Worldcrunch
From abortion to euthanasia, chimps’ rights to legal marijuana, here are some bioethical controversies currently making headlines around the world: FRANCE: THE RIGHT TO DIE A video uploaded on the Internet this month has sparked a new controversy in the case of Vincent Lambert, a 38-year-old French man in a neuro-vegetative state since a 2008 […]
My partner in crime, le petit-fils (grandson) Bertrand, is following in my footsteps and touring the Southeastern United States. During this hiatus, take a look back at all the places we’ve already been in My Grand-Père’s World …
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has a plan that sets a strict 18-month deadline for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to find a lasting accord. If not, he says France will recognize Palestine nationhood anyway.
From the top of the cathedral’s towers, the Notre-Dame gargoyles — designed by genius Gothic Revival architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc — have been watching over the roofs of Paris, the Tour Saint-Jacques and the Sacré-Coeur since the 1840s.
Libération, June 17, 2015 “Thou Shall Not Pollute” is written in stone on the front page of Libération, as the world awaits tomorrow’s release of the final version of Pope Francis’ much-anticipated environmental encyclical. The Pope will call for changes in energy consumption, according to a draft version of the encyclical which leaked four days […]
Some film distributors are choosing to release movies directly online without theater screenings. Because of cinema regulations, this new model is forbidden in France — for French movies — but foreign films are another matter.
This is how they used to farm oysters on the Île d’Oléron in western France: using tiles as cultch for the mollusks to attach to. This kind of traditional method has since largely disappeared.
PARIS — Are you bored at work? Do you stare blankly at your screen wondering what to do with the rest of your day? No doubt, you are a victim of “boreout,” which describes persistent boredom and disengagement in your work. What causes this listlessness and how can you solve it? Frédéric Méduin, a physician […]
Medievalist, novelist, and renown public intellectual, Umberto Eco’s most recent novel Numero Zero will be published in English this November. A regular contributor to Italy’s L’Espresso magazine and La Repubblica newspaper, his new work of fiction delves into the truth and lies of the mass media. He spoke with Le Monde. LE MONDE: Do you […]
In his first year as president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has shown surprising rhetorical flair, even as he consistently sends contrasting messages.
Fashion tides are always changing, and as the weather warms, comfort is in for both ladies and gentlemen.
After centuries of disagreements over the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad, the split between Islam’s two main schools of thought is more apparent than ever, as the two theocratic regimes of the Middle East are increasingly hostile towards each other. “Shias, Sunnis: Why is Islam torn apart?” the French newsweekly L’Obs writes on Friday’s cover. […]
AL-QAEDA HAS “COLLAPSED” The al-Qaeda terror group has been “cut off and ripped apart by ISIS,” two of its most important spiritual leaders told The Guardian. Abu Qatada and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi said that al-Qaeda has been drained of recruits and money because of territorial and influential losses to rival ISIS. Al-Maqdisi said its organizational […]
PARIS — Eternally nostalgic of its past grandeur, France is already dreaming about the prospect out loud: Platini! As an attacking midfielder, he led France to the 1984 European Championship and Italian squad Juventus to club dominance, before turning manager and overseeing the 1998 World Cup organization in France and eventually taking over as head […]
Filmmaker Diasteme’s new movie suggests links between neo-Nazis and France’s third largest party the National Front. He says cinemas are now dropping the film.
“Scandals, lawsuits, and bankers chase him. What of it!” writes French news weekly Marianne in its cover story this week. “Nicolas Sarkozy has but one goal: take back ultimate power on the “Republican” ticket.” The former president of France has rattled observers across the political spectrum with his initiative to rebrand his center-right party, the […]
Europe’s immigration crisis has also been gathering under a Metro overpass in the French capital. Officials have now acted, but that hardly means there is a solution.
Though their conclusions have been criticized as racist and fatalistic, a group of researchers argues that civil wars are more likely in countries where there are vast genetic, and therefore aesthetic, differences among populations.
HUNDREDS MISSING AFTER CHINA SHIPWRECK At least 400 people were missing this morning after a Chinese ship carrying 458 passengers and crew was hit by an apparent cyclone and sank in the Yangtze River late yesterday, Chinese news agency Xinhua reports. So far, there are only 15 to 18 survivors, and just five bodies recovered, […]
Traveling by car for more than 50 years, you develop some habits: One of them was that for lunch, we’d wander off the beaten path and picnic somewhere nice. Too bad this stone table we call dolmen, in the South of France, was a little bit too tall for us.
Many international cities have adopted broad, bicycle-sharing systems that have become hugely popular. Early adopting French cities are now studying the bill.
For maladies from stress to unexplained itching and bulimia, hypnosis is increasingly establishing itself as a therapeutic tool among bona fide medical professionals.
With the choir of traditional folk singing I was part of, we went to many national — and international — gatherings of groups of singers and dancers who were trying to preserve their local cultural heritage. I took this picture of these two Cannettes with my very first camera, an Exacta Varex.
VILLENEUVE D’ASCQ — Envelopes and calendars, decorative stickers, headscarves, prayer rugs and small copies of the Koran: Samia el-Alaoui Talibi, 54, has her car’s trunk packed full of gifts. A trained mathematician, she’s one of the only Muslim women in France to work as a prison chaplain. The presents she brings are for the convicts […]
Libération, May 19, 2015 “I won’t be Charlie Hebdo anymore, but I will still be Charlie,” the cover headline in Tuesday’s Libération reads, quoting Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Luz, who has decided to leave the staff. Libération has hosted Charlie Hebdo since the January terror attacks that targeted the weekly, killing 12 of its employees. In […]
Every year, he watches 1,800 films and rejects 1,750. Inside the life of the Cannes Film Festival’s almighty power broker.
Libération, May 13, 2015 “Let the party begin!” The 68th Cannes Film Festival kicks off today and it looks like it’s going to be a hard one to choose from for jury co-presidents, American filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. In its cover story, French daily Libération notes with a splash of irony that there […]
Sentenced to 18 years in prison, Franck fought to undergo a sex change operation with hunger strikes and endless mutilations. Chloe is now a free woman, and married to her former cellmate.
I have a pretty decent wine cellar back home. It’s underground, so there’s no light and the temperature is constant. It’s just a little bit too humid, meaning that I sometimes have a hard time deciphering the labels. So who knows, I may still have a bottle from that time I went to the town […]
A filming accident left French equestrian stuntman Bernard Sachse paralyzed below his tenth vertebra. But his career is busier than ever.
The French son of an Auschwitz victim and German daughter of a Hitler supporter spent their lives confronting Nazi crimes, from capturing Klaus Barbie to a symbolic slap of a German Chancellor.
-Analysis- PARIS — As pharmacists look to the future, the first thing they should bear in mind is that the health market is growing as it never has before. But it’s also just as true that consumer habits are changing. People are better informed, more demanding and more prone to self-medication. All of those are […]
Bags, pouches and purses are among the world’s oldest fashion items, used through the ages for carrying seeds, weapons and eyeliner. A history of this most indispensable adornment.
In our always plugged-in era of uber immediacy, some of us are willing and eager to wait ages to buy the latest smartphone or eat a certain hamburger from a truck.
PARIS — Opendesk.cc is an original website in more ways than one. First of all, its domain name in .cc is that of the Coco Islands, but also means Creative Commons, a license system used by those who believe in sharing “open source” material. Indeed, this concept of “free material” is also part of what […]
EMERGENCY EU SUMMIT AFTER MIGRANT TRAGEDY European Union leaders are holding an emergency summit in Luxembourg to discuss a common response to the ongoing migrant crisis. But the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini warned ahead of the meeting that there was “no easy solution, no magic solution,” the BBC reports. This comes just one […]
They call themselves the “Barbarians,” ready to challenge both the status quo in France and the prevailing ethos of U.S. startups obsessed with power and money.
France hasn’t won the Eurovision Song Contest since 1977,when Marie Myriam moved the audience with her song “L’oiseau et l’enfant”. Nobody has been able to renew that performance in 38 years, even though France has tried extremely hard to seduce the members of the jury. The country has sent some of its biggest stars to […]
France lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in facing fundamental changes to the nature of work. The old model dominated by wage labor just can’t compete.