Worldcrunch
-Analysis- PARIS — “Paris sera toujours Paris …” When French singer Maurice Chevalier first released the classic tune in 1939, the aim was to brighten the mood of the curfew-burdened French capital as war approached, assuring them that “Paris will always be Paris.” Fast-forward nearly eight decades and another kind of showman has been trying […]
Nice Matin, July 13, 2017 This year’s Bastille Day celebrations will have special meaning in Nice, as the southern French city commemorates the first anniversary of the July 14, 2016 attack when a truck driven by a terrorist plowed into a dense crowd gathered to watch the National Day’s fireworks. The city’s largest local daily, […]
Why does France want to share its annual national party with a president that American history itself is already rejecting? In the UK, instead, a petition against Trump’s state visit has a million signatures.
Such disreputable figures as Lance Armstrong and John Galliano, Bashar al-Assad and Manuel Noriega have gotten France’s highest honor. That needs to change.
AIX-EN-PROVENCE — Here, the vineyard traces the pathways of art. It usually is the other way around, whereby a well-known vineyard expands its activities (rooms for rent, a restaurant, exhibitions) to attract more wine buyers. But at Château La Coste, 15 kilometers from Aix-en-Provence in southeastern France, the cultural offer is so rich that people […]
Christian Assyrians have been targeted repeatedly through history — and found themselves under attack again by ISIS forces in Syria.
Hand Spinner Mag, July 2017 PARIS — Fidget spinners — or as they’re called here, “hand spinners’ — have made it to France. Originally created for medical purposes, to help autistic children with attention disorders, the device has become a worldwide must-have for summer 2017. France seems to have taken things to a whole other […]
-OpEd- PARIS — It’s taken years for acts of violence carried out against French Jews to be recognized not as ordinary crime, but as the violent expression of a new form of anti-Semitism. By describing perpetrators as standard criminals, lone wolves or psychiatric patients, every possible effort was made to avoid acknowledging that in France, […]
PARIS — I’m on the bus when “Proud to Be An American” pops into my head. Once it was Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved.” Another time, the Frosted Flakes cereal theme song. Nearly a year after moving to France, my brain keeps regurgitating America. I moved to the suburbs of Paris in September to […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Will the digital revolution get the better of physical currencies, a cornerstone of trade since 700 B.C. and a key fixture of modern society and government? Whether using cards, transfers, or cellphones, paying for things is increasingly done without coins or bills. This evolution raises the prospect of a cashless society. But […]
Analyzing letters and testimony of ISIS terrorists shows how eye-for-an-eye arguments in defense of Muslim victims meld with monotheistic guilt and a mystic sense of destiny to become offensive weapons in the jihadist strategy.
Imagine what Donald Trump would do within a French-like government structure …
PARIS – Notre-Dame Cathedral continues to draw millions in the center of Paris. But how long before it starts to collapse? For now, at least, France’s most famous cathedral still stands tall and proud. But it’s not in great shape. Far from it. Pollution is eating away its stones. Detail work on the outside is […]
PARIS — New York City. 2022. The Big Apple is packed — with 44 million inhabitants — and roasting. Average temperatures are in excess of 30ºC. The metropolis is enveloped in a thick, greyish fog. Water is scarce. Fauna and flora have almost disappeared. Food produced from agriculture is a distant memory, alive only in […]
PARIS — When the migrant crisis started spinning out of control in the summer of 2015, a deep fracture appeared inside the European Union, between countries willing to open their doors and countries ready to erect walls to block the flow of incoming migrants. The tension culminated in late September of that year, when the […]
-Analysis- PARIS — The scene repeats itself. On the ground, bodies in blood, inanimate, unconscious or already dead, others staggering around frightened and haggard. Soon after, the sounds of sirens, as rescue workers and emergency medical care arrive. Later, we see the first faces of the victims, the identities of the killers. At the scene, […]
“A Masterstroke,” “A Tsunami,” “The Takeover.” Newspapers in France summoned their best metaphors this morning to describe what already looks like a landslide — yes, another favorite electoral metaphor — in favor of Emmanuel Macron’s party in yesterday’s first round of legislative voting. Ahead of next Sunday’s second and final round, the new president’s party […]
The sale of property belonging to Mr Trump in the French Antilles could become a problem.
Exploitation of so much data by artificial intelligence could lead to the automatic evaluation of individual employee performance.
U.S. President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and seek a new deal. “The planet’s enemy,” a “coup against the future” — and even some barely printable expletives: Here’s how international newspapers reacted to the news Friday. UNITED STATES New York Daily News, a play on […]
-OpEd- PARIS — At first, there is that horrific sensation like something pushing on your chest with the tears that swell as we imagine the parents trying to reach their children and nobody answering on the other end of the line where a massacre has been committed. Then, there is the anger that becomes a […]
Shrouded in secrecy, the process for picking the winners is a mix of glamour and intrigue.
—Analysis— The simmering tensions between reporters and politicians in the U.S. have moved beyond the White House press room — and beyond just words. Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs was in the state of Montana on Wednesday to cover the hotly contested special election to fill a vacant Congressional seat. When Jacobs asked a question to […]
Right now, with the 70th edition of the annual Film Festival underway, those 24 iconic steps of the Grand Auditorium in Cannes are strictly off-limits to the general public. Just a few days before the 60th edition, the carpet was still blue and anyone could proudly mount those steps in whatever off-the-rack outfit they might […]
With Brexit woes dominating the UK and the fresh air of Macron’s victory in France, capitalistic economics in Europe may be turned on its head.
Nationalism was defeated in Emmanuel Macron’s victory. But the debate of the individual vs. collective has just gotten underway in France, and beyond.
France’s incoming First Lady is 24 years older than Emmanuel Macron, her husband and former drama student. How this unusual presidential couple is rewriting the rules of French politics.
PARIS — He wanted to be a writer. He’ll be president of the French Republic instead — what a tale to tell! The story of a young advisor to the king who, taken aback by his master’s powerlessness, somehow decides to replace him and try and conquer the Elysée palace, alone against the world, overcoming […]
Emmanuel Macron’s victory halts the blind assault against globalization, at least in Europe, if not the rest of the world. But the battle is far from over.
PARIS — Emmanuel Macron became France’s youngest ever elected president with a decisive victory over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen on Sunday. The arrival of the 39-year-old pro-European former Economy Minister was also hailed as a reversal of populist victories of Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in the U.S. FRANCE Libération Le Figaro […]
-OpEd- PARIS — Upon returning from exile in 1870, legendary French author Victor Hugo declared that “the instinct of the people always matches the ideal of civilization.” That very instinct swept away the worst among us in electing Emmanuel Macron as the new French President. And what a victory! Very few had thought he could […]
Worldcrunch’s Parisian co-founder knows from up close the challenges that France has faced. Only an open and united Europe can bring a better future.
-Op-Ed- PARIS — Several decades of weakness and/or blindness have brought France to where it is today. A deeply divided country, where two camps are facing off with an animosity rarely seen in its recent past. An unhappy France vs. a happy France, a France of privilege vs. a France of exclusion, France from on […]
PARIS — The hour is nigh. On Sunday, French voters, as well as abstainers, (expected to rise in numbers since the first-round ballot on April 23) will decide who, between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, will lead the country for the next five years. One way or another, their choice and its consequences will […]
-Analysis- Donald Trump makes a lot of noise. In the past week alone, he made headlines for saying he thought being president of the United States “would be easier” and for calling North Korea’s Kim Jong-un “a tough cookie.” But friends and foes alike have advised us to pay attention to what he does more […]
In France’s presidential campaign, like last year’s race in the United States, protectionism is being used to woo the struggling working class. But workers would be its first victims.
Climbing 400 or so stairs is all it took my wife Claudine and I to get to mingle with the gargoyles at the top of the Notre Dame cathedral, and enjoy an breathtaking view of Paris — including Montmartre and the Sacré-Coeur basilica. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
COULOMMIERS — In the working-class outskirts of Paris, people are counting. They count the number of houses now occupied by people from an immigrant background. “There are four Arabs opposite my house, four others at the end of the street, on the right-hand side, and one Black guy to the left,” says 88-year-old Micheline, who […]
Leftists in France will not vote Le Pen on Sunday. But will they vote Macron?
PARIS — Five days ahead of the showdown between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in France’s crucial presidential elections, Worldcrunch has asked Camille Langlade, a political reporter at the 24-hour French news channel BFMTV to share her experiences covering the non-stop action of national political campaigns, and more. This is the first installment in […]