Worldcrunch
Among the many villains through Europe’s colonization of the African continent, a case could be made that Belgium’s King Leopold II was the worst. Responsible for the genocide of an estimated 10 million people, the 19th-century monarch ordered his troops and administrators to pillage the central African colony known as Belgian Congo, renamed the Democratic […]
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it’s that no one is safe until everyone is safe.
Welcome to Friday, where Biden toughens U.S. investment ban on China, the Belarus journalist forced to confess and a parking space sells for more than a million. We’ve also produced a short photographic video that tells the story of the pandemic in Italy — one closed (and open) storefront at a time. • Biden to […]
As more than 20,000 protesters in Paris reminded us last night, police violence against people of color is a global issue. Demonstrations have been held in cities across the world, including London, Auckland, and Berlin to condemn the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of police in Minneapolis. There is […]
Welcome to Thursday, where Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure as Israel’s Prime Minister appears to be coming to an end, Canada calls on Pope Francis to apologize and NASA is finally going back to Venus. Le Monde also takes us to Belarus where the shocking arrest of a dissident journalist brings new attention to the still ongoing […]
The U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century took inspiration from the minds of freed American slaves and abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and black artists and poets like Langston Hughes. But there was also a central place in that history for a soft-spoken lawyer from the western coast of India. Dr. Martin Luther King […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where a second Chinese vaccine gets WHO’s greenlight, Sri Lanka faces its worst maritime disaster ever and an asparagus recipe makes its way into a Belgian legal decree. Meanwhile, our latest edition of Work → In Progress takes the pulse of the work-life balance in a fully-vaccinated future. • COVID travel system […]
Welcome to Tuesday, where there’s a new country with the highest rate of COVID deaths, India registers its worst recession in almost 80 years, and Lithuania’s capital city goes full on science fiction. The Latin American business magazine America Economia shows us the massive new port in Peru that’s planned to be the gateway for […]
By now, our regular readers know that Worldcrunch works hard at being of and for and about no one particular place or people or subject matter. Our beat and our audience are written in our name, and we work with journalists and newspapers everywhere to tell the stories (no matter how big or small) that […]
Skeptical. Overwhelmed. Disappointed. Exhausted. Helpless. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, healthcare workers have felt it all. But in recent weeks, doctors and nurses around the world have added one adjective to their list of feelings: angry. In Europe, the mood has indeed shifted from the images of people applauding their medical heroes every night, from […]
-Analysis- PRAGUE — From a geopolitical perspective, the Czech Republic is a case apart. After four decades of being “abducted” to the East (as writer Milan Kundera, for one, described the era of Soviet communism), it has spent 30 years as part of the West, first as part of Czechoslovakia, with its Velvet Revolution, and […]
U.S. President Donald Trump has failed spectacularly in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But he’s not the only world leader coming up short.
PARIS — There’s a price to be paid, in euros and other things, when you choose to live in a city like Paris. But there’s a reason people pay: There’s only one Louvre, one Opera Garnier and exactly 114 Michelin-star restaurants. And even if you don’t have tickets, or the euros, to make it through […]
A mix of love and hate mirrors their own feelings about Beijing.
To call it a “side effect” of the pandemic would miss the point entirely. Beyond the devastating health impacts of coronavirus on those infected is the impact the crisis is having on research and treatment for other diseases. Nobody can argue with the massive public attention and funds focused on coronavirus, considered the worst worldwide […]
Welcome to Thursday, where fighting continues in Gaza despite Hamas’s moves toward a ceasefire, there’s good news on Alexei Navalny’s health, and a young French driver sets a new kind of speed record. Clarin also looks at the Brazilian Left’s refusal to recognize its own failures and how that might allow Bolsonaro to win a […]
There’s a whole lot of money and prestige at stake as researchers across the globe scramble to develop a vaccine. Does this help or hurt the cause?
PARIS — The surprise announcement of a massive pact between France and Germany to lead Europe’s response to the COVID-19 crisis marks a historic agreement, writes of Paris-based daily Les Echos. Germany’s decision to accept the principle of a common debt for European countries, signals the birth of a new union of solidarity, which is […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where the fighting in Gaza intensifies despite international calls for ceasefire, COVID deaths hit a new record in India and a flooded Italian village resurfaces. Le Monde“s correspondent Louis Imbert reports from the West Bank where more and more young supporters of the ruling Fatah party are joining the clashes with Israeli […]
Germany has the resources to weather the storm, but not everyone in Europe is convinced that’s a good thing.
It is, of course, inevitable that governments’ stay-at-home orders and other emergency measures to contain the novel coronavirus would generate differences of opinion. And yet, even a few weeks ago, it was hard to imagine that it would take as ugly a turn as what’s happening right now in the U.S. state of Michigan, where […]
Whether or not they were looking for it, the COVID-19 crisis has given epidemiologists bonafide public power. “At this point, if Drosten says it is too early, that carries as much weight as Merkel saying it,” quipped German economist Marcel Fratzscher about his country’s top epidemiologist Christian Drosten and top politician Angela Merkel. There is […]
The novel coronavirus currently sweeping the globe can, of course, infect any of us. But it poses particular dangers for indigenous and forest-dwelling communities attempting to live isolated from the modern world, and who in some extreme cases fear for their very survival. History is littered with tragic episodes of exposed communities decimated by imported […]
Latin American countries are, for the most part, appreciative of Beijing’s donations of much needed medical supplies. But the goodwill isn’t guaranteed to last forever.
Egyptian students won’t attend in-person classes again until September. In the case of most private schools, there won’t be any refunds either to the mostly middle-class families.
As the new pandemic reality requires radical rethinking about how we live our lives, one hint of where we may be going could appear this summer in a neighborhood near you. The re-opening of bars and restaurants coinciding with warm weather is pushing city officials to reallocate the space that diners and motorists can occupy. […]
PARIS — The rate of transmission and death toll of the coronavirus finally seem to be slowing, and various national and local lockdown measures are beginning to loosen. In a best-case scenario, both commerce and public confidence pick back up and social distancing measures help the virus to fade away by the summer. But even […]
Welcome to Monday, where fresh clashes rock Jerusalem’s mosque, death toll in Kabul school bombing tops 60, and Dracula sinks his fangs into COVID. We also look at the risks that go along with all the gung ho talk of the New Space Race. • Clashes escalate in East Jerusalem: A new round of clashes […]
Welcome to Friday, where a shooting at a favela in Rio kills 25, the Pfizer jab shows promising results against COVID variants, and pizza vending machines arrive in Rome. We also look at how central banks are finally starting to take an interest in cryptocurrencies. • COVID-19: Pfizer vs. variants, pandemic Olympics: Two different studies […]
After weeks of denial and manipulation, China wanted to play the role of a caring superpower. But something about its soft-power push went awry.
Welcome to Thursday, where Washington calls for suspension of COVID vaccine patents, Philippines President regrets getting a Chinese jab and Europe’s biggest bear is dead. Germany daily Die Welt, meanwhile, looks at the perils of cops who want to be internet famous. • U.S. to support vaccine patent waiver: The Biden administration has come out […]
The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated tensions between Beijing and Washington. It’s time that cooler heads prevail, and Germany has just the right person for the job.
For most of human history, the best way to protect personal privacy was to simply stay at home. Lock yourself in your room, or the proverbial closet, and nobody can find out a thing. In little more than a decade, those walls and doors have vanished as digital technology invites us to take large chunks […]
Given its reliance on both oil and tourism, the Mexican economy is in major trouble. So far, though, President López Obrador has refused to have the state take on new debt.
Welcome to Tuesday, where clashes erupt on the Myanmar-Thailand border, Israel is accused of “apartheid” and mischievous beavers cause internet mayhem in Canada. We also go to Hong Kong where the wave of emigration caused by China’s clamping down on freedoms has a troubling side effect on dogs and cats. • Clashes at Myanmar’s Thai […]
In Benin, Senegal or Mali, marabouts and traditional healers offer solutions which range from alternative medicine to downright quackery.
Welcome to Friday, where tensions between far-right Jewish activists and Palestinians escalate in Jerusalem, Russia withdraws troops from Ukraine border and four ponies jump over Brexit obstacle. German conservative daily Die Welt also tells us why the country’s political parties should keep a close eye on the Greens’ candidate in the upcoming chancellor election. • […]
Welcome to Thursday, where India faces an oxygen shortage as COVID surges, Russia crackdowns on Navalny supporters and Italy nabs the worst slacker ever. We also turn to Le Monde for an analysis on what the killing of Chad President Idriss Déby means for the fight against jihadists in north-central Africa. • India’s COVID surge […]
Welcome to Wednesday, where Derek Chauvin is convicted for murdering George Floyd, India faces a COVID “storm” and a French town finds not one but two gold treasures. We also look at how Russia is building diplomatic relationships with Pakistan just as U.S. troops are about to leave Afghanistan. • Chauvin found guilty of Floyd’s […]
As some countries start to loosen preventative measures put in place against the spread of coronavirus, the need for a vaccine is becoming glaringly obvious for any hope of returning to some semblance of the lives we had before. It’s an abrupt return to the first half of the 20th century, when cures for infectious […]