Worldcrunch
PARIS — The address is not by chance. Courbet, a jewelry designer that sells synthetic diamonds, has decided to open at the world’s most prestigious location for any jeweler: the Place Vendôme in Paris. Setting up shop at No. 7, becoming neighbor to establishments like Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, is a daring move, […]
A Chinese company recently bought nearly 1,000 hectares of French farmland. Pourquoi? ‘To put French cereals on Chinese tables,’ its owner says.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the May “68 uprising in France, a political and cultural touchstone in the West and one of the most memorable confrontations of the Sixties. OneShot has produced a series of videos with the French public audiovisual institute INA from their photographic archives of the “May “68” events. This episode shows some of the 3,000 riot police officers called in to tackle the student riots in the Latin Quarter on May 6, 1968. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/LZ-NpdTUlbE expand=1] May 68, Paris – The police (©INA/OneShot) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of […]
This month marks the 50th anniversary of May “68 uprising in France, a political and cultural touchstone in the West and one of the most memorable confrontations of the Sixties. OneShot has produced a series of videos with the French public audiovisual institute INA from their photographic archives of the “May “68” events. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/nVTelopE8_k expand=1] May 68, Paris – Banks (©INA/OneShot) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot: [rebelmouse-image 27068863 original_size=”320×320″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068864 original_size=”174×174″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068865 original_size=”128×128″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068866 original_size=”227×227″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068867 original_size=”256×256″ expand=1]
-OpEd- PARIS — At a time when nationalism is coming back to life across the continent, the pro-European activism of Emmanuel Macron is to be applauded. The emergence of a new sheen of European sovereignty, which the French president regularly calls for, would allow commercial, environmental, banking, digital or migration issues to be dealt with […]
Climate change is a real and alarming problem. But there’s another — and intimately related — ticking time bomb threatening our planet: overpopulation.
The violent protests that struck Paris last week weren’t the start of a new, 1968-style uprising. But people are angry and disillusioned. And that’s a problem.
Countries like France can either prepare, and make research into artificial intelligence a national priority, or allow themselves to become digital colonies.
PAU — Not far from this southwestern French city, up in the snow-capped Pyrénées mountains that tower in the distance, there are bears. Still, even the most intrepid human adventurer would be hard pressed to ever spot one. Researchers believe there are only about 40 of the omnivores in the entire, 490-kilometer long Pyrénées range, […]
The shift toward electric cars is picking up pace, but the road ahead has plenty of obstacles still.
-OpEd- PARIS — Public opinion was outraged, and rightly so, by revelations from the so-called Paradise Papers investigation and the publication, before that, of the Panama Papers. But no one ever questions the root causes of these tax scandals. It’s not enough to complain and condemn. We must deal with the root causes of the […]
Today’s terrorism is different, with a specific way of scripting the violence that echos popular culture. Of course, these aren’t actors. Especially, the victims.
The world has mostly embraced technological advances. But as fallout over the Facebook data-breach scandal suggests, the reaction could get nasty.
-Essay- PARIS — This is not news, but dating today is a completely different animal than it was even five years ago, as new apps keep arriving to create “matches’ between people online who may have never come face-to-face otherwise. Personally, online or off, the whole “dating” thing has never really been my strong suit […]
France will be marking 50 years since the month-long student uprising that challenged the establishment on so many fronts. But some historians now question whether it was really the birth of sexual liberation.
For decades, economists scorned protectionism as a losing proposition. Now some have begun to admit that not everyone benefits from open markets.
Sexually-charged images of women (and occasionally men) being seized and abducted abound in ancient and present-day artwork alike.
The new generations in the job market have a much more fluid relationship with their employer. How should HR respond?
Albert Camus’s iconic novel is a relevant today as it was when it first hit bookstores, in 1942.
PARIS — On any day of the week in Paris, my morning commute is interrupted by the word “Manifestation.” These political demonstrations and labor union protests occur with such frequency that I often barely notice the subject matter of the protest, hoping only to get to my destination within that window of acceptable lateness. As a black, disabled American, my entire public existence has been made possible because of the actions of the social justice and civil rights advocates who came before me. As we remember the life and solemnly mark the death of Martin Luther King Jr. on its […]
Rest assured, computers aren’t that smart. They lack common sense. Or so we assume: for if a computer could become conscious, how would we really know?
The targeted murder by a Muslim of an elderly Parisian Jewish woman connects hatred of Jews today to that of Europe’s past. And it’s not just in France.
French authorities agreed to help the U.S. crack down on tax evaders. But in doing so, people who just happened to be born on American soil face massive penalties and reams of red tape.
‘Other bombmakers who bought products like these…’
In a time of Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping, Europe represents a democratic ideal alone—respectful of both humanity and the planet. And Europe needs a revival of the Berlin-Paris alliance to make it possible.
PARIS — As we prepare to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the author of The Gulag Archipelago, his widow and intellectual accomplice, granted a rare and exclusive interview to Le Figaro. Natalia Solzhenitsyn evokes her husband’s gigantic literary and historical work in identifying the causes of the Russian tragedy. She recalls that […]
PARIS — At the Ritz palace overlooking the Place Vendôme, the “Ritz Burger” beaufort cheese, fries and a green salad is sold for 42 euros. At the Crillon bar, the chef’s mini burgers are sampled until 6 pm, for a cool 28 euros. A longstanding symbol of junk food, the burger seems to have found […]
I once visited a foie gras farm in southwestern France, years before goose liver became one of the world’s most controversial delicacies. Désolé, but foie gras still is a péché mignon of mine.
–OpEd- PARIS — The year is 2050. Cash has disappeared. People now pay for their purchases with their smartphones. And as in so many other sectors, Apple and Google are the big winners — along with Microsoft, who makes a small chip, which people implant under their skin to use as an electronic wallet. For […]
In the place of narcissistic and subjective dignity wrongly invoked by procreation militants, we need a return to the transcendent and objective dignity of human nature.
-Analysis- PARIS — With his new sweeping round of protectionist tariffs on steel and aluminum, it looks like Donald Trump has decided to extend to the economic field the “madman strategy” he had already applied to the Korean Peninsula. That was the take last week from former CIA Director David Petraeus. Developed by the Nixon-Kissinger […]
In the southern city of Marseille, actor Selman Reda draws on his personal experiences to explore the ins and outs of being Muslim in secular France.
Some of the stunning stained glass panels from France’s Cathedral de Chartres date back to the 12th century. And if I was able to see — and photograph — them, I’ve got to thank the people who had the good idea of removing and stashing them away during both World War I and World War […]
You just walked past a homeless man on the street, but you may try to help him if you see his story on social media.
-Analysis- PARIS — He is “a man of about forty-two years of age, of large build, but slightly round-shouldered. His massive head momentarily shook a shock of reddish hair, which resembled a lion’s mane.” This isn’t a description of Elon Musk, but of Michel Ardan, one of the characters in Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Michiel Van Aarnhem is a young and elegant advisor to the Dutch finance minister. He’s also an award-winning video producer. The educational video Bitcoin, Money of the Future?, which he made with his friend Jason Halbgewachs, a Justice Ministry official, took first prize in the European Central Bank (ECB)-sponsored Euro Video Challenge […]
PARIS — It all started with a video shot late last year on the banks of the Seine, between the Musée d’Orsay and Pont Royal bridge in the French capital. The video, which has gone viral around the world since first being posted by the daily Le Parisien, shows garbage collectors discovering with horror dozens […]
-OpEd- PARIS — At the Beauval Zoo in central France, visitors line up every day for a chance to glimpse at His Majesty Yuan Meng. The animal’s birth, on Aug. 4, 2017, was followed by 26 million people on social media. Baptized with great pomp and circumstance by French First Lady Brigitte Macron in a […]
France is the land of seduction, where relations between men and women can seem more harmonious, dating back to the Ancien Régime. Or is that a myth hiding a darker reality?
-OpEd- PARIS — A people brings glory upon itself up when it is able to confront the complexity of its history. On the contrary, it dishonors itself when it takes on a defensive posture with its past. In Poland, both houses of the legislature have now voted in favor of a law criminalizing any reference […]