WorldcrunchFrance’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.
NEW YORK — He spent his youth surfing on the beaches of Leblon, Rio’s most affluent neighborhood. He also had a certain talent for tennis, having been crowned national champion five times, participated in Wimbledon and two Davis Cups. This could have been the accomplishment of a lifetime — but for Jorge Lemann, it was […]
PARIS — Opendesk.cc is an original website in more ways than one. First of all, its domain name in .cc is that of the Coco Islands, but also means Creative Commons, a license system used by those who believe in sharing “open source” material. Indeed, this concept of “free material” is also part of what […]
The UK’s second-largest city has struggled to reinvent itself for the post-Industrial age, but it’s now looking to thrive as a startup hub known as the “Silicon Canal.”
France lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in facing fundamental changes to the nature of work. The old model dominated by wage labor just can’t compete.
PARIS — First there was the campus. Next up Facebook city. The size of the “Zee town” project Mark Zuckerberg announced in February surprised many: For an estimated $200 billion, the king of social networks plans to build what will essentialy be an entire town — a 200-acre development in California’s Silicon Valley featuring supermarkets, […]
ROUEN — Coming out of the train station, the rue Jeanne d’Arc, a wide street along the river Seine in this northern French city, leads us straight to the Jeanne d’Arc bridge. And between the two, we pass many signs evoking the young warrior’s name: a cafe named “Jeanne d’Arc,” a church, of course, even […]
Young adults between 18 and 25 are an increasingly vulnerable population in France. Jobless and rejected by their families, they are finding themselves on the streets in disturbing numbers.
-OpEd- PARIS — Some say that television shows are to our time what serials were to 19th century literature, an inexhaustible source of entertainment and conversations. During “urbane dinners,” it has become obligatory to demonstrate knowledge of this new cultural front. “Tell me which shows you watch and I’ll tell you who you are.” Besides […]
The anonymous author has penned a new book, but lives in fear of reprisal for her writings that celebrate female sexual pleasure and castigate “Arab arrogance” and subjugation of women.
Bad urban planning, pollution, corruption, the Indian megapolis offers lessons on exactly how not to run your city.
SIMFEROPOL — One year after Russia annexed Crimea, oyster farmer Sergey Koulik is exultant about both the future and the past. “Russian Crimea means new markets, more business and state funding,” he says. “Crimea’s return to the mother country is a good history lesson for all of Europe.” Koulik owns the only oyster farm in […]
-OpEd- PARIS — With just days to go before the Israeli election, it becomes increasingly difficult to predict who will win the race. The latest polls show the center-left Zionist Union candidates Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni leading over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling Likud party. Of course, the country’s proportional system means […]
The second highest-paid DJ in the world, a celebrity with 17 million Twitter followers, is currently touring the world. The hedonist sits down with Le Monde after a concert in Brazil.
Animals have many of the characteristics of the brilliantly useful machines scientists would like to create: flexibility, adaptability, instinctive intelligence …
Lilou, 32, lives a double life as a married mother of an infant and libertine blogger. Her endless string of lovers are shared on Twitter, with pictures as evidence. And her husband?
-OpEd- PARIS — There’s something both pathetic and surrealistic about France’s obsession, at the moment, with a rather unremarkable economic reform bill (the “loi Macron“) while to the east and to the south, in Ukraine and Libya, real threats are edging closer to our continent. It’s time to wake up! Twenty-five years after the fall […]
MARSEILLE — Have you met Pepper? This four-feet-tall emotion-reading robot is expected to hit stores soon in Tokyo, where technology lovers will be able to acquire one for the equivalent of $1,650. The child-faced robot, the latest invention of French start-up Aldebaran, was created to “live alongside humans.” But household chores such as vacuuming or […]
In 2010, French police seized a huge stash of previously unseen Picasso drawings at the home of the late artist’s electrician. Were they gifts or stolen goods? An ongoing trial will decide.
A hard European retort to an attitude that extends from Silicon Valley to the White House, which says that the United States’ dominance in new technology should give it free license abroad.
Western medicine had abandoned the use of viruses with the advent of antibiotics. But now promising, non-chemical options are emerging in the fight against bacterial infections and some types of cancer.
A record 53 French police officers committed suicide last year. The Courbat, a health facility, treats officers suffering from burnout, depression and alcoholism with a very specific therapy.
Novelist and Nobel laureate J.M.G. Le Clézio welcomed the resolve of millions of his fellow Frenchmen uniting against terrorism. But he’s ready to ask the uncomfortable questions.
After the Greek election of radical leftists and the European Central Bank’s new liquidity, Europe is still where the rest of the world looks to understand themselves. History has so much to say.
Wine-loving France used to be a beer haven too, before shrinking to just 22 breweries three decades ago. Today it’s up to more than 700 microbreweries, even if industrialists continue to dominate.
Most carmakers know that the real money isn’t in the car itself but in its parts and components, which are increasingly high-tech. Those who invest in development will win the revenue game.
The increasingly authoritative stances of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Erdogan are only isolating them inside their own countries and on the global stage.
In France, the sacrosanct freedom of speech is cited over the offensive images of Islam’s prophet Muhammad. But the same standards have not always applied to anti-Semitism.
Following a Sunday that may have restored our collective faith in humanity, the hard work for France and all of Europe begins in earnest. Will the rare burst of unity last?
After the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, the reaction in Paris is raw: war has been declared on the values of the French Republic. First order of business: know your enemy.
The “devs” who code our digital world are so rarefied and vital they can dictate their own terms. Companies do anything to recruit them, but like birds, they tend to fly. A look at this singular species.
Though Google’s new technology was once hailed as revolutionary, product disappointment has set in and technology watchers are predicting that Google Glass is doomed.
French researchers have made significant discoveries that lead them to believe that a vaccine is imminent. It would target the protein that allows the HIV virus to multipy.
The French may never abandon the notion of mealtime as sacred, but it seems they love their crumpets and chips. France is now the second-largest importer for British food products.
RIO DE JANEIRO — The sign outside this modest hair salon in the Rio das Pedras favela, or shantytown, of Rio de Janeiro reads “Belos Fios” (“beautiful hair”). Inside, customers can find Matrix hair color products stacked behind the salon’s two only chairs. This is just one of some 30 small salons, most of them […]
Four decades after abortion became legal in France, too often women face moral judgment and physical pain, not to mention unsympathetic health care professionals.
Hong Kong’s umbrella protesters have all but conceded defeat, and China is taking a victory lap. The showdown offers a glimpse of Beijing’s new use of smart power, and its deeper weaknesses.
One in three people around the world is overweight, and the ratio is growing. “Globesity” investors see that airlines, hospitals, car companies and others must adapt to meet the expanding needs.
PARIS — The stage is set in the middle of the vast, empty and decidedly cold shed of the Halle Freyssinet, a building formerly used as a shipment hub for trains and trucks near the Austerlitz railway station in Paris. After the presidential lectern is installed, with French and European flags in the background, in […]
Amid the mayhem of civil war, huge money is to be made from stealing and selling archeological treasures from Iraq and Syria. ISIS ambitions are fueling an already huge black market.
Japan has slipped into recession, the ultimate mark of failure of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ambitious but misguided efforts to turn around the nation’s economy.