral of senior intelligence official Wissam al-Hassan. Al Jazeera reports that violence erupted after protesters tried to storm the offices of Lebanese Prime […]
MOGADISHU – General Barisse’s men are in the pick-up trucks, one next to the other, holding their weapons, looking around. They do not fidget, a military patience having descended upon them: they simply wait. They have been waiting for food, pay, the enemy’s attack — in this, they also wait for the end of a […]
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Erdogan Raises Stakes With Syria
HURRIYET, MILLIYET, PRESS TURK (Turkey) Worldcrunch ANKARA – Turkey shows increasing signs that it wants to raise the pressure on the neighboring regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. A full week after a Syrian passenger plane was forced to land in Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to insist publicly that the jet was […]
MONTREAL – She’d been preparing for this day for 30 years. On September 4, Pauline Marois became Quebec’s first Prime Minister, though her victory wasn’t as clear-cut as she’d hoped. As the leader of the Parti Quebecois (PQ), best known for its call for the independence of the French-speaking province, the 63-year-old told constituents during […]
KCNA (North Korea), YONHAP (South Korea), YLEISRADIO (Finland) Worldcrunch North Korea announced Friday that it would launch a “merciless military strike” on South Korea, if the country allows anti-North activists to disseminate propaganda leaflets in the communist country next week. Yonhap news agency, citing the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), quoted the warning statement […]
Tanja Nijmeijer joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) when she was barely out of her teens. Now, at 34, the Dutch woman is negotiating for the Marxist rebels in the peace talks with the Colombian government that began this week in Oslo. With her long, dark-blonde hair, brown doe-eyes and engaging smile, Nijmeijer […]
DOMODEDOVO – I first met with the leaders of this town’s independence movement in a small Azeri cafe. Domodedovo is barely a town, really, more like just a street; and when I arrived, there was a Muscovite photographer obviously on the same story. We were waiting for the members of the independence movement led by […]
THE NEW TIMES (Rwanda), LE MONDE (France), BBC (UK), REUTERS Worldcrunch Rwanda is tipped to take one of five UN Security Council seats today, despite mounting pressure on the country over the allegations that it is backing an armed rebellion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A confidential UN report, leaked to Reuters on […]
BBC, GUARDIAN, SYRIAN NETWORK FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (UK), AVAAZ (USA) Worldcrunch According to human rights organizations, at least 28,000 civilians have disappeared in Syria since the beginning of the protests last year, the BBC reports. Most of them seem not to be militants but ordinary people who have been picked up by the regime of […]
REUTERS, KATHIMERINI (Greece) Worldcrunch ATHENS – For the second time in three weeks, crowds are gathering in central Athens today for marches against a new wave of spending and pension cuts. Trade union leaders says they hope to show EU leaders meeting in Brussels that a new round of austerity measures will only worsen the […]
CAIRO – Orwa Nyrabia is looking for an apartment in Cairo for a few months, just enough time to wrap his latest movie a month after being released from a Syrian jail. Nyrabia was arrested on August 23 in Damascus and held for 22 days. This 35-year-old filmmaker and creator of the renowned Dox Box […]
ROSENHEIM – German authorities don’t believe his parents are dead, nor do they buy the stories about living on the streets as a child. And so Mohamed Kamara, an 18-year-old asylum seeker from Sierra Leone, is now due to be deported. His integration in Germany has been exemplary, and his therapist is convinced that he […]
ASAHI SHIMBUN, KYODO (Japan) THE GUARDIAN (UK), U.S. ARMY (USA) Worldcrunch Two U.S. Navy sailors in Okinawa, have been accused of raping a Japanese woman, reports the Asahi Shimbun. The case comes amidst American military efforts to combat sex crimes following several high-profile cases over the past decade. The two 23-year-old sailors allegedly perpetrated the […]
A Die Welt exclusive explores declassified German documents 50 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
CAIRO – One of the most memorable scenes from the Libyan revolution was when the rebels, in wretched clothes and advanced weaponry, seized a house of the oldest son of Muammar Gaddafi. They famously entered his living room, sat in his couch, watched his TV, ate his food and slept in his bed. Mohamed Morsi […]
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 […]
HET LAATSTE NIEUWS (Belgium), THE SCOTSMAN (UK) Worldcrunch After Catalonia stepped up its bid to secession, separatist parties in Belgium and the United Kingdom have made major gains amid a crisis-hit Europe. British Prime Minister David Cameron is set to meet Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond in Edinburgh Monday to sign a historic deal that […]
CAMBODIA DAILY (Cambodia), BBC (UK), NEW YORK TIMES (USA), ABC (Australia) Worldcrunch King Norodom Sihanouk died in Beijing early Monday morning, reports the Cambodia Daily. The former monarch was about to celebrate his 90th birthday. Prince Sisowath Thomico, chief of cabinet for the late king said he had suffered a heart attack, after suffering fragile […]
AL MASRY AL YOUM, AL WATAN (Egypt), AL CHARK AL AWSAT (Saudi Arabia) Worldcrunch CAIRO – ‘Chaotic’ is the only word to describe the Egyptian political scene right now. There is of course the ongoing battle among and within the three main movements in post-Mubarak Egypt: Islamists, secularists and those who still support the old […]
CEYLANPINAR – “Is the tea good? It comes from those houses over there.” Ramaazen adds sugar to the already sweet drink, pointing at a line of dwellings on the far side of the barbed wire. On this side of the border is Ceylanpinar, a mostly Kurdish town of 45,000 people. It is the farthest outpost […]
NOBELPRIZE.ORG (Norway), TWITTER Worldcrunch OSLO – The 2012 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the European Union for having “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe” for more than six decades, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced. Thorbjørn Jagland, head of the Oslo-based Nobel Committee, said the EU […]
MUNICH – In central Munich an Arbeiterstrich is a crossroads where day laborers from southeastern Europe hang around waiting for low-paid work. Some say they are modern-day slaves, ready to take whatever job comes along, even at the risk of not getting paid. All Ilya* has to offer is his physical strength. “I don’t give […]
MOSCOW – While much has been made of a “reset” in the relationship between the United States and Russia, Pakistan is also trying to find a new starting point in its relationship with Russia, which has yet to recover from Pakistan’s cold-war alliance with the United States. This would-be reset has had both setbacks and […]
AP OF PAKISTAN, PAKISTANI OBSERVER, PAKISTANI INTERNATIONAL NEWS (Pakistan), HINDUSTAN TIMES (India), DAILY MAIL, BBC (U.K.) Worldcrunch PESHAWAR – A wave of national and international support was growing for Malala Yousefzai, the 14-year-old girl shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat province, who remained in critical condition after her latest surgery Thursday […]
YEMEN OBSERVER (Yemen), REUTERS Worldcrunch SANA’A – A U.S. Embassy employee was assassinated on his way to work in the Yemeni capital Thursday. Yemen Observer reports that Qassem Aqlan, a Yemeni senior security officer working at the U.S. Embassy, was shot dead by masked gunmen on a motorcycle around 10 am Thursday. Gunmen opened fire […]
MOSCOW – In a new twist in the case of Anna Politkovskaya, the prominent Russian investigative journalist murdered in 2006, her children are filing a petition to rescind a plea bargain reached with one of the men involved in their mother’s assassination. Politkovskaya was a well-known investigative journalist who reported extensively for the Russian paper […]
ISTANBUL – “Will we go to war with Syria?” That is the singular question on everyone’s mind these days. We journalists are being pounded with it every day from friends and close relatives — but how can we give a direct answer? I say talk of war between Turkey and Syria is overblown and I […]
BERLIN – Despite considerable efforts, the economic gap between eastern and western Germany is not shrinking fast enough. While the East is indeed becoming more dynamic, it still lags far behind the West, according to the 2012 statistics compiled by the Initiative for a New Social Market Economy (INSM), which ranks German states for dynamism […]
AL WAFD, JANUARY 25TH PORTAL (Egypt), TWITTER, GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch CAIRO –Among the central demands of Egypt’s pro-democracy movement was for Mohamed Morsi to set free all those imprisoned during the many protests linked to the January 25th Revolution. Yet when reports that the new Egyptian president had marked his first 100 days in office […]
ATHENS NEWS, ZOUGLA (Greece), FOCUS, DAS BILD, DER SPIEGEL, STERN (Germany) Worldcrunch ATHENS – German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Greece this morning to a welcome of police, protestors and armored cars, as well as a “wave of hatred,” reported German newsmagazine Stern, which also called Greece a Pleitestaat, or “broke” country. The Greek government […]
VANGUARDIA, EXCELSIOR, MILENIO, INFORMADOR (Mexico) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – Authorities in Mexico were busy Tuesday trying to determine if one of the country’s most feared drugpins had been killed over the weekend in a firefight with military forces. The showdown took place Sunday at a crossroads in the northeastern Mexican city of Coahuila, when the […]
CORRIERE DELLA SERA, LA STAMPA, TG5 (Italy) TWITTER Worldcrunch ROME – For one brief, shining moment, he was back. For those who like their politics, well, colorful, the prospect of another run for office by controversial three-time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had hung in the air for the past two months in Italy. But on […]
THE NEWS INTERNATIONAL, NEWS PAKISTAN, GEO NEWS (Pakistan), BBC URDU (UK) Worldcrunch SWAT – Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old peace activist has been shot in her hometown of Swat in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in northern Pakistan. The children’s rights activist was injured along with two other girls when unknown assailants opened fire on the vehicle […]
–Editorial– In spite of what the polls say and the voting urns told us – Hugo Chavez has indeed won another term, which will keep him in power until 2019 – it is also true that the true triumph in Venezuela’s election yesterday lay elsewhere: in the support for the young Henrique Capriles Radonski, the […]
SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, DPA, DAPD, HGN, WOJA (Germany) Worldcrunch ATHENS – Some 7,000 police, including reinforcements brought in from across Greece, will be ensuring extra-tight security during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first visit to Athens since the breakout of the financial crisis. The government fears the visit on Tuesday could unleash hostility from citizens who hold […]
AKRUN – Far beyond the brown plain and the shimmering blue waters of Qatinnah Lake, the outlines of a city can just barely be made out. “That’s Homs, that’s where there’s war,” says a refugee turning away from the empty window opening. Then there’s the sound of an explosion at some distance behind him. “And […]
THE GLOBAL TIMES (China), CHINA TIMES (Taiwan) Worldcrunch BEIJING – What do the Chinese people appreciate most from Japan? Adult videos and their actresses, answered the Chinese according to a large-scale online survey conducted last week by the Global Times, a state-owned Beijing daily. Just as China and Japan have marked the 40th anniversary of […]
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 […]
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Signs Of A New US-Russia Spy War?
VOICE OF RUSSIA, KOMMERSANT (Russia) HOUSTON PRESS, (US) MOSCOW – Russian authorities are staying mostly mum since the United States accused 11 people this week, all from countries in the former Soviet Union, of illegal export of high-tech military equipment and money laundering. Moscow-based daily Kommersant reports that seven of the 11 accused were arrested […]