Kholoud, a Sunni, and Nidal, a Shiite, got married in a civil ceremony, a first for Lebanon where sectarianism warns against loving the “wrong” neighbor. Now they have a baby boy.
Source: LE MONDE
This leading French daily newspaper Le Monde (“The World”) was founded in December 1944 in the aftermath of World War II. Today, it is distributed in 120 countries. In late 2010, a trio formed by Pierre Berge, Xavier Niel and Matthieu Pigasse took a controlling 64.5% stake in the newspaper.
Seven decades after Winston Churchill’s secret coterie of female spies were sent undercover during World War II, the United Kingdom is honoring their service and sacrifice.
SAINT-LOUIS — In front of the houses in Pilote Barre, tires inexorably creep up on a shoreline that is gradually disappearing. The tide easily swallows these futile rubber fortifications along the Senegal coast. Only the large stones seem to be able to withstand the assaults of the ocean, but for how long? For several years, […]
The Sochi Olympics are to Putin what Saint Petersburg was to Peter The Great. Freeing rivals, such as Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot, are one more step toward sealing his place in history.
BANGUI – Bibiane had a dreadful night. As torrents of rain came beating down on the capital of the Central African Republic, this 28-year-old mother, her two children, her parents and her seven brothers and sisters tried in vain to gather under a single canvas sheet, pocked with holes. Still, compared to the 35,000 to […]
PARIS — For the last few years, cheese has been at the center of a debate that is as gastronomic as it is economic and sociocultural. Facing increasingly strict regulations, many producers are concerned about the future of cheese made with ancestral methods, and the anxiety is particularly high in France and Italy, which each […]
One of the heartbreaking side-effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The last of the past century’s ‘counter-history’ leaders, Mandela represented the ultimate triumph over the destructive powers of the notion of racial superiority.
As France embarks on its third military intervention in Africa in the past three years, in the Central African Republic, a search for the sources of a continent’s perennial instability.
Because of outdated tradition and economics, 14% of Yemeni girls are married off before their 15th birthday. But since the Arab spring, a movement is growing to stop this.
LUANG PRABANG — As they say, the early bird gets the worm. Luang Prabang, the former royal capital of Laos and a UNESCO world heritage site since 1995, is one of those early morning cities — not necessarily calm, but where a walk at the crack of dawn is very satisfying. As early as 5 […]
PORT VILA — The small boat slices through the turquoise water that separates Efate from Pele — two of the 80-some islands that make up Vanuatu, a Melanesian archipelago in the southwest Pacific. Kaltuk Kalomor, Vanuatu’s Minister of Agriculture, is standing onboard, pointing out the receding coastline, a consequence of the rising sea level and […]
JOHANNESBURG — “As long as he’s alive, his family members still refrain, but you’ll see when he passes away …” Earlier this year, a man close to several of Nelson Mandela’s relatives told Le Monde of his fear that the unity displayed during the moments of reverence around South Africa’s global icon of reconciliation, would […]
BANGKOK — The situation that has taken over Thailand’s capital this past week has been, among other things, surreal. The government has been paralyzed after demonstrators occupied several ministerial buildings, and even entered, on Dec. 3, the complex where Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s offices are located. But below the surface, the upheaval is a political […]
Thanks to crunching masses of employee data, the field of HR and corporate personnel management will never be the same.
PYONGYANG — Mounted on the façade of the new Haedanghwa complex is a giant screen broadcasting slick propaganda messages. Just across the way, the “people’s ice rink” glimmers with its wavy modernist roof. On the opposite bank of the Taedong River, a dozen of 50-story-high residential buildings completed last year have helped give this area […]
Europe represents the freedom from political dictatorship. But at what cost?
ALEXANDRIA — It is filthy and squalid here, putrid air and the smell of sewage palpable amid the din and dust from the constant passage of heavy vehicles. Far away, beyond the silhouette of a refinery, the horizon is hardly distinguishable. It is from this shore, in the suburbs of Alexandria, Egypt, that Mohammed tried […]
With echos of the Truman Show, medical staff pose as neighbors and bartenders in this groundbreaking Dutch institution to treat dementia.
A Le Monde reporter takes us behind the scenes of Geneva’s marathon, high-stakes negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
LONG SINGU — Lost in the Malaysian forest, the village of Long Singu — on the Island of Borneo — is engaging in righteous resistence. Between 200 and 300 Penan people are refusing to leave their land to make way for the Murum dam. “We want to keep our village and our forest,” is the […]
People escaping the Communist bloc used to try to cross from Bulgaria into Turkey. Now, immigrants, including many refugees from the war in Syria, cross the other way.
CAIRO — “Have you seen this? The streets are so filthy, it’s disgusting!” Suzie Greiss doesn’t even live in one of Cairo’s notoriously poor corners, but rather in the middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, where the head of Egypt’s Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) says she can no longer stand the filth that […]
Different views on ecology, religion and the human body help explain a stunning boom in modern men and women choosing to be cremated instead of a traditional burial.
Police are monitoring traffic from a small wooden gatehouse in eastern Vientiane, on the outskirts of the Laotian capital. It was here nearly one year ago, opposite the Indian embassy, that 62-year-old Sombath Somphone mysteriously disappeared. The rural development promoter and farmers’ rights activist hasn’t been heard from since. On Dec. 15, 2012, Somphone was […]
Does the classification of tropical storms need changing? With sustained winds of 195 miles per hour, and gusts close to 235 mph, the super typhoon Haiyan, which left a trail of destruction in the Philippines and beyond, was the most powerful cyclone to make landfall in recent history. So much so in fact that some […]
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was smart to reject a pact that offered no long-term guarantees for Iran to dismantle its nuclear program. A Le Monde editorial.
When it comes to offering comfort and counseling to parents dealing with their Internet-era teenagers, the French government is shelling out major cash.
Babs tried and failed, so did the peeps working for Beyonce and even French President Francois Hollande. Once online, information beats to the sound of its own drum.
Though she knew she would never walk again, it didn’t mean she couldn’t climb.
IVRY-SUR-SEINE — The Plateau special planning district in this small town south of Paris could almost be mistaken for a regular construction site. Since 2007 the multidisciplinary artist Stefan Shankland has guided the construction of some 1,000 apartments according to an “action research” program launched by the city government and developed over the course of […]
As winter descends on Mongolia’s cold and polluted capital of Ulaanbaatar, toxic coal heating is turning on everywhere. An estimated one resident in 10 dies from the effects of pollution.
Worms, crickets and the like are showing up at fine European eateries. But this is not just a gastronomical fad, as population growth means finding new sources of protein in unlikely critters.
NADOR — Papa Africa carefully wraps his only possession, a cooking pot, in a cover. He then climbs up to the top of a tree to hang it. “It’s because of the police. When they come, they burn and break everything,” he explains as he jumps back to the ground. Next stop is the “Tranquilo,” […]
Often victms of human encroachment, these animals have been left without their mothers. But it is also humans who help teach them they can swing from branches.
Categories
Diary Of A Double Mastectomy
A Parisian breast cancer patient kept this journal in the week leading up to her surgery, and sent it to Le Monde.
PARIS — The loud complaints of European leaders castigating Americans as vile spies who are betraying their allies are quite surprising. Oh, of course, perhaps they felt obligated to say something while they debated together in Geneva about what the common EU reaction to U.S. spying should be. What is surprising is the seeming astonishment […]
NEW DELHI — He wears a badge, and his slightly wrinkled light blue uniform has epaulettes. But the security guard casually seated on a chair at the entrance to this jewelry store in a New Delhi mall, old gun in hand, doesn’t exactly look like the deterrent type. In the shop window, display busts have […]
ATHENS — Over the past three years, the European country most affected by the global economic crisis is without doubt Greece. Today, almost six in 10 young people are unemployed, 58.8% of those under 24. Many have also moved abroad since the country has struggled to recover from the recession. The “troika” (the International Monetary […]
Let’s call her Juliet. This young woman is one of the few who accepted to tell her story, under certain conditions of course: no mention of her name, not even her first name, of her studies or her former university. “During my Masters, the relationship between my thesis supervisor and I gradually worsened. At first, […]