"This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in" the Economic Observer. This new form of public entertainment has also landed in China: the digital political sex scandal. The starring role, as always, goes to a respectably married middle-aged man in an important position. The script includes the usual wealth of spicy details to prolong the pleasure. Take the hapless Xie Zhiqiang, Director of Jiangsu ...

For more than two weeks, students have occupied the main campus of the University of Chile in Santiago, spreading sleeping bags across office floors between empty soda cans brimming with cigarette butts. On one chilly afternoon "There is a demand for structural change in Chilean society that hasn't occurred in 20 years," says pollster and political analyst Marta Lagos. But on no issue does that demand seem more intense than education - which could be key ...

Miamians hate it when media criticism of their city is couched in stale clichs like "Trouble in Paradise" or "Paradise Lost." I agree: it's time to nix the whole "paradise" chestnut, because Miami isn't and never really was paradise. In fact, it was originally a mangrove swamp; South Beach is entirely man-made. Yes, Miami winters are balmy, but have you ever spent an entire summer here? By August you're dreaming of Montreal. But put aside Miami's natural ...

When the Beijing LGBT Center screened a prerecorded lecture on gay-themed movies last year, the venue was so packed that latecomers had to jostle for a spot on the windowsills of the rented classroom doubling as their makeshift theater. This year, however, a similar event attracted only a handful of people, leaving much of the same room empty. The organizers soon realized their online announcements never reached the community. Soon after, other lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender ...

Hot Mac and cool Chris prevail after a furious fortnight In all of sport, there is no contest as self-consciously august as Wimbledon. Like a dowager duchess, Wimbledon walks hand in hand with a statelier past, revering its history, requiring homage to its traditions, never questioning its prerogatives. But in the 104th year of "The Championships upon the lawns of The All England Club," the unthinkable finally happened: Wimbledon came under attack. Players criticized the conduct of the tournament, fans ...

Vasso Sarafidou wasn't carrying a gas mask when she walked from her home near the Acropolis to the anti-austerity demonstration outside parliament in Athens on Wednesday. Passing rows of riot police, some not much older than her teenage grandchildren, Sarafidou, 72, said she knew Greek lawmakers were going to pass the bill that would raise taxes and sell some state assets in exchange for more bailout loans. But she thought the bill was a bad idea, and ...

When an Amsterdam court acquitted far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders of all charges of discrimination and inciting hatred against Muslims on June 23, it seemed a fitting climax to a week that saw the end of the decade-long Dutch experiment with integration. Judges ruled that although the comments the politician made in the Dutch press and on the internet between October 2006 and March 2008 comparing Islam to Nazism may be offensive, they are nonetheless legal and part of a legitimate government ...

A year and a half after President Obama loosened restrictions on government funding of human-embryonic-stem-cell research, a federal judge on Monday, Aug. 23, declared all such studies temporarily off-limits for taxpayer dollars, on the grounds that they violate a 1996 law. The decision could be a devastating step backward for a promising new science that has the potential to generate new treatments and possibly even cures for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's — and the reaction ...

This week, Linda Garibay's monthly welfare check will drop by $43. The unemployed mother of two will struggle to afford clothes, soap and shampoo. She'll be squeezing by on an income of $490 per month, all of which comes from welfare, and spending it all on shared rent for her sister's apartment and diapers and clothes for her kids. She's trying to find a job, but says she's had no success since a clothing store fired her ...

Stooped from old age and disease, the four surviving leaders of Pol Pot's communist revolution of 1975, which left perhaps 2 million people dead, at last entered the dock to stand trial at a special tribunal here on Monday. Facing charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, they are accused of leaving this tiny nation in ruins after nearly four years of mass murder and enslavement with the greatest number of victims in any trial ...