WorldcrunchStay informed on France with Worldcrunch. In-depth coverage of French politics, economic trends, societal changes, and cultural events with expert translations. Highlights include Paris, Lyon, Marseille, French cinema, gastronomy, modern literature, and cultural events.
PARIS — European nations are bracing themselves for the return of their citizens who had left to fight the wars in Syria and Iraq. “The EU member states most affected expect a slow but gradual rise of returnees,” noted a recent Radicalization Awareness Network (RAN) report submitted to the European Commissioner for Security, Julian King. […]
PARIS — What if the very different Chinese approach on debt held the key to a solution for the crisis of public finances in the West. In Europe and North America, the notion of a contract holds a central role: Whoever borrows money has to pay back, no matters the circumstances. Chinese people instead tend […]
What kind of a world do we live in, when Turkey can’t even give us a proper coup anymore? Unable to sleep for the summer heat in Valencia, I remember that twisted thought coming to me as the July 15 coup — or at least its broadcast version — was unfolding on the radio. Typically […]
Marketing firms are embracing a strategy called ‘femvertising’ to challenge the sexist gender molds of the past. Are they pushing equality for equality’s sake, or just trying to woo consumers?
The record-breaking transfer of the Brazilian superstar to French club PSG is part of much bigger plans by Qatar, which owns the Parisian club.
Guédelon, an attraction in Burgundy, recreates the Middle Ages in a way that aims to make visitors smarter while they’re having fun.
-Essay- PARIS — For a superficial observer, it is one of the lesser-known cultural revolutions and a rather trivial one at that: the dramatic shift in the Western physical ideal, in just over a generation, from one skin ideal to another, from one tone to another. It is what we in French call “bronzage,” similar […]
Large technology companies need to be stopped before they crush our cherished freedoms, argues a new book by two French economists.
Our ability to forget helps us to learn, make decisions … and remember a face. This seeming paradox has intrigued writers and led to important new research on how the brain functions.
The French city of Nice was torn apart by the terrorist truck attack that killed 86 and left 458 injured during national holiday festivities. Victims struggle to return to normalcy.
Why does France want to share its annual national party with a president that American history itself is already rejecting? In the UK, instead, a petition against Trump’s state visit has a million signatures.
AIX-EN-PROVENCE — Here, the vineyard traces the pathways of art. It usually is the other way around, whereby a well-known vineyard expands its activities (rooms for rent, a restaurant, exhibitions) to attract more wine buyers. But at Château La Coste, 15 kilometers from Aix-en-Provence in southeastern France, the cultural offer is so rich that people […]
Christian Assyrians have been targeted repeatedly through history — and found themselves under attack again by ISIS forces in Syria.
-OpEd- PARIS — It’s taken years for acts of violence carried out against French Jews to be recognized not as ordinary crime, but as the violent expression of a new form of anti-Semitism. By describing perpetrators as standard criminals, lone wolves or psychiatric patients, every possible effort was made to avoid acknowledging that in France, […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Will the digital revolution get the better of physical currencies, a cornerstone of trade since 700 B.C. and a key fixture of modern society and government? Whether using cards, transfers, or cellphones, paying for things is increasingly done without coins or bills. This evolution raises the prospect of a cashless society. But […]
Analyzing letters and testimony of ISIS terrorists shows how eye-for-an-eye arguments in defense of Muslim victims meld with monotheistic guilt and a mystic sense of destiny to become offensive weapons in the jihadist strategy.
Imagine what Donald Trump would do within a French-like government structure …
PARIS – Notre-Dame Cathedral continues to draw millions in the center of Paris. But how long before it starts to collapse? For now, at least, France’s most famous cathedral still stands tall and proud. But it’s not in great shape. Far from it. Pollution is eating away its stones. Detail work on the outside is […]
PARIS — New York City. 2022. The Big Apple is packed — with 44 million inhabitants — and roasting. Average temperatures are in excess of 30ºC. The metropolis is enveloped in a thick, greyish fog. Water is scarce. Fauna and flora have almost disappeared. Food produced from agriculture is a distant memory, alive only in […]
-Analysis- PARIS — The scene repeats itself. On the ground, bodies in blood, inanimate, unconscious or already dead, others staggering around frightened and haggard. Soon after, the sounds of sirens, as rescue workers and emergency medical care arrive. Later, we see the first faces of the victims, the identities of the killers. At the scene, […]
The sale of property belonging to Mr Trump in the French Antilles could become a problem.
Exploitation of so much data by artificial intelligence could lead to the automatic evaluation of individual employee performance.
-OpEd- PARIS — At first, there is that horrific sensation like something pushing on your chest with the tears that swell as we imagine the parents trying to reach their children and nobody answering on the other end of the line where a massacre has been committed. Then, there is the anger that becomes a […]
Shrouded in secrecy, the process for picking the winners is a mix of glamour and intrigue.
With Brexit woes dominating the UK and the fresh air of Macron’s victory in France, capitalistic economics in Europe may be turned on its head.
Nationalism was defeated in Emmanuel Macron’s victory. But the debate of the individual vs. collective has just gotten underway in France, and beyond.
France’s incoming First Lady is 24 years older than Emmanuel Macron, her husband and former drama student. How this unusual presidential couple is rewriting the rules of French politics.
PARIS — He wanted to be a writer. He’ll be president of the French Republic instead — what a tale to tell! The story of a young advisor to the king who, taken aback by his master’s powerlessness, somehow decides to replace him and try and conquer the Elysée palace, alone against the world, overcoming […]
Emmanuel Macron’s victory halts the blind assault against globalization, at least in Europe, if not the rest of the world. But the battle is far from over.
-OpEd- PARIS — Upon returning from exile in 1870, legendary French author Victor Hugo declared that “the instinct of the people always matches the ideal of civilization.” That very instinct swept away the worst among us in electing Emmanuel Macron as the new French President. And what a victory! Very few had thought he could […]
Worldcrunch’s Parisian co-founder knows from up close the challenges that France has faced. Only an open and united Europe can bring a better future.
-Op-Ed- PARIS — Several decades of weakness and/or blindness have brought France to where it is today. A deeply divided country, where two camps are facing off with an animosity rarely seen in its recent past. An unhappy France vs. a happy France, a France of privilege vs. a France of exclusion, France from on […]
In France’s presidential campaign, like last year’s race in the United States, protectionism is being used to woo the struggling working class. But workers would be its first victims.
COULOMMIERS — In the working-class outskirts of Paris, people are counting. They count the number of houses now occupied by people from an immigrant background. “There are four Arabs opposite my house, four others at the end of the street, on the right-hand side, and one Black guy to the left,” says 88-year-old Micheline, who […]
The French election coincides with the bicentennial of British economist David Ricardo’s seminal work. Never has it been more relevant.
A mix of arrogance, careful planning and fortuitous circumstances have brought the political outsider and youthful former economy minister Emmanuel Macron to the gates of the French presidency.
-Analysis- PARIS — Such a result was unthinkable just a few months ago: For the first time in the more than half-century history of the Fifth Republic, the top two vote-getters in the first round of the French presidential election — now qualified for the runoff next month — belong to neither of the country’s […]
Four candidates, including one from the extreme left and one for extreme right, are in a virtual dead heat ahead of Sunday’s election. But the problem runs much goes deeper than tight polls.
PARIS — A long line stretched in front of Hall 2 of the Bourget Exhibition Center on the outskirts of the French capital last Saturday afternoon, ahead of an annual three-day conference by the Union of Islamic Organizations of France. Fliers announced the topic of the upcoming roundtable: “Eleven candidates in the presidential election, who […]
After Trump and Brexit surprise victories with the support of disenchanted voters, the populist right-wing candidate in France is feeling supremely confident.