WorldcrunchThis 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.
ALEPPO – As a man cleans his Kalashnikov, another next to him is peeling garlic for supper. At his feet, the assigned cook has left his pistol and his knitting, with the needles stuck inside – it is a striped scarf with the colors of the rebellion. A small fire is lighting up the walls […]
PARIS – Hurricane Sandy in the U.S., the tsunami in Japan or the eruption of the Eyjafjoll volcano in Iceland. Could the rising tide of such natural disasters be explained by man’s voluntary action? Could these cataclysms be triggered deliberately by the army, for political reasons? For years, these conspiracy theories, relayed generously on the […]
THESSALONIKI – Great defender of bears and forests, a winemaker who left the family business to launch his own high-end wine – Iannis Boutaris was an eccentric businessman. Since 2010, he is the atypical mayor of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city with a population of 800,000. In his seventies, Iannis Boutaris wears colorful suspenders; tattoos, […]
PAPEETE – Regardless of what geographers might say, there is a certain proximity between Tahiti and Iceland… The lush green rock dropped in the middle of the southeast Pacific Ocean might be a hundred times smaller than the chunk of windswept ice in the Northern Atlantic Ocean, but insularity is not about surface or latitude. […]
PARIS – The wine cellar of the French Presidential Palace – the Elysée – where President François Hollande now resides, is not that far from the command center of France’s nuclear arsenal. Its location remains just as much a mystery. Except for authorized personnel, it is impossible to visit the wine cellar, with the entrance […]
AGEO – Shigeo Iizuka still has the black-and-white photo of his little sister, Yaeko, stuck on the inside cover of his pocket diary. It was June 1978, when the 22-year-old suddently disappeared, taken from the bustling heart of Tokyo and transferred to North Korea to be used as a teacher of Japanese language and customs […]
CHAMONIX – Bruce Springsteen sang the song, but Lizzy Hawker was actually born to run. She just replaced the New Jersey rocker’s urban jungle for mother nature, open spaces, and most of all– mountains. Lizzy Hawker is the queen of ultra-trail running, an increasingly popular athletic and mystical sport. Ultra-trail running or ultra-marathon is any […]
PARIS – Boosting sales and maintaining the allure. Such is the challenge today for arguably the world’s most luxurious brand – Louis Vuitton. And that task falls to Jordi Constans, the former Danone food company executive, who is the new head of the largest subsidiary of the prestigious French LVMH (Louis Vuitton – Moët Hennessy) […]
DHARAMSALA – Sacrifice of life for Tibet. Under this scarlet red title, the giant poster displays photos of deceased Tibetans. The poster was put up on a steep road in McLeod Ganj, a village on the slopes of Dharamsala, home of the Tibetan government in exile, in northern India. The street leads to the Tsuglakhang […]
PARIS – Syria appears to be moving closer by the day toward the end of Assad’s regime. In Western countries, the debate on a military intervention to secure the country’s “hot zones” is gaining momentum. Until now, Western leaders have said that they would only support a military intervention if Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons. […]
PARIS – For Christmas this year, eight-year-old Thomas has asked for… a laptop computer, just so he doesn’t have to use his mother’s. Last year, when he was seven, he got an iPod. This Christmas will be characterized by society’s evolution toward high-tech gadgets; an evolution that has not bypassed children. For dozens of years, […]
-OpEd- PARIS – America is crying for its children. The country is in mourning, after the Connecticut elementary school shooting that left 28 dead, including 20 children between the ages of six and seven. President Barack Obama shed real tears as he was listing the number of recent shootings: “These neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and […]
DOHA – Jean-Pierre Moreau is growing flowers in the desert. Just 30 kilometers west of the Qatari capital of Doha, roses, gladiolus, chrysanthemum are blooming. At the request of Hamid Khalifa al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, the Frenchman produces four million flowers a year, with the help of 60 employees mostly from Nepal and India. […]
Children’s privacy is of particular concern in Europe, even as US tech giants line up to oppose any new laws that could force Internet “de-indexing.”
LENS – Matthieu Debas, the owner of the “Chez Cathy” bar, is peeling some potatoes for tonight’s French fries. Across the street, he can see the faint lights of the construction site. On Rue Paul-Bert, cars are zigzagging around heavy equipment, lit up by the lights of the diggers. As the inauguration date of the […]
NOUMEA – Stanley Jemes’ dream is to move back to Maré Island. There, he would grow sandalwood and yams, far away from town, “where everything is for sale.” On the island where he was born, Stanley would live with his family, like a tribe. “In Maré, we all live together. Here in Tindu, it’s everyone […]
GRENOBLE – Since she joined as staff at the Dojo Grenoblois — the judo and ju-jitsu club located in the heart of the housing projects of Villeneuve, south of Grenoble — Laëtitia Cardaci has gotten used to locking the door of the room where she gives her class in Japanese taïso exercise. For this bubbly, […]
PARIS – Everyone was expecting Mahmoud Abbas. Serious rumors claimed that, given his success at the UN, the president of the Palestinian Authority would head for Gaza, where he hasn’t set foot since 2007, when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a coup. In the end, the surprise came from Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’s exiled […]
Doctors are left “playing God,” having to choose which patient will get the costly treatment.
BIR JDID – The family dream was to move to a slum in Casablanca. Shantytowns are no longer as bad as they used to be, says the mother: “Everything there is well-planned nowadays.” She proudly lists out all the advantages of living there: “Electricity, sewage, waste collection, humanitarian organizations and even a mailman.” Every big […]
Christopher Tolkien gave his first ever press interview with Le Monde, shedding light on his father’s vision and sharing his own deep dismay with Hobbit director Peter Jackson.
TUNIS – Overnight, the name of their organization, Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), became famous. They were brought into the spotlight after the deadly attacks on several U.S. embassies that they were accused of organizing after the broadcast of the Islamophobic movie “Innocence of Muslims.” In 2011, in the course of just a few […]
CHANGSHA – When the Dazehu village chief told his constituents that a company was planning to build the tallest skyscraper in the world right there, in the swamps in front of the village, Mrs. Tan’s only reaction was: “All right then…” It takes more than that to overwhelm this 60-year old woman, who has become […]
MOGALE CITY – Patience Pumlangadu’s black skin is now a yellowish color. “I put this powder on my face to protect it from the sun,” explains the South African mother of three. Pumlangadu makes this sun protection herself by mixing water with bits of crushed rock she says are “good for your health.” But in […]
TOKYO – The conflict between Japan and China over the sovereignty of the inhabited Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in Chinese) is symptomatic of Tokyo’s diplomatic weakness. In its duel with Beijing, Japan appears isolated in its claim and abandoned by its allies. The United States announced that the islands were covered by the U.S.-Japan security treaty, […]
MADANG – Armed with thousands of test tubes, flasks, microscopes, mouth aspirators, gillnets and compressors, Olivier Pascal and Philippe Bouchet have arrived in Madang, their departure point for their new expedition in Papua New Guinea, which started last month. The botanist for an NGO, Pro-Natura International, and the zoologist specializing in mollusks at the National […]
PARIS – She has always wanted this kind of assignment. As far back as she can remember, Mireille Ballestrazzi, 58, has dreamed of a job where “adventure and exercising responsibility” would come together. In many ways, it has already been her mission for the past 30 years inside the French police force. But now things […]
PARIS – The file will be at the top of the pile on the president’s desk. It is the singular priority for the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA – a political hot potato, a diplomatic puzzle, and a strategic nightmare. It is stamped “danger,” “highly explosive,” and could mean a new war in […]
VIENTIANE – The feeling of lethargy still lingers in the streets of old Vientiane. Things, however, are beginning to change: the time for indolence is over. The capital of Laos, on the banks of the Mekong River, is brushing off its image as a sleepy, colonial market town by hosting the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) this […]
-Analysis- Barack Obama’s reelection to a second term in the White House is in spectacular contradiction to the trend in Western politics since the beginning of the current economic crisis. One after another, Western leaders have been dumped by voters who have made them pay for the effects of the crisis and the austerity measures […]
WASHINGTON D.C. – As the campaign draws to a close, the American people have been hit by a barrage of promises of a better, more civil future. The two candidates have vowed, even sworn, that they will work harder with the opposition. Mitt Romney mentioned it first in one of his advertisements and confirmed it […]
WASHINGTON – As Mitt Romney would say, it’s a particularly well-stuffed “binder full of women.” The 2012 vintage of candidates for public office is one of the best — at least in terms of quantity. More women are running for Congress this year than ever before. The newspapers are comparing it to the 1992 so-called […]
The future of Bhutan“s agriculture industry will be organic. The country, which mainly grows oranges, apples, rice and potatoes, had decided to become 100% organic in the next 10 years. Situated in the craggy foothills of the Himalayas, only 3% of the kingdom’s territory is actually farmland. However, 80% of the population of Bhutan, a […]
FEZ – Everyone should go to the Moroccan city of Fez at least once, if only to get lost in the medina, around the mosque of al-Karaouine, the oldest university in the world. You could choose to spend the hot hours of the day in the Bou Inania Madrasa, the religious school built in the […]
CHIRANG – “Around 50 of them came and opened fire on our village.” Rebayal Ali still seems stunned, his eyes glazed over. His vest clings to his skinny torso because of the humidity, as the Muslim farmer tells Le Monde of his night of terror. It was July 23 in his village in Assam, a […]
PYONGYANG – The austere, angular façade of the Taedongmun movie theater, surmounted by large statues depicting a worker, a soldier and a peasant, gives off an air of power and authority. The date of construction, 1955, is carved into the building, which stands close to Kim Il-sung Square, near the center of the North Korean […]
MONTREAL – She’d been preparing for this day for 30 years. On September 4, Pauline Marois became Quebec’s first Prime Minister, though her victory wasn’t as clear-cut as she’d hoped. As the leader of the Parti Quebecois (PQ), best known for its call for the independence of the French-speaking province, the 63-year-old told constituents during […]
CAIRO – Orwa Nyrabia is looking for an apartment in Cairo for a few months, just enough time to wrap his latest movie a month after being released from a Syrian jail. Nyrabia was arrested on August 23 in Damascus and held for 22 days. This 35-year-old filmmaker and creator of the renowned Dox Box […]
ATHENS – Everyone knows that Greece’s debt is spiraling out of control, but few know that the country is an oil producer, though its production is minimal: 2,000 barrels a day – 0.5% of just its own needs. During the 1980’s, however, Greece produced 30,000 barrels a day – 12% of its consumption – through […]
NEW DELHI – Who will be able to decontaminate Bhopal? During the night of December 3, 1984, a Union Carbide pesticide plant exploded in the north Indian city of Bhopal, releasing toxic gases that killed between 15,000 and 30,000 people. Nearly 28 years after one of the worst industrial catastrophes in history, toxic chemicals abandoned […]