After being arrested by French police during a school field trip, then deported with her family to Kosovo, 15-year-old Leonarda has become a symbol of Roma everywhere.
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.
SHANGHAI — The annual rush in Apple stores all over the world started Sept. 20 when the Cupertino, Calif.-based company released its new iPhones 5S and 5C. Outside Fifth Avenue in New York, the queue was the longest in store history. Similarly, in China, people went en masse to buy the latest smartphone, but for […]
PARIS — Will the yuan dethrone the dollar one day? The Chinese currency may have just moved a step further in that direction with the October 10 signature between the European Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China (the country’s central bank) for the establishment of a “currency swap” mechanism. The terms of the […]
IWAKI — Our meeting with one of the “liquidators” of Fukushima’s power plant takes place in a discreet location, out of sight. Talking to journalists is risky, and the man’s nervous employers could use it as a pretext to fire him. “It’s the same thing for workplace accidents — there’s a collective solidarity,” he says. […]
GENEVA — The resumption of talks this week on Iran’s nuclear program will provide a clear opportunity to verify Hassan Rouhani’s true intentions. During his charm offensive at the United Nations General Assembly at the end of September, the new Iranian President, a moderate religious figure, surprised many by meeting with French President François Hollande, […]
Al-Mouadamiyah’s ordeal is not over yet. After being one of the targets of the Aug. 21 chemical attack, this stronghold of the Syrian rebellion, located in the southwestern suburbs of Damascus, is now facing such a severe siege that its inhabitants are starting to starve to death. According to local sources, nine people have already […]
SAINT-GIRONS — Jean Benazet is still in shock. In the early morning of Sept. 9, he discovered 30 of his sheep lying motionless at the bottom of a cliff. It was clear right away that they had all fallen to their death. He and his herd had been spending the season in the summer pastures […]
VATICAN CITY — There’s a joke going around St. Peter’s Square: Next thing you know, to comply with his ecclesiastical vows of poverty, the pope is going to put the Vatican up for sale! That day hasn’t yet arrived, but the idea speaks as much to Pope Francis’ unpredictability as to his now famous acts […]
SILAH — The men entered by the window of Silah’s police station. There were maybe 60 of them, their unmasked faces easy to recognize since they all live in the small town. “Average citizens, aged between 18 and 45,” one policeman says. That mid-August day, these “average citizens” set about sacking the station, taking radio […]
PARIS — “Camille, watch out! Your hair!” Myriam calls to her 7-year-old daughter as she leans against the wall, temporarily crushing her blond ringlets, curled with an iron and hair-sprayed early in the morning. Though it’s Saturday, mother and daughter have woken early to leave their home in northern France by 8:30 a.m. They are […]
MUMBAI — At the height of the Mumbai rush hour, boarding a train is about as easy as finding a comfortable position in a rugby scrum. On the overcrowded platform, those wearing glasses carefully tuck them away in their cases before taking a deep breath and pushing into the compact crowd of passengers until they […]
ARRANMORE — The battle is not totally over, and total victory remains uncertain. But the fishermen from Arranmore have managed to make Brussels sway. This handful of diehard Irish fishermen is slowly managing to lift Europe’s fishing ban, which has been stifling the economy of this remote island for the past seven years. Arranmore is […]
-Editorial- PARIS – Once upon a time, there was a Republic that knew how to overcome ideological differences. It was largely governed from a certain middle ground, a magical place and the matrix of what political art can produce in its most intelligent and, often, noble form: reform by compromise. This Republic of yore could […]
YUTZ — Use a digital tablet in gym class? You might smile, but in room A101 of the Jean-Mermoz Junior High in northeastern France, the visitor today is Luc Di Pol, whose job title for the regional education authority is digital supervisor for physical education. Here in the mostly rural French department of Moselle, Di […]
PARIS — As French lawmakers consider new legislation that would make it a crime to pay for sex, it’s becoming clear that we tend to know very little about the clientele of prostitutes. Based on the few reports that have been published on the subject, between 12% and 18% of men (and less than 1% […]
SCHILTIGHEIM — We didn’t see the big grey sedan coming, before it had stopped in the middle of the parking lot in the downtown shopping center. There are a dozen little boys killing time between the parked cars, drinking soda and talking football. Welcome to the Marais housing project in Schiltigheim, on the outskirts of […]
– Editorial- PARIS – Should the three massacres perpetrated this past weekend in Kenya, Pakistan and Nigeria be approached separately? The incidents would appear to be unrelated, but all is not so simple. In Nairobi, it took nearly three days to finally end the Westgate siege after al-Shabab, a Somali terrorist group, began their attack […]
CEYLANPINAR – Instantly, spoons stop stirring in teacups and conversations freeze mid-sentence. A mortar has just been heard a few hundred meters from the main street of Ceylanpinar, a small Turkish town on the border with Syria. Through the window, everybody can see a cloud of black smoke rising up from Ras al-Ayn, the Syrian […]
LIMA — Why are more and more Mashco-Piro native Indians who have always lived in deep isolation in the Amazon jungle being spotted around inhabited areas? This question is worrying Peru as never-before-seen photographs of the tribe emerged in August. “We usually get a glimpse of them once a year, but their appearances have been […]
LONDON – Double-parked cars causing a traffic jam, mothers in a rush, a supervisor watching the gate: the usual end of a school day in South London. Except that the school is Iqra VA, a Muslim primary, and all the mothers are wearing the veil. Five of them even wear a niqab, the full veil […]
GAIBANDHA DISTRICT — In remote areas of Bangladesh, the Internet can arrive in unpredictable ways. Take for example, Shathi, who rolls into a small village, ringing the bell on her bike – and soon the kids are running to tell their parents, screaming “Hello! Hello!” And so the women of the village come out of […]
NEW DELHI — The findings of India’s first linguistic census in a century were unveiled earlier this month. Of the 850 languages identified, 300 had never previously been documented, and nearly 200 are considered at risk of extinction because they have fewer than 10,000 speakers. The Sept. 5 ceremony took place at the Gandhi memorial […]
BEIRUT — Meeting for a drink, Lina, Ali and Johnny at first blush seem like normal young people enjoying a pleasant social gathering. But there is also heartbreak behind what has brought them so far from their homes in Damascus. Friends since childhood, these upper middle-class Syrians gather at one of their usual cafés lining […]
CAIRO — The show had just started. It was one of those debates that the new private Egyptian channels love to produce: Viewers can call in to denounce a terrorist, live on air. In front of his television, Yasser was listening to the host describe an “individual who seriously affects the image of the country.” […]
Though Russia’s proposed diplomatic solution casts doubt over a U.S. military strike in Syria, Lebanese fear being caught in the middle if the fire spreads across the entire region.
Not prone to emotional effusiveness, the Finnish have developed a particular taste for euphemisms: “Naturally, this is a day of big change for Finnish industry,” Premier Jyrki Katainen affirmed modestly last Tuesday, when the country’s best-known company, Nokia, sold its mobile phone outfit to Microsoft for $7.2 billion. That is about 15 times less than […]
A strange thing has happened on the way to the war in Syria: U.S. public opinion, like in Turkey, has lined up this time alongside Europe’s perennial reflex against intervention.
A study has identified the online encyclopedia’s most controverial topics by language. Ironically, the study may also offer clues for all about how to resolve conflicts.
Exhibitions in Matisse’s favorite French town provide new and informative contexts for the artist’s work. Given his fame, that’s no small feat.
Categories
When Rabbis Lie
A psychological portrait of Gilles Bernheim, France’s former Chief Rabbi, disgraced last spring in a scandal of plagiarism, a bogus philosophy degree and deep human denial.
President Hollande has the power to strike militarily without parliamentary consent. But democratic and political necessities require it.
French President Hollande has been in step with U.S. calls to strike Syria. Now with Obama’s request for a Congressional vote, France is left flapping in the wind.
BEIJING – Is recess time over for China’s whistleblowers? Are we seeing the beginnings of a crackdown on this group of influential bloggers who have contributed to exposing corrupt public officials over the past few months? These digital activists and journalists had believed their crusade had the implicit backing of the central government after new […]
“I would not call it a war, but the sanction of a monstrous violation of human rights,” the French president tells Le Monde.
Gang fights, clandestine excavations, a thriving black market for cigarettes. In post-Mubarak, post-Morsi Egypt, life and violence go on for the people of Bab El Bahr Street.
GUIPAVAS — In the Jacques Brel retirement home in Brittany’s town of Guipavas, Marcelle Plougoum looks at Jean-Noël Michel tenderly. They first met in a medical center for senior citizens, and have loved each other for three years in this modern residential community surrounded by gardens. “We stay together all the time,” Marcelle explains. “Being […]
Though Kurdish Syrians have largely avoided any involvement in the country’s civil war, they are now caught in the middle and fleeing in droves. A visit to the refugee camp in Iraq.
Spat on and kicked out of his job running a top Cairo theater company, Tamer Abdel Moneim, a bona fide *fulul*, says he’s proud he always stuck by the deposed former strongman.
RAMNICU SARAT — The door closes, hinges grating like a desperate man’s lament. Only a single sunbeam manages to make its way through the bars of the prison cell. A few minutes in this long, heavy silence and one can imagine the daily life of a prisoner, locked up inside a two-square-meter cell. In eastern […]