👋 Halo!*
Welcome to Wednesday, where Israeli airstrikes kill at least 60 people across Gaza, six luxury hotel deaths in Bangkok are linked to cyanide poisoning, and the mayor of Paris makes good on her promise to swim in the Seine. Meanwhile, Italian chef and writer Tommaso Melilli in multimedia magazine Lucy Sulla Cultura explores the sometimes complicated relationship between haute cuisine and childhood nostalgia.
[*Bislama, Vanuatu]
✅ SIGN UP
This is our daily newsletter Worldcrunch Today, a rapid tour of the news of the day from the world's best journalism sources, regardless of language or geography.
It's easy (and free!) to sign up to receive it each day in your inbox: 👉 Sign up here
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“MH17, ten years later.” On its front page, Dutch daily NRC remembers the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, shot down by Russian-controlled forces ten years ago, on July 17, 2014, during the war in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas. Departing from Amsterdam and heading to Kuala Lumpur the Boeing 777-200ER carried 283 passengers and 15 crew members. The airliner was downed by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine while flying over the Ukraine-Russia border. All 298 people aboard were killed, including 38 Australians. On Wednesday, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong told families gathered at a memorial service in Canberra that the country will "not be deterred in our commitment to hold Russia to account."
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israeli strikes in southern, central Gaza kill more than 60 Palestinians. These strikes included an Israeli-declared “safe zone” filled with thousands of displaced people. Airstrikes in recent days have killed many Palestinians, even as Israel has pulled back or scaled down major ground offensives in the north and south. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage of the war in Gaza here.
• Trump supported by former rivals Haley, DeSantis in show of unity at Republican convention. Donald Trump's former rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, offered their endorsement of his candidacy at the party's convention, in a display of unity days after he survived an assassination attempt. Haley, who had described Trump as unfit for office during her campaign, urged her supporters to vote for him over Democratic President Joe Biden “for the sake of our nation.” Read more about Donald Trump’s assassination attempt here.
• At least six killed in Bangladesh student anti-quota protests. Authorities in Bangladesh urged all universities to close on Wednesday, the day after at least six people died in violent protests over the allocation of government jobs and police raided the headquarters of the main opposition party. Dhaka University, at the center of the violence, decided to suspend classes and close its dormitories indefinitely. Tens of thousands of students joined nationwide protests for a second day after more than 100 people were injured on Monday in rallies that blocked major highways and rail links.
• Video of man whipping group of migrant women. A video is sparking outrage after it began circulating online showing a trucker whipping a group of Eritrean and Ethiopian women with a belt after he found them in his truck trying to cross the border to France at Ventimiglia in Italy. Italian police are looking into the incident and trying to identify the trucker, who is thought to be Bulgarian.
• French Prime Minister resigns. French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal late Tuesday, stating that Attal will lead a caretaker government with restricted powers until a new government is formed. The leftist New Popular Front alliance has still not managed to name a consensus candidate for prime minister after snap legislative elections earlier this month. For more on the political situation in France, read this article by Les Echos’ Gaspard Koenig, translated from French by Worldcrunch: Why Macron Should Be France's Last All-Powerful President.
• Cyanide found on teacups used by Bangkok hotel victims. Six people who died in a luxury hotel suite in Thailand were poisoned by drinks laced with cyanide. Police suspect that one of the dead was behind the poisoning and was driven by crushing debt. The six deceased were found dead by housekeepers at the Grand Hyatt Erawan hotel in the Thai capital Bangkok late on Tuesday.
• “Super spicy” chips land Japanese students in hospital. Fourteen high school students in Tokyo were rushed to hospital after eating "super spicy" potato chips. Around 30 students ate the chips after one of them brought them to school, and soon some of them started complaining of nausea and acute pain around their mouth, prompting emergency calls to the fire department and police.
💬 LEXICON
Die Null
The German city of Munich, famous for its outdoor beer gardens and Oktoberfest, is preparing to ride the sober wave. Local officials have announced that its first alcohol-free beer garden, called “Die Null” (meaning zero) will open on Thursday. Located by Munich Central Station and the Old Botanical Garden, on Karl-Stützel-Platz, this new business aims at responding to slowing demand for alcohol in Germany by only serving non-alcoholic drinks, while trying to “revitalize” an area that has fallen prey to crime and drug abuse. For more on the topic, we offer this Worldcrunch original: Sober Sells: Gen Z Is Making Alcohol-Free The Cool New Global Order.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
How the “Ratatouille curse” has been poisoning haute cuisine
In Ratatouille, the food critic Anton Ego declares innovative a dish that is actually quite traditional. Today, many great chefs offer reinterpretations of homemade dishes from childhood. But what happens when even avant-garde cuisine becomes nostalgic, asks Italian chef and writer Tommaso Melilli in multimedia magazine Lucy Sulla Cultura.
🍽️ Whether Ratatouille is to blame or whether it was just portraying a new trend, for at least the past 15 years, what is “new” and exciting in cuisine, that dish that we feel obliged to try, is very often a dish we have always known. This wasn’t the case before, and it hasn’t always been like this. In the 1990s, Fulvio Pierangelini was the most renowned Italian chef worldwide. Pierangelini is famous for several simple yet poignant dishes, which influenced Italian contemporary cuisine.
🍝 The 1990s and early 2000s were a period of great experimentation in haute cuisine: there was this widespread idea that a dish must surprise, disturb and shock, all at once. Pierangelini never meant to disturb with odd flavors, and ambitious or exotic matches. In a way, though, his cuisine was provocative, but subtly so: one of his most famous dishes was spaghetti al pomodoro (spaghetti with tomato sauce), which he would sell for 50 euros and which he said only he could make.
🧒 Gastronomy has changed a lot since then. But of the many changes, I have the feeling that many of the dishes and restaurants that people discuss the most, that influence public debate and young chefs' ambitions, suffer from what could be called the “Ratatouille curse.” Many of the most desired, tasted and photographed dishes, the ones that cannot be removed from the menu because otherwise people would get mad, are oftentimes simple, made with few ingredients, and openly recall a form of domestic comfort that takes customers back to their childhood.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
✉️ Want to receive all Worldcrunch articles by email? Subscribe to The Latest here (and check our other — free! — newsletters while you’re at it!)
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📣 VERBATIM
“This, in essence, would be a declaration of war — albeit with a delay.”
— Talking to the Russian news outlet Argumenty I Fakty, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that the accession of Ukraine to NATO would go beyond a direct threat to Moscow's security. The current deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council reacted to the pledge of NATO's leaders last week to support Ukraine on an “irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright and Laure Gautherin
Let us know what’s happening in your corner of the world!