Worldcrunch
PARIS — Emmanuel Macron became France’s youngest ever elected president with a decisive victory over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen on Sunday. The arrival of the 39-year-old pro-European former Economy Minister was also hailed as a reversal of populist victories of Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in the U.S. FRANCE Libération Le Figaro […]
-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 […]
SÃO PAULO — In the nearly two years since it was formed, Unicorns FC, an amateur soccer team in São Paulo made up exclusively of LGBT players, only recorded one crisis: when a player, disappointed with a teammate’s performance, said “soccer is a man’s sport.” For the club, it isn’t — it’s a sport for […]
PARIS — The hour is nigh. On Sunday, French voters, as well as abstainers, (expected to rise in numbers since the first-round ballot on April 23) will decide who, between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, will lead the country for the next five years. One way or another, their choice and its consequences will […]
Germany’s jet set loves this island and yet we have it almost all to ourselves. What makes Sylt so special?
-Analysis- Donald Trump makes a lot of noise. In the past week alone, he made headlines for saying he thought being president of the United States “would be easier” and for calling North Korea’s Kim Jong-un “a tough cookie.” But friends and foes alike have advised us to pay attention to what he does more […]
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.
Around the world, local water shortages are a very real sign of the effects of climate change. Drought conditions in certain areas of India have recently left some cities reeling, leading to new political tensions. Meanwhile, last weekend, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Washington, D.C. and around the United States to demand […]
CHIBA — Researchers are collecting 3D data of Buddhist statues and other cultural assets at a university here on the eastern outskirts of Tokyo in order to store the stereoscopic information in case of the objects’ deterioration or theft. The graduate school research laboratory at Chiba University is recording the 3D data, which is also […]
Climbing 400 or so stairs is all it took my wife Claudine and I to get to mingle with the gargoyles at the top of the Notre Dame cathedral, and enjoy an breathtaking view of Paris — including Montmartre and the Sacré-Coeur basilica. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
More and more people in Muslim-majority countries are opting out of their marriages. And often it’s the woman who decides to end things.
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 […]
Leftists in France will not vote Le Pen on Sunday. But will they vote Macron?
BEIJING — Authorities have carried out a series of raids on beauty salons in the Chinese capital in an effort to crack down on counterfeit Botox, The Beijing News reports. Botox is popular in China, where many young women aspire to have a thin V-shape face. But the high price of injections, which require regular […]
An Italian reporter gets a rare glimpse past the North Korean regime’s attempt to portray the country in a positive new light.
Like much of the rest of the country, Syria’s fourth-largest city, Hama, has been left victim of the brutal civil war repeatedly over the past six years. Still, its most prized antiquities, these big Byzantine-era norias that keep water turning, are still standing. The same, sadly, cannot be said in Palmyra. See more slides from […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Here in France, one learns that the first step to flipping a crêpe is to ensure the batter is cooked all the way through. Only then can you shake the edges loose, and with a flick of the wrist, flip the crêpe high in the air. The kitchen of foreign diplomacy has […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — Late last summer, my wife and I took a ferry from Doolin, on the West coast of Ireland, to Inishmore, the smallest of the three Aran Islands. The tiny ferry, with perhaps no more than 30 or 40 people aboard, was filled with mostly European passengers.The ocean was rough; a short trip […]
A project in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second biggest city gives women from the rival Alawite and Sunni communities a chance to work together.
-Analysis- “This bull is a bull and this horse is a horse,” Spanish-born painter Pablo Picasso once said of his iconic 1937 painting Guernica. Eighty years later, the horrifying depiction of the Spanish Civil War bombing of a Basque town — history’s first attack from the air on a civilian population — stands as one […]
Dr. Zee, as he’s known, is an Amsterdam-based researcher who regularly invents new drugs. And they’re legal — at least until authorities identify and then ban the experimental substances.
In Pakistan, men dominate public life. There are very few occasions women can enjoy being out by themselves. But now there’s a place in Karachi that’s giving women the opportunity to enjoy a long-awaited cup of tea.
-Analysis- Buenos Aires, 2013. At the ripe age of 76, Jorge Mario Bergoglio seems destined to wind down an illustrious career in the Catholic hierarchy as the widely respected and mostly beloved Archbishop of the Argentine capital. But the Holy Spirit (and the College of Cardinals) was destined to intervene, sending the Jesuit prelate to […]
The French election coincides with the bicentennial of British economist David Ricardo’s seminal work. Never has it been more relevant.
COPENHAGEN — In the picturesque Danish capital, it’s easy to overlook the men lying on public benches with a beer in hand, or assume they’re immigrants from Southern Europe. Listen carefully, though, and you’ll notice that they speak fluent Danish, a task almost impossible for foreigners. These men, it turns out, are Danish citizens; indigenous […]
Photography works in mysterious ways. This frozen moment of some graceful Bulgarian folk dancers in Varna somehow looks terribly clumsy. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
-Analysis- WASHINGTON (Indiana) — This city of 11,000, nestled among a handful of low hills rising from table-flat Hoosier farm fields, is 680 miles from the other Washington, but the cultural and political divide may be even greater than the geographical distance. Solidly red Indiana backed Donald Trump by 57% to Hillary Clinton’s 37%. Voters here in Daviess County went for Trump over Clinton by 79% to 16%, more than the 74 % who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and the 67% who supported John McCain in 2008. Indeed, Daviess, tucked into the state’s southwestern toe between Illinois and […]
El Nacional — April 27, 2017 CARACAS — The embattled government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has raised the stakes on both the domestic and foreign front. At home, the death count continued to climb as the state responded to anti-government protests, a scenario Caracas-based daily El Nacional“s Thursday edition characterized as “Brutal Repression.” Most […]
MARRAKESH — It is a 21st-century Parisian experience par excellence: You turn a cobblestone corner or exit some quaint square and come face-to-face with a small, tiled alien critter pasted on the wall of a Haussmann-era building. That is the work of Invader, the French-born street artist who claims to have been educated by alien […]
-OpEd- SAO PAULO — One of the biggest lies in modern politics is the belief that freedom is a universally-shared passion. It isn’t. Freedom implies a burden of responsibility not everyone is willing to bear. In this school of thought, I believe Thomas Hobbes was right: People fear violence, scarcity and death. The majority, therefore, […]
French journalist digs up troubling comments from 17 years ago by Jean-François Jalkh, who was just tapped to head the National Front party ahead of the May 7 presidential election.
-Analysis- PARIS — Someone, somewhere will probably call this fake news. Reporters Sans Frontières, a Paris-based organization for the protection of journalists and free expression, released its latest annual World Press Freedom Index this morning, and … little good news to report. The Index, which tracks criteria like harassment and violence against journalists and laws […]
El Correo, April 26, 2017 The front page speaks for itself. “Guernika,” Wednesday’s edition of Spain’s El Correo reads, with the Basque spelling of Guernica displayed in bold red letters against a black background.
A Colombian NGO is hoping football could turn former communist guerrillas into peaceful citizens — and maybe even sporting stars.
-Analysis- Today Donald Trump will deliver a speech at the Holocaust Memorial Museum for the National Day of Remembrance. Safe to say, there will be prepared remarks, which neither Trump nor his top spokesman will write. This is no occasion for Trump’s verbal freestyling. Meanwhile, it was Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who two weeks ago […]
The city of Fatehpur Sikri, founded in 1569 near Agra, served briefly as the capital of the Mughal Empire before it was abandoned, mainly for water scarcity reasons, only 16 years later. It’s one of India’s best preserved ghost towns. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
ZURICH — The determined look of Mambo Mhozuyenikono (not his real name) contrasts with the nonchalance of the other students who wander, trays in hand, around the cafeteria at the University of Zurich. For this 23-year-old from Zimbabwe, enrollment here is a privilege rather than an obligation — not something to be taken for granted. […]
-Analysis- LIMA — Peruvian historian Javier Puente’s latest research includes some very interesting maps. The first (and most extensive) covers the area affected by drought as a result of the El Niño weather phenomenon between 1982 and 1983 (when it was unusually intense). The second, relying on data from Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee, shows […]
-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 […]
PARIS — After France’s two main political parties fell short in Sunday’s first round voting, next month’s second round will feature a showdown of centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Macron, 39, of the brand new En Marche ! party came in first with 23.7% of the vote, while Le Pen […]