A French-Algerian writer launches a loud and clear message for whoever carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine.
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Your Prophet Is Not My Prophet
Tag: france
After the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, the reaction in Paris is raw: war has been declared on the values of the French Republic. First order of business: know your enemy.
The “devs” who code our digital world are so rarefied and vital they can dictate their own terms. Companies do anything to recruit them, but like birds, they tend to fly. A look at this singular species.
PARIS — There’s a nice trompe l’oeil mural on rue Nicolas Appert here in the 11th arrondissement. I once stood in front of it for a little while on my lunch break, trying to make sense of the artist’s visual tricks. Today, making sense of what happened on that street feels impossible: Twelve people, among […]
PARIS — The brazen terrorist attack against the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo that left at least 12 dead Wednesday has shocked the nation and the world. But it doesn’t come in a vacuum, following a series of attacks in the past few years that have no parallel in any other Western country. There […]
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The Little Angry Giant
The Dol Cathedral in northwestern France is missing one of its two towers. Some say it’s because an angry giant once threw a menhir — Brittany’s trademark standing stone — that decapitated the cathedral before landing in a field. The Menhir de Champ-Dolent weighs 150 tons, so it’s fair to say that little boy wasn’t […]
JANUARY Israel Ariel Sharon, former prime minister Portugal Eusebio, soccer player United States Phil Everly, musician FEBRUARY Spain Paco de Lucia, Flamenco guitarist United States Shirley Temple, child actress United States Philip Seymour Hoffman, actor MARCH Spain Adolfo Suarez, former prime minister United States L’Wren Scott, fashion designer France Alain Resnais, filmmaker APRIL United Kingdom […]
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The Royal Game
Chess has been a favorite hobby of mine long before 1963, when I took part in the Franche-Comté regional finals in Besançon. (I finished third.)
Ukraine’s Pro-Russian Separatists Are Bad News For Russia The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, located on the Moldovan border with Ukraine, has relied on Russia for the past two decades. A perfect example of potential new burdens for Moscow. — KOMMERSANT In India, The World’s First Vegetarian City After monks went on a hunger strike to push […]
It’s been a year of both earnest and outrageous comments from across the globe.
A heartwrenching court case in France poses thorny questions as the very meaning of family evolves more quickly than the legal system, or even the experts, can keep up with.
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Eradicating AIDS Is Within Our Grasp
French researchers have made significant discoveries that lead them to believe that a vaccine is imminent. It would target the protein that allows the HIV virus to multipy.
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The Year In Numbers, 2014
Looking back on 2014, month by month, summing up the news — by the numbers. JANUARY According to a study published in the journal Science, at least 20% of the Neanderthal genome can be found in modern-day Europeans and Asians. Between 1% and 3% percent of human DNA comes from Neanderthals. “Individually, we are a […]
Here are some of the best stories we ran this year, from our fair-minded but ever subjective staff of journalists, translators and editors. Crunchers united! From Ukraine To Syria, Mercenaries With A Cause Hurriyet / TURKEY Le Monde / GUINEA, SIERRA LEONE, LIBERIA Süddeutsche Zeitung / GERMANY Economic Observer / CHINA Kommersant / RUSSIA, UKRAINE […]
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Worldcrunch’s Weekend Staff Playlist #5
Well, well, well, could it be Friday again? Time for our fifth weekend staff playlist, then. Can you guess this week’s theme? Quick hint: It involves going around people’s houses, hiding stuff, and a fair amount of arguments. No, it’s not the NSA.
The French may never abandon the notion of mealtime as sacred, but it seems they love their crumpets and chips. France is now the second-largest importer for British food products.
Four decades after abortion became legal in France, too often women face moral judgment and physical pain, not to mention unsympathetic health care professionals.
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Worldcrunch’s Weekend Staff Playlist #4
The weekend is almost upon us, which means it’s time for our weekend staff playlist. And if this week’s edition seems farewell-themed, it’s because our business developer Garrett is setting off to conquer new horizons — so we’re all feeling a bit nostalgic. So long, Mister G!
One in three people around the world is overweight, and the ratio is growing. “Globesity” investors see that airlines, hospitals, car companies and others must adapt to meet the expanding needs.
PARIS — The stage is set in the middle of the vast, empty and decidedly cold shed of the Halle Freyssinet, a building formerly used as a shipment hub for trains and trucks near the Austerlitz railway station in Paris. After the presidential lectern is installed, with French and European flags in the background, in […]
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My Son Has Committed Unspeakable Crimes
What is it like to be the parent of a “monster?” After their teenaged son confessed to rape and murder in southern France, the parents of Matthieu Moulinas decide to tell their story.
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Worldcrunch’s Weekend Staff Playlist #3
Photo: David Muir Although Santa Claus is not coming to town quite yet, it’s time for music website Stereogum’s Cold Hard Facts On The Year In Pop, which looks at the stats and charts to find out which artists were the most popular on Spotify, Vevo, Shazam, and other music sites. And if figures aren’t […]
The second edition of the Worldstock festival, an event that aims to break the barriers of genres, started this week in Paris. The motto remains the same as last year’s successful inaugural edition: search for that universal je-ne-sais-quoi that somehow gives music from anywhere the possibility to touch anyone. Until Dec. 13, artists from all […]
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You Shot My Battleship!
The Bay of Brest, in northwestern France’s Brittany region, has been an important military port for centuries. I walked a hundred meters or so on a forbidden but unguarded path overlooking a naval base to take a picture of this fine example of our glorious French fleet.
Yes, the Google ‘monster’ is too big and too powerful. But EU politicians imposing a breakup of the U.S. tech giant is not the solution. A mix of arm-twisting and open competition can do the trick.
“What is a DJ if he can’t scratch?” Sims asks in his bio. The answers to this question may not be crystal clear for us at Worldcrunch, but at least one thing is certain: Sims can scratch and sample, and is therefore a DJ. He proves it on Instagram, where in a series of short […]
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Worldcrunch’s Weekend Staff Playlist #2
It’s not only Friday, it’s Black Friday! If you’re planning to go berserk this weekend like these people above in London, listening to our weekend staff playlist might help. It puts together, among many other more or less acceptable musical favorites, One Direction, Primus and Bob Dylan.
The Louis Vuitton Foundation is a new high-profile cultural offering for the city of lights, but art’s higher calling becomes just a tool of luxury promotion for the ultra-privileged.
Auberta, the bear cub abandoned by her mother in April in the Catalan Pyrenees, was found dead earlier this week in her 5,000-square foot enclosure. The 10-month-old cub was going to be released into the mountainous region, where there are believed to be just 30 other brown bears. CCTV cameras in the enclosure had captured […]
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Promenade Des Francais
Time to share a little vintage family portrait. This was my daughter Cécile’s first trip outside of her native Franche-Comté; here she’s with my wife and my father, walking along the Promenade des Anglais on Nice’s Bay of Angels. In the background you can catch a glimpse of the world-famous Hotel Negresco.
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Worldcrunch’s Weekend Staff Playlist #1
It’s Friday! Time to celebrate like Ricky Martin, who just got a wax figure of himself at Las Vegas’ Madame Tussauds. Can you tell which one is real? On another note, Worldcrunch’s staff comes from many different places so our music tastes are just as wide-ranging. So we’ve decided to create weekly and extremely varied […]
Reducing the strain on the environment, and opting out of a “growth-at-all-costs” logic, may be the only path forward for the future. And it will require the smartest new ideas.
A 6.6-billion-kilometer space mission flew with the spirit of Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral and some of the old continent’s other great achievements of vision and steadfastness.
Coravin, which allows you to sample the finest bottle without uncorking it, is being hailed as a game-changer for the wine industry. It was greeted with mixed reviews in the city that may still matter most.
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Napoleon Complex
From the Place d’Austerlitz, the statue of Napoleon watches over Ajaccio, the town in which he was born. Some may see a resemblance with Prague’s Stalin Monument, but the statue of the French emperor is significantly smaller — adding to the myth that Napoleon was short in stature when in fact he was 5 feet […]
What’s the difference between pop singer/general nuisance Justin Bieber, and Sexion D’Assaut, a French rap group from the Paris region? According to Google Translate: none. There’s a perfectly rational explanation behind the mix-up: Google Translate is a participatory platform, where users can suggest alternate translations just by clicking on the “Improve this translation” button. The […]
Calais, France along the English Channel has served as a hub for UK-bound illegal migrants for more than a decade. Now Egyptian, Kurdish and Albanese traffickers are fighting for control.
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Holiday Traffic Jam
In the near vicinity of the Pont d’Arc natural bridge in Ardèche, southern France, is the Chauvet Cave, which features some of the earliest prehistoric paintings in the world. Not as fun as kayaking on a crowded river, I guess?
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Why World Hunger Won’t Go Away
Two new books and a docudrama ask hard questions about how so many can still go hungry in a world of technological advancement and economic growth.
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The Meanings Of Bigouden
The Breton word “Bigouden” was first used to designate the very distinctive, sugarloaf-shaped lace bonnet traditionally worn by the women in the southwestern tip of the French region of Brittany. Then the meaning expanded, and “Bigouden” was used to identify the women themselves, then all the inhabitants of the region — then the region itself! […]