Hip hop performers, flamenco stars and ballet and classical dancers all have a peculiar tenderness for their feet, which aren’t just work tools but extensions of themselves.
country: France
Stay 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.
Amid fierce competition in the global film capital, a big movie chain opens an art-house theater in Paris that raises questions about the feasibility of independent cinema itself.
-Analysis- PARIS — Defeated, the government doesn’t know what it wants! Defeated, the Socialist Party is again incapable of defining a clear line! Defeated, members of the center-right Republicans party are tearing each other apart as they seek to avoid the “trap” the Socialists are said to have laid for them. The staggering debate ongoing […]
A European program has been researching how the pharmaceutical industry could use the peptides found in venomous creatures for new therapeutic medicines.
Following the first trip to Italy and France in 16 years by an Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani talks about terrorism, trade, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Car-sharing in France has gotten complicated. Though Uber was forced to shut down its amateur driver service UberPop, another app is antagonizing competitors by continuing to operate, and working with “suggested” prices.
French scientists have developed a new technology to read the long hidden portions of the French queen’s correspondence with Swedish royal Axel von Fersen, long rumored to be her lover.
Though the technology now exists to clone humans, and mercenaries are at the ready if allowed, most of the mainstream geneticist community points to other ways to get life-saving stem cells.
Researchers across the globe are trying to understand what drives the sense of martyrdom to which terrorists aspire. Complicating the explanations is the fact that these killers have a wide range of psychological profiles.
The boom of platforms for freelance workers, on the Uber model, presages a world where the wage system will no longer dominate. This will require new social protections for the good of workers — and the economy.
Since the Jan. 7, 2015 killings, many humorists have been struggling to tackle the question of Islamic terrorism, security and freedom of speech. Most are undeterred.
On Jan. 7, 2015, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi gunned down most of the Charlie Hebdo staff. It should have been a wakeup call that the number of radicalized Muslims in France is increasing at an alarming rate.
Long relied upon to rally against the far-right National Front party, young French people are increasingly seduced by the ideas of Marine Le Pen. Terrorism isn’t the only reason.
Since the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris, reams of new government safety measures and orders have been issued to schools, where teachers say the atmosphere is tense and their responsibilities overwhelming.
The fate of our personal data after death has become both a legal and economic issue. Online businesses such as Facebook and Google want to be able to monetize even dead users, while some families who want to erase accounts may find it problematic.
Both private and public French organizations are trying to strike the right balance between respecting beliefs among Muslim employees and keeping company welfare in mind.
PARIS — No country has yet decided to send anyone to Mars. But private-sector initiatives reported by the media — and the global film industry — suggest that things could change within the next decade. If nothing else, such efforts are proof of our collective impatience to see a new stage of space exploration and […]
It causes cancer, harms the planet and is cruel to animals, which is why meat consumption has steadily declined in the West. Some have become vegetarians or even vegans, but there is one much more modest alternative that is spreading.
-Editorial- PARIS — The electoral surge was on scale with the threat at hand: The rise in turnout from the first to second rounds of France’s regional elections was so strong that it prevented the conquest of several regional governments by the far-right National Front party, which tallied the highest number of votes in its […]
Western powers must share in the blame for its historic role in the Muslim world, from Napoleon Bonaparte to George W. Bush. But without the Arab world taking its share of responsibility, the chaos will not quiet any time soon.
Heaps of flowers, candles and other memorials to the Paris attack victims still remain on sidewalks and in front of businesses where tragedy struck Nov. 13. Locals understand the desire to pay homage, but say limits are needed on visible reminders of the
“Saving the Planet” isn’t enough. Activists must begin to think about other ways to push people towards an ecological approach to life.
The very essence of intelligence is that it’s human, and can never be recreated by something artificial.
BANYULS-SUR-MER — Up on these hillsides, vineyards descend steeply, almost falling into the blue waves of the Mediterranean. The soil is hard, and plowing is done by hand. But local winegrowers in Banyuls-sur-Mer and the neighboring towns of Port-Vendres, Collioure and Cerbère, just north of the border with Spain, wouldn’t have it any other way. […]
PECS — When they first took the plunge two years ago, farmers around Pécs may have only seen it as a way to improve profit margins. Certainly nothing wrong with that. But as time went by, their foray into alternative energy production turned out to be much for this group of 50 pioneers, who live […]
A return to national borders, a fight against radical Islam, a rejection of the EU and its asylum policies. France’s Far-Right National Front leader Marine Le Pen answers questions in the wake of the Paris attacks, and ahead of Sunday’s re
-Analysis- France is at war! Perhaps. But at war against whom, or what? The Islamic State (ISIS) isn’t sending Syrians to commit attacks in France in order to dissuade the French government from bombing it. ISIS instead is tapping into a pool of young radicalized French who, whatever happens in the Middle East, are already […]
To both improve cities and conquer markets, companies are turning to urban simulators with the interactive power and graphics of video games.
PARIS — France, the host of the COP21, has in its hands the most vital mission it has ever been entrusted with: spare humanity the irreversible disaster that would come from a two-degree rise of the globe’s average temperature by this century’s end, compared to the pre-industrial era. There will be no second chance. We […]
Though 146 countries have pledged to fight global warming ahead of the UN’s COP21 conference, market realities and other forces means such commitments are unlikely to materialize.
Inside the de-radicalization program that began last year in France to undo the indoctrination that pushed young Muslims toward extremism.
PARIS — Colonel Eric de Lapresle had never seen anything like it. Since this month’s Paris and Saint-Denis terrorist attacks, the French Armed Forces recruitment services have received some 1,500 requests for information per day. That’s three times more than before Nov. 13, says de Lapresle, the head of marketing and communication for French military […]
An EU report issued to member states seven years ago offered an eerily accurate warning of what was to come — that areas affected by global warming and political tension (Yemen, Syria, etc.) would be vulnerable to destabilization.
Research suggests that sustained terror attacks over time deal a crippling blow to economies, but a single act of appalling violence, like the Nov. 13 attacks in France, may have fewer lasting effects than one might think.
The killers and victims of the Paris violence are part of the same demographic, though they share different realities. Authorities haven’t heard the angst, but rap has been telling us for years how little the two groups share.
In the wake of wanton terror, psychology replaces practically everything, from social life to and information. Emotion is now political — and strategic.
-Analysis- PARIS — The Nov. 13 attacks that saw jihadists slaughter at least 129 people in Paris raise two crucial questions: Who ordered these attacks? And who carried them out? The answer to the first is ISIS, the so-called Islamic State that spreads terror, slaughters Muslims and non-Muslims, destroys treasured monuments inherited from centuries and […]
After the attacks in Paris, Marc Simoncini, the founder of Meetic, asked French entrepreneurs living abroad, sometimes for fiscal reasons, to come back to France.
PARIS — France’s intelligence services no longer rule out what not so long ago seemed unthinkable: the emergence on its territory of a “Lebanon-like” terrorism which would see suicide bombs replaced one day by the deadliest of operational modes — truck or car bombings, possibly activated remotely. “We have to accept the reality,” a well-informed […]
There are signs that the reaction to Friday’s massacre may unite the country, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in a more lasting way than the Charlie Hebdo attacks did in January.