The weakening power of the “Mother of Europe” comes at a bad time for both Germany and the rest of the continent.
Source: LES ECHOS
France’s top business daily, Les Echos covers domestic and international economic, financial and markets news. Founded in 1908, the newspaper has been the property of French luxury good conglomerate LVMH (Moet Hennessy – Louis Vuitton) since 2007.
History mostly knows him as the disgraced architect of the Vietnam War, but McNamara first made his mark in the corporate world with his mastery of numbers before it was as fashionable as it is today.
It is a philosopher’s job to debunk prejudice and foregone conclusions. But isn’t there also a duty to not ignore the facts? A look back 15 years later from a prominent Paris thinker.
The past few months have left a feeling of an ever less stable future. But a clean defeat of the Republican in November is the quickest way to bring back some order to the world.
The EU Commission is taking a tough stance on tax evasion, as shown with the 13 billion euro bill leveled at Apple.
In big and small companies alike, security risks have entered a whole new era.
CHINON — Serge Desazars’ bodyguards are very hairy. Hip-Hop, a two-year-old Springer, jumps whenever a new visitor arrives. Serge lets out a smile, surreptitiously materializing on the unemotional farmer’s face. Hip-Hop is clearly too playful for this former international director for the clothing brands Petit Bateau, Céline and Holland & Holland. Desazars, who abandoned carpeted […]
Since its creation, the Hebrew state has adapted to a permanent terrorist threat, thanks to a dynamic model of which the central elements are intelligence and the involvement of the civil society.
Categories
The Apple-Samsung War Turns 10
The two tech giants are engaged in an all-out struggle for market supremacy. Samsung may sell more smartphones, but Apple generates more profit. Where will each turn next?
The virtual hunting game Pokémon Go, for which players have to walk and walk in search of monsters and objectives, has just taught the eHealth sector a valuable lesson.
Japan’s Nomura company thinks technology prices tell us more about currency comparisons than fast food.
In 2002, the major southern city gave developers a decade to revitalize 138 old villages as part of China’s rapid urbanization. Almost 15 years later, only four have been revamped, and the last holdout residents still refuse to leave.
Categories
Why Plato Would Hate Instagram
PARIS — This summer, like every year, we’ll take more and more photos. We’ll send selfies and snapshots, any and all kinds of pictures and videos. Like 64% of French people recently surveyed, we’ll take photographs of the meals we’re about to eat at restaurants. These tens of billions of shots will be added to […]
How should we react in the face of the threat of Islamist terrorism? It’s a fine line to walk between the double threat of jihadism and our own worst instincts.
PARIS — Arnaud Danjean, member of the European Parliament for the French opposition party Les Républicains, spoke to Les Échos about the aftermath of the Nice attack and France’s ongoing fight against terrorism. Les Échos: Every attack evokes a feeling of powerlessness, especially in the wake of one as “low-cost” as the one in Nice, […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Call it the “glorieuse incertitude du sport” — the glorious uncertainty of sports. During the finals of soccer’s just completed 2016 European Championship, Portugal saw its singular star Ronaldo taken out of the game after an injury, but won anyway against a favored host French team that had overcome its eternal nemesis, […]
BEIJING — Beijing recently announced that it would start to recognize a selection of French wines in China, a country where counterfeiting of prominent French wine brands is common. The announcement, made at the G20 agricultural ministers meeting in China, is a victory for France. China will now recognize 45 Bordeaux wines that have the […]
PARIS — Try to imagine that an intelligent robot is out to kill you. It remembers all your passwords and has access to all your data. Equipped with facial recognition technology, it can identify you wherever you go, even though you have no idea what it looks like. This nightmare is actually possible. Drone assassins […]
PARIS — The two French visitors just couldn’t get over it. “Why were you wrong again?” the elderly English lady asked them with a severe, inquisitive tone. The woman, Queen Elizabeth II, should have had other things on her mind. It was April 21, 2026, after all, her 100th birthday, and the whole planet seemed […]
The once Great Britain has just gotten smaller. But Brexit has also rendered the meekness of the European project evident to all. And the big players like the U.S. and China will eat them for lunch if something doesn’t change quickly.
-Essay- BERLIN — “No other place recalls so vividly the fragility of democracy in Europe in the 20th century.” On the streets of Berlin, passersby may notice this line etched on a building plaque in German, French and English. It can be found in the finance ministry complex that used to house Nazi Germany’s Ministry […]
MOSCOW — He is described as the Russian equivalent of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. After launching VKontakte, Russia’s biggest social network, a decade ago, Pavel Durov has more recently become one of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest, if ever discreet, opponents. Forced into exile after quarrels with the Kremlin, he is never where you’d expect him […]
With the help of its Russian partner, Novatek, and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), French energy giant Total has created an uprecedented liquid natural gas plant on the frozen Yamal Peninsula, some 370 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
France has long been an innovator in building materials, from the steel splendor of the Eiffel Tower to concrete to surprisingly resistant wood. Environmental factors hold sway.
From ancient religions to contemporary ecology, dire warnings that the end of the world is upon us are not only false — they bring a damage of their own.
“The city is a complex form for which there exists no equivalent in nature…”
PARIS — Imagine securing a loan in just minutes — without having to visit a bank, fill out complicated paperwork, sit down with a loan officer. What if it could all be done with a few clicks on a smartphone? For some consumers and small businesses in the United States, China, the Philippines, Mexico and […]
For the first time in 70 years, Americans have a chance to vote for an outspoken protectionist from a major party. How did we get here?
Whether it’s about Syrian refugees, Syria or Iraq, the truth is sometimes better left unsaid. It all depends on the country in which it is said. One thing is certain: In these troubled times, censorship and self-censorship are thriving.
A book published recently by French writer Pascal Bruckner cuts to pieces the taboo of money in French society. For him, it’s one of the barriers French needlessly impose on themselves.
In the best case, take Socrates as your instructor.
For the last several years, South Korea’s capital has made the sharing economy a priority, funding a citywide initiative that has enabled dozens of startups to emerge. But they are still struggling to export.
A recently inaugurated mega-mosque near Washington D.C. is one of many the Turkish government has built in an effort to extend its influence and tout a moderate model of Islam.
A heat map from French tourism professionals, forced to rethink where to send eager would-be globetrotters in the face of new and old security threats.
A few decades ago, researchers dreamed of creating a machine capable of thinking as well as, or better than, humans. As the world becomes increasingly specialized, artificial intelligence can undermine the art of perspective.
In Japan, the yakuza traditionally controlled vice businesses and demanded shakedowns. But as their dwindling numbers are hunted down by the authorities, the mobsters are trying to reinvent themselves to survive.
PARIS — Does the Arab world party? The answer is yes. That’s also true in France, where the North African community doesn’t deprive itself of pleasures or amusements, and where raï music — contrary, perhaps, to the general public’s perception — is alive and well, albeit in a sphere of its own. The music used […]
Why this time it’s different — and maybe much worse.
By next year, there will be three times more connected objects than humans on earth, all containing information that can be mined to improve public services, benefit consumers and boost economic growth.
PARIS — We’ve hardly made peace with the idea of driverless cars, and now we’re being told that artificial intelligence could also control rifles, missiles and bombs of the future. The warning was issued last summer by leading figures such as Tesla chief Elon Musk, physicist Stephen Hawking and MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. During July’s […]