Worldcrunch
WASHINGTON — In November 1968, a young Rhodes Scholar by the name of Bill Clinton was “mad as hell,” as he told a friend back in Arkansas in a letter penned from Oxford University. Clinton’s absentee ballot hadn’t arrived in time for him to cast his vote for the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, who lost […]
European rocket company Arianespace doesn’t get the attention of Elon Musk’s U.S.-based upstart SpaceX, but its approach may be better equipped for the long haul.
Did you know the funny yellow stuff was born in the land of beurre?
SUPER TUESDAY IS HERE Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are heading into the most important day of the campaign to date hoping to consolidate their leads as respective party favorites. It’s primary day in 12 different states, most of them southern, where Clinton is expected to benefit from support among minorities, CNN notes. SYRIAN TRUCE […]
PARIS — One of France’s state institutions is under fire for what critics call a textbook example of “biopiracy,” an issue that is also at the heart of a new bill the French Senate approved just last month. Last year, the country’s Research Development Institute (IRD) earned a patent on a molecule extracted from the […]
LUNEL — Tac trimmed his beard and cut his hair short. He also stopped wearing his long prayer shirt. After the Paris attacks in November, he thought, the police were bound to come looking for him. Even his family had gotten into the habit of calling him “Daesh” (acronym for ISIS) as a joke about […]
PARIS — Pinpointed strikes, carried out covertly: This is France’s strategy to face down the threat of ISIS in Libya. A senior French official has confirmed to Le Monde that “the last thing that should be done is to intervene in Libya. Avoiding any open military engagement, we must act discreetly.” In Libya where France […]
Libération, Feb. 23, 2016 “Calais: An Endless Jungle,” writes French daily Libération on the front page of its Tuesday edition, as hundreds of migrants living in the so-called “Calais jungle” in northern France are facing an 8 p.m. deadline to move out. The left-wing Paris daily describes the evacuation and scheduled dismantling of the southern […]
In the multiethnic French city of Marseille, the La Rouvière complex has its own unwritten bylaws.
Moroccan-born Osama Khallouf is a 20-year-old student with plans to become a full-time imam. As French mosques struggle to tamp out radicals, the likes of Khallouf are being nurtured and given on-the-job training.
U.S. AIRSTRIKES TARGET ISIS IN LIBYA A predawn U.S. airstrike targeted an ISIS camp in Libya, killing at least 30 members of the terrorist outfit, The New York Times reports. The operation, about 50 miles west of Tripoli, targeted senior Tunisian operative Noureddine Chouchane who is linked to two major terrorist attacks in Tunisia last […]
MONTCHEVREL — Hidden in the hills of the Orne department, in Normandy, is the village of Montchevrel, population 230, with its church, garage and, surprisingly enough, nightclub. On this Saturday night, the parking lot of the Tempo Club is full and the bouncer is welcoming: even the the people in T-shirts and sneakers, and the […]
From the Middle East to Europe and the United States to Asia, from geopolitics to economics, the world has fallen into widespread chaos. But there is cause for hope.
It’s never been easy to categorize people according to their origins, despite the hand-wringing of nationalist political parties. An American raised in France and married to an Italian explores how and why modern notions of nationality are troubli
Given our growing concerns about ‘traditional’ employment, some say paying people a basic living income should not be linked to work. The idea is appealing, but requires a leap of faith few politicians are willing to take.
Maya and Mehdi were seriously injured at Le Carillon café during the Paris attacks. Three of their friends (including Maya’s husband) were killed in front of them. Three months later, moving on is almost impossible.
“Trump Tells All,” reads the cover of this week’s edition of French right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles, which nabbed an exclusive interview with real estate mogul and 2016 Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump. “If I’d been at the Bataclan or one of the cafés, I would have opened fire,” Trump told the French magazine, when asked […]
Our connected lives don’t happen as if by magic. Nearly 99% of intercontinental traffic, such as Internet and telephone, is made possible by giant underwater cables buried deep on the ocean floor.
By the start of the 1970s, some new technology had made it to the bottling line of this cognac distillery in southwestern France. Nevertheless, production was still very much a traditional affair: The famous brandy must be distilled twice in copper pot stills and aged at least two years in oak barrels.
A feeling has spread through the popular consciousness: The collapse is near, we’re living on the edge of implosion. But there is another way to look at our complicated world.
Thinkers, writers, popular wisdom: your Quote of the Day from around the world.
There was a time not long ago when imperfect produce was discarded for its aesthetic shortcomings. But now concerns about food waste are giving some not-so-pretty products a new lease on life.
Hip hop performers, flamenco stars and ballet and classical dancers all have a peculiar tenderness for their feet, which aren’t just work tools but extensions of themselves.
PARIS — When Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made his momentous visit to Paris last week, an unlikely resident of the French capital was watching his every move. Farah Pahlavi, the 77-year-old widow of the Shah of Iran, told the Persian-language Kayhan newspaper she noted the irony “sitting hundreds of meters’ away from the Elysée palace […]
Amid fierce competition in the global film capital, a big movie chain opens an art-house theater in Paris that raises questions about the feasibility of independent cinema itself.
JAPAN THREATENS NORTH KOREA TO SHOOT DOWN ROCKET Japan deployed destroyers in the Sea of Japan and missile batteries on land today, warning it would shoot down a satellite set to be launched soon by North Korea, The Japan Times reports. Pyongyang told United Nations agencies yesterday it would launch an “earth observation satellite” some […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Defeated, the government doesn’t know what it wants! Defeated, the Socialist Party is again incapable of defining a clear line! Defeated, members of the center-right Republicans party are tearing each other apart as they seek to avoid the “trap” the Socialists are said to have laid for them. The staggering debate ongoing […]
BOKO HARAM TORCHES VILLAGE Islamist terrorists from Boko Haram razed a small village in northwestern Nigeria, bombing and setting fire to huts in a horrific attack that killed at least 86 people, officials say. A survivor hidden in a tree told AP journalists he could hear children screaming as they burned to death. The six-year […]
A European program has been researching how the pharmaceutical industry could use the peptides found in venomous creatures for new therapeutic medicines.
Following the first trip to Italy and France in 16 years by an Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani talks about terrorism, trade, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Car-sharing in France has gotten complicated. Though Uber was forced to shut down its amateur driver service UberPop, another app is antagonizing competitors by continuing to operate, and working with “suggested” prices.
French scientists have developed a new technology to read the long hidden portions of the French queen’s correspondence with Swedish royal Axel von Fersen, long rumored to be her lover.
Though the technology now exists to clone humans, and mercenaries are at the ready if allowed, most of the mainstream geneticist community points to other ways to get life-saving stem cells.
PARIS — Invited on French radio Europe 1, British actress and Oscar-nominee Charlotte Rampling has weighed in on the controversy over the lack of diversity this year among Academy Award nominees, saying that filmmaker Spike Lee’s call to boycott the ceremony was “racist against whites.” The 69-year-old English-born actress, famous for her movies in three […]
Researchers across the globe are trying to understand what drives the sense of martyrdom to which terrorists aspire. Complicating the explanations is the fact that these killers have a wide range of psychological profiles.
This looks like Rome’s Colosseum, but is actually the Arena of Nîmes in southern France. When I took this picture, archeological digging was still taking place in the Roman amphitheatre, which nowadays serves as a concert venue.
“The Jews’ great concern,” reads the Thursday headline in French daily Aujourd’hui en France, above an image of a man wearing a skullcap. It comes after a teenager attacked and wounded a Jewish teacher who was wearing the traditional headgear Monday in Marseille, southern France. France is debating whether it’s still safe for members of […]
The boom of platforms for freelance workers, on the Uber model, presages a world where the wage system will no longer dominate. This will require new social protections for the good of workers — and the economy.