Is the Islamization of Europe underway? In his dark novel “2084: The End of the World,” Algerian writer Boualem Sansal explores an Islamist world dictatorship. In this extract from an interview with Die Welt
Tag: france
Japan’s Nomura company thinks technology prices tell us more about currency comparisons than fast food.
PARIS — Never before had this kind of effort been so successful in France. In the span of two weeks, starting in mid February, an online petition to say “No, thanks!” to a proposed labor-reform bill collected a million signatures. The government decided, subsequently, to amend the imitative and put off submitting it to the […]
SPOTLIGHT: THE POWER OF NOT INFORMING With the increasing number of terror attacks in France comes an intensifying debate on the role of media coverage of the events. French news outlets have begun to ask whether spreading the identity of terrorists, who often are seeking some twisted sense of glory, feeds the problem. Reporting on […]
SPOTLIGHT: HOW TO AVOID A RELIGIOUS WAR A spate of terror attacks across western Europe continued yesterday as two assailants took hostages in a church in the northern French town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, killing an 86-year-old priest and injuring three others. The two men, who declared allegiance to the Islamic State, were shot and killed by […]
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Roses And Chirps
Too bad slides can’t convey the sounds and odors of a given time and space. Coming across this image from Paris, I can still hear and smell the flower and bird market on the Île de la Cité where my wife Claudine and I were taking a walk one day.
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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.
SPOTLIGHT: A FRENCH HERO AND THE REST OF US When a murderous truck hurtled down a promenade in the French city of Nice last week, slamming into innocent bystanders and leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake, a 49-year-old man riding his scooter nearby threw his life on the line to stop […]
A video circulating showed a desperate attempt by someone on a scooter to stop the runaway truck in Nice. Most figured the scooter driver was dead. Here’s his story.
With the third major terrorism attack on French soil in 18 months, the question “Why France?” is another way to measure the stakes that apply to us all.
France is not only a target for ISIS. The country must also admit that terrorism profits from its internal fractures.
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Corsican Siesta
On a warm Spring day at the southern tip of the French island of Corsica, it was time to go home and take a siesta.
Tourists can take a trip through time—and across the French-Italian border—in the 75-meter Monte Viso Tunnel, a footpath originally built during the Renaissance.
NICE — There are still more questions than answers three days after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a 20-ton truck through hundreds gathered to see the Bastille Day fireworks on the city’s waterfront, killing 84 people and injuring more than 200, before being shot dead by police. Still, a portrait of the 31-year-old divorced father of […]
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After A Long And Awful Weekend
SPOTLIGHT: WORLD IN PIECES, A LONG WEEKEND The long and awful weekend began late Thursday night, local time here in France. At the end of the Bastille Day national celebrations, the southern coastal city of Nice turned into yet another scene of unspeakable horror. It is the same sad plot, different script for a country […]
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Flying The Italian Flag
This Arlecchino belonged to a band from Bergamo that had made the trip to my native eastern France. Parading in the streets of Montbéliard, this character from the Commedia dell’arte was participating in the folk singing and dancing festival organized by the choir I used to conduct.
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, […]
NICE — It was a cool atmosphere, the fireworks were impressive, kids tossing pebbles in the water — and the Promenade des Anglais was packed full. Just like every other Bastille Day. I had chosen to spend the evening on the beach around the High-Club, where the Promenade becomes pedestrian. As soon as the show […]
NICE — After Thursday night’s horror come the questions. Along Nice’s Promenade des Anglais, people gather to tell their stories and understand how such a tragedy could have happened. Franck Sana is a postman in Nice, and he was working on July 14th. His wife and children went to the beach in front of the […]
Following attacks in Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, and now Nice, Europe must unite to combat the Islamist terror campaign.
SPOTLIGHT: TOLL RISES IN NICE ATTACK, AS TERROR HITS FRANCE AGAIN Terror struck the French Riviera last night, as revellers and tourists gathered on Nice’s famous Promenade des Anglais to watch the fireworks display on Bastille Day. Around an hour before midnight, a truck drove through frantic crowds for almost two kilometers, killing more than […]
NICE — For the third time in 18 months, France has been hit with a major terrorist attack. Scores of people were killed Thursday night in the southern French city of Nice when a 31-year-old Tunisia native drove a truck into crowds of people who had gathered for a July 14 holiday fireworks show. Here […]
-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, […]
PARIS — For more than three years now, the French startup Qwant has been trying to prove that a search engine can be efficient and profitable while respecting the privacy and anonymity of users. After a slow and difficult start, Qwant is finally taking off. Six months ago the search engine had 8 million visitors. […]
SPOTLIGHT: FRENCH CONSOLATION France needed this win badly. It has been a grim 18 months, with major terrorist attacks, a crippled economy and record floods, and the country yearned for the kind of unifying victory that sports can provide. And so an edgy kind of optimism reigned ahead of kickoff at the European Soccer Championship […]
Jornal de Notícias, July 11th “IT’S OURS!” reads Monday’s front page of Lisbon daily Jornal de Notícias, featuring Portugal’s national soccer team celebrating their victory at the Euro 2016 tournament, with coach Fernando Santos lifting the cup. Claiming its first ever European title, Portugal beat host country France 1-0 at Paris’s Stade de France, on […]
Cooked in Asia for centuries, this protein-rich marine plant is making its way onto our plates.
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 […]
Le Canard enchaîné first ever and latest front pages France’s legendary satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné is celebrating its century-long existence, and the Internet is not about to write its obituary. “The Chained Duck” — canard is both French for “duck” and the slang for “newspaper,” — was first published on July 5, 1916. On […]
Power & Revolution, a simulator that mirrors real world events, is used by some countries to select potential diplomats and train them.
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Easy Way Up
To get from the foot of the butte Montmartre to the Sacré-Cœur basilica in Paris, you can either go up the 300 stairs or, since 1900, buy a ticket for the funicular.
-Analysis- PARIS — It’s a company like any other, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. Except that in the BeMyApp offices, you’ll hear a dinosaur screech and a stream of puns. Jokes that fail to get a laugh are taxed. Employees and managers put 20 cents in a jar. It’s the “bad joke tax.” “Me, […]
-OpEd- PARIS — The year 2015, an annus horribilis if there ever was one, will remain etched in people’s memories for the violent acts committed in the name of religion, of murder perpetrated in the name of Islam. Faced with the threat of terrorism, we’ve adopted new security measures for the long term, and that’s […]