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Tag: france
PARIS — How can we surf the web without using Google, Amazon or Facebook? French group Framasoft, which promotes the use of open-source software, offers a way. Under the “De-google-ify internet” initiative, the group uses decentralized software solutions to design tools that allow consumers to retake control of their data. Members of Framasoft are strong […]
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The Bigger Picture
The 1960s was a momentous period for the French island of Corsica, caught between opening up to tourism and dealing with a growing nationalistic movement. But in Ajaccio on that sunny spring day, it was just fishing business as usual.
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Le Figaro: Paris-Moscow Cold War
Le Figaro — Oct. 12, 2016 “Paris-Moscow: the big chill” writes French daily Le Figaro on its front page Wednesday a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin postponed his planned visit to Paris next week, amid rising tensions between Russia and France over the Syrian conflict. Tensions between French President François Hollande and Putin have […]
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No, The West Is Not In Decline
Europe, the United States and other parts of the so-called West may not be booming, but they’re not about to be superseded either. Quite the contrary, in fact.
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Judo Priest Floors Church Robber
“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe …” Father Bertrand, a Catholic priest and expert in martial arts, must have long meditated on this quote from Luke (11:21). And on Friday morning, the 48-year-old cleric finally had a chance to live the gospel. Father Bertrand was woken by […]
PARIS — Can we one day live in a world where there’s zero trash? A German chemist named Michael Braungart believes it is possible. He encourages companies to put a complete end to waste in The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability — Designing for Abundance, a book he co-wrote with U.S. architect and designer William McDonough. “The […]
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Parisian Prestige
The Sorbonne University, in the center of Paris, is the second oldest university in the world. No, not behind Oxford — behind Bologna. I took this shot of the Chapelle Sainte Ursule de la Sorbonne more than 50 years before my grandson and partner-in-crime went to one of the university’s branches, just a few hundred […]
In France, more than 23,000 people live in a room of smaller than nine square meters, many in the capital. But to rent out such small spaces is illegal.
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That Darker Paris Reality
SPOTLIGHT: A DARKER REALITY IN THE CITY OF LIGHTS Paris has always had a dark side. Uprisings, demonstrations, even revolution…the streets of Paris have been awash in blood time and again over the centuries. In far more recent months, terror attacks, floods and strikes have stamped the City of Light as the standing capital of […]
-Essay- PARIS — Will reality become a rare commodity? The digital revolution has given humans the greatest power — that of creating and manipulating reality. We make machines and algorithms that can imitate our world so well that they manage to deceive our brains. For example, Applied VR, a U.S. startup, offers a therapy based […]
British rocker Pete Doherty is signed up for a November gig, though other artists have opted out of playing in the venue where terrorists killed 90 people last year.
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Here Comes The Calvary
This stone calvary in western France’s Brittany region depicts scenes from the life and death of Jesus with incredible attention to detail — and someone on Wikipedia was kind enough to explain it all exhaustively.
Before this week, few outside of France knew his face. But no doubt, millions have been busy Google-Image-searching the name “Guillaume Canet.” Yup, bel homme. He is also an accomplished actor and director, and happens to be the husband of the already internationally known French actress, Marion Cotillard. And that, as you are disturbingly likely […]
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Legal Services Go “Uber” In France
PARIS — Technology is changing the way people secure legal services, turning clients into “consumers” by allowing them to bypass traditional law firms. Need help drafting that shareholders agreement? There’s an app for that — at just a fraction of the normal cost! The past few years have seen a boom, in France, of “legal […]
In the scenic Loire Valley southwest of Paris, a town was designated to accommodate the first center of “deradicalization” of Islamic extremists in France. Since then, the community in Indre-et-Loire has been consumed by anger and fear.
-OpEd- PARIS — In the northern German state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) defeated Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in local elections. In the United States, the Republicans chose Donald Trump as their candidate for the White House. The British voted for Brexit. Italians elected as mayors of Rome and […]
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Daily Bread, A Local Currency For Paris?
The French capital is weighing whether to issue its own unique currency. But can I buy a baguette with that?
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Our Ladies Of The Snow
The statue of Notre-Dame-des-Neiges (Our Lady of the Snow) marks the top of the Bavella Pass, in central Corsica. In this photograph, the serene but somewhat austere statue stands in stark contrast with our playful daughter Cécile posing under the road sign.
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Wedding Kiss — Video Quote Of The Day
PARIS — Breaking more than two years of public silence, actress Julie Gayet, the long presumed companion of French President Francois Hollande, appears on two major French magazine covers this week. Gayet has guarded her privacy after her affair with the French President was revealed in January 2014 in a gossip magazine while Hollande was […]
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Another Wall For The Road
“UK government has just gone full Trump.” The British announcement yesterday that the construction of the “Great Wall of Calais” is about to begin was bound to arrive at the feet of Donald Trump. Of course, the New York businessman is far from being the first, or the last, to have the idea of setting […]
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Shutterbug
With my RDA-made Exakta Varex camera, I tried my hand at some macrophotography. I processed the film myself in a home-made darkroom.
PARIS — Ten months after the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan concert hall, it is now possible to virtually “conquer” the tragic music landmark thanks to the latest distasteful twist to the augmented-reality mobile game Pokémon Go, which sends players to find and catch more than 100 […]
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Connecting The Dots, French-Style
The crew here at Worldcrunch is busy scouring the best foreign-language journalism in search of untold local stories and points of view from different countries: like this German story from deep in Bavaria or a Chinese op-ed about China’s Olympic performance. Sometimes, though, it’s also useful to zoom back out, and weave together the whole […]
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.
Terrorism and social networks contribute to the exacerbation of a general feeling of fear, as recent incidents in New York and the South of France have shown.
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 […]
Police officers probing the attack on a priest in the quiet northern French town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray were led to an unusual location in their investigation: Telegram, a messaging application that has 100 million active users worldwide. With both private and public chats, the application’s flexibility, as well as its policy on privacy, makes it attractive […]
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Presidential Bids And Baggage
France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his bid to become the Republican party’s candidate in next year’s presidential election. He did so despite his previous claim that he wouldn’t run again. (See our Extra! feature for more) Sarkozy will focus on tax and budget cuts, stopping economic migrants and “organizing Islam,” according to French newspaper […]
Libération, Aug. 23 Former right-wing French President Nicolas Sarkozy, 61, announced he’s running for the 2017 presidential election. “What is worse is that he may win,” leftist newspaper Libération lamented on its front page. The daily has a point: Socialist President François Hollande faces record unpopularity, making re-election an uphill battle if he plans to […]
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Rainy Reputation
Ask anyone in France about Brittany, and there’s a good chance they’ll tell you how bad the weather is in the northwestern region. Looks like blue skies to me!
MUNICH — Shortly after the 1985 hijacking of a TWA plane by a splinter group of the Shiite Hezbollah militia, Britain’s then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, blasted the media for its handling of the affair and called for a new code of conduct. If the press would simply stop covering terrorist attacks, she argued before […]
SPOTLIGHT: “PROVOCATIVE” FRENCH BURKINIS In France, like elsewhere in the Western world, summer is about going to the beach. Unlike elsewhere in the Western world, this summer it has also become about what women can and cannot wear at public beaches. In what has become a uniquely French flashpoint, so-called burkinis — swimsuits that cover […]
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.