Worldcrunch
PARIS — Are Nobel Prizes a wicked luxury? This year, like every year for more than a century, Scandinavian juries will honor researchers in physics, chemistry and medicine, an author, and a man or a woman who contributed to peace. The season will end with the presentation of the latest prize, created a little more […]
PARIS — “Camille, watch out! Your hair!” Myriam calls to her 7-year-old daughter as she leans against the wall, temporarily crushing her blond ringlets, curled with an iron and hair-sprayed early in the morning. Though it’s Saturday, mother and daughter have woken early to leave their home in northern France by 8:30 a.m. They are […]
YUTZ — Use a digital tablet in gym class? You might smile, but in room A101 of the Jean-Mermoz Junior High in northeastern France, the visitor today is Luc Di Pol, whose job title for the regional education authority is digital supervisor for physical education. Here in the mostly rural French department of Moselle, Di […]
PARIS — As French lawmakers consider new legislation that would make it a crime to pay for sex, it’s becoming clear that we tend to know very little about the clientele of prostitutes. Based on the few reports that have been published on the subject, between 12% and 18% of men (and less than 1% […]
Watch France’s former first lady, ex-model and forever chanteuse Carla Bruni-Sarkozy blank on the lyrics (and the chords) to her most famous song Quelqu’un m’a dit during a benefit concert to combat … Alzheimer’s disease. After a brief pause at Wednesday’s event in Paris, Bruni-Sarkozy got back on track.
ANGOULEME — What if, thanks to technology, you could literally dive into pictures? This technological prowess would make dreams of unexplored applications come true, especially with regard to defense simulation or the presentation of urban projects. Andreas Koch, a 54-year-old animation entrepreneur in France, has reinvented the 360-degree image. The idea is not altogether new. […]
SCHILTIGHEIM — We didn’t see the big grey sedan coming, before it had stopped in the middle of the parking lot in the downtown shopping center. There are a dozen little boys killing time between the parked cars, drinking soda and talking football. Welcome to the Marais housing project in Schiltigheim, on the outskirts of […]
PARIS — Five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it seems that we are passing through an unprecedented layer of thick fog. We see one country suddenly accelerating while its neighbor suffers a “sudden stop.” But this isn’t the first time. The world was consumed by the same sort of uncertainty five years after […]
Imagine a future where all high school students could go on to study whatever subject they want, where a university isn’t forced to limit the number of applicants it can accept or base its enrollment policy on grades or finances, but only on the wishes of students. It’s the dream of an education revolution that […]
PARIS — Conflict, scandal, disrepair: the bad news must be reported, wrongdoing exposed. Still, journalism too often is obsessed solely with what is broken — the breaking news, in every sense of the word. Worldcrunch Impact takes a different starting point, with another question that journalists should ask: How might things get better? How can […]
BEIRUT — Meeting for a drink, Lina, Ali and Johnny at first blush seem like normal young people enjoying a pleasant social gathering. But there is also heartbreak behind what has brought them so far from their homes in Damascus. Friends since childhood, these upper middle-class Syrians gather at one of their usual cafés lining […]
Exhibitions in Matisse’s favorite French town provide new and informative contexts for the artist’s work. Given his fame, that’s no small feat.
A psychological portrait of Gilles Bernheim, France’s former Chief Rabbi, disgraced last spring in a scandal of plagiarism, a bogus philosophy degree and deep human denial.
President Hollande has the power to strike militarily without parliamentary consent. But democratic and political necessities require it.
GUARDIAN (UK), LE MONDE (France), AFP, ARUTZ SHEVA, JERUSALEM POST (Israel), RUSSIA TODAY, REUTERS Worldcrunch WASHINGTON — The Syrian crisis shifts in a new direction this week after President Barack Obama’s announcement that he will seek Congressional approval for any U.S. intervention. Following that news, Secretary of State John Kerry clarified that Obama had the […]
Properties of Saudi princes, the sultan of Brunei, billionaires from Qatar and Asia, and a few of the wealthiest people in France, Parisian palaces-turned-hotels are a high-rolling industry.
“I would not call it a war, but the sanction of a monstrous violation of human rights,” the French president tells Le Monde.
LE MONDE Worldcrunch PARIS – It seems France’s love affair with taxing its citizens has reached a new high: the French Treasury sought full income tax payments from a 37-year-old convicted drug dealer for the sum he’d earned selling cannabis. According to Le Monde, two weeks before Farid, a former drug-dealer, got out of prison […]
GUIPAVAS — In the Jacques Brel retirement home in Brittany’s town of Guipavas, Marcelle Plougoum looks at Jean-Noël Michel tenderly. They first met in a medical center for senior citizens, and have loved each other for three years in this modern residential community surrounded by gardens. “We stay together all the time,” Marcelle explains. “Being […]
ANSA (Italy) Worldcunch PARIS – Italian-born model and movie star Monica Bellucci and her French actor husband Vincent Cassel are breaking up after 18 years together. The news was confirmed by Bellucci’s agent after recent rumors had circulated about their possible separation, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. The couple was a long-lasting symbol of […]
After rejections by Austrian and French ski-lift companies, a Swiss competitor was set to supply Pyongyang the means to realize his Alpine fantasy. But then the state stepped in.
AP, BBC, InterAksyon (Phillipines) Worldcrunch Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli shocked the tennis world by announcing her retirement just 40 days after winning her first-ever Grand Slam in London. The 28-year-old French player made the announcement from a media conference in Cincinnati after losing to Romania’s Simona Halep at the Southern and Western Open. “I just […]
To counter Islam, conservative groups are twisting the ideas of the Enlightenment writer famous for his advocacy of freedom of religion.
In the French city of Noisiel, the old Menier chocolate factory is a grand architectural landmark of the industrial age. It’s now the luxurious headquarters of Nestle France.
Youthful believers in Brittany target vacationers with God’s word, hoping to return “asleep” Catholics to the path to faith.
Djamel Mastouri was told as a child that he’d never walk again. He went on to become an Olympic champion and an accomplished French soldier.
AFP (France), CNN (US) Worldcrunch CANNES – Only three days after France’s biggest heist ever, two gunmen robbed a luxury watchmaker on Wednesday morning in the French resort city of Cannes in southern France. The value of the theft at the Kronometry store on the famous Croisette is not yet known. The store had already […]
SETE – French poet Paul Valéry called it “the singular island” – an expression that the inhabitants of Sète have adopted as their own. How else to describe this quasi-archipelago at the foot of Mount Saint-Clair, bordered in the north by the string of lakes that make up the Etang de Thau, and in the […]
It should be “Casual Monday-Through Friday” all summer long — and not just for women. It might change everything at the office, odors and energy bills included.
LES ECHOS (France), TELEGRAPH (UK), REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS – After six straight quarters of contraction, new signs were reported Wednesday that the recession in Europe’s single-currency euro zone may be set to end. Manufacturing in the euro zone increased for the first time in well over a year, boosted by higher private sector output in […]
Young people sign up for higher education solely for scholarship money, while officials turn a blind eye to those permanently absent from class. Is this a twisted way to buy social peace?
PARIS – He first visited libraries as a researcher, before crossing on to “the other side of the mirror.” That’s how Philippe Galanopolous describes his life as a curator for the Inter-University Science Library of Paris (BIUS), one of the world’s best collection of science texts and documents. BIUS was created after the merger between […]
SAGONE – Ecstatic strawberry; erotic nougat; the forgotten flavours of violets, helichrysums, and Persian black limes… Can ice-cream contain a touch of genius? If it’s Pierre Geronimi making it, absolutely! An artisanal ice-cream maker from the little village of Sagone, north of Ajaccio, this Corsican grew up surrounded by the sorbets that his father, a […]
SAINT-DENIS – Those going through the Legion d’Honneur Square, not far from the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Denis, in the northern Seine-Saint-Denis suburb of Paris, will perhaps wonder about the presence of a globe-shaped monument in the middle of a flower bed. As they come closer, they will see that names, surnames and numbers have […]
LE PARISIEN (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Et voila…there she is: Elysee (Twitter) The Marianne is France’s national emblem, present on various official logos of public institutions, including official stamps of the French postal service. The stamps of the female figure have been redesigned every few years since 1967, based on famous women. According to Olivier […]
You probably have never heard of French engineer Louis Pouzin. But you might not be reading this website without him. At 82, he offers a unique perspective on Edward Snowden, and us all.
BRUSSELS – You know, those spy movies of some bespectacled hero photographing secret files, looking up every few seconds to make sure there’s not a burly KGB agent around. One executive from the Degussa chemistry group found himself in such a scene in 2002, entering a fancy Zurich building with a camera in his hand, […]
Like other countries, France faces a rising number of young people who arrive illegally into the country, without their parents or other family members. It poses unique questions.
PARIS – The revelations of the controversial U.S. domestic surveillance program PRISM have provoked massive indignation through much of Europe, but France has been rather quiet. There are two simple explanations: Paris was already aware — and does exactly the same. Le Monde has confirmed that the “Direction Générale de la Securité Extérieure” (DGSE, the […]