Worldcrunch
DONETSK SETS ULTIMATUM FOR UKRAINE FORCES Pro-Russian groups in the region of Donetsk have issued a 24-hour ultimatum to Ukrainian armed forces, threatening to take the region by force if they don’t leave, RT reports. This comes as acting President Olexandr Turchynov said the government forces had destroyed two rebel military bases, in Kramatorsk and […]
FRANCE 24, BLOOMBERG, REUTERS Worldcrunch BERLIN/PARIS – France slipped into recession while Germany’s economy expanded by a fraction, according to European economy data published on Wednesday. Statistics showed the forecasts for Europe’s two biggest economies were weaker than expected. The German GDP increased about 0.1% from the fourth quarter while the French economy contracted by […]
Disgusted by the “spirit of May ’68” the new generation of French Catholics isn’t shy about taking on what they see as the moral wasteland that has taken over the country’s establishment.
FRANCE 24, LE PARISIEN (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Violence broke out in the French capital’s ritziest neighborhood as supporters gathered to celebrate the Parisian soccer team Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) winning the French League 1 championship for the first time in 19 years. Thirty people were injured in the riot, including three police officers. Twenty-one people […]
-Essay- PARIS – Charity starts at home, as the saying goes. So the very least that can be expected of communication consultants is that they are successful at communicating. And they have been successful – well beyond expectations. They have not only managed to take a front-and-center seat in electoral campaigns, they are now also […]
SAINT-TROPEZ – Star, entrepreneur, chef, and the most decorated cook in the world, Alain Ducasse always has a place to be. He’s perpetually traveling around the world from one of his restaurants to another: from Paris to Tokyo, from Abu Dhabi to Las Vegas, he’s always curious to see where the flavors will take him. […]
MONTBELIARD – The meeting point is located just outside the city limits of Montbéliard, in eastern France, on the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. A few steps away is the front gate of the Peugeot car factory. Twenty people or so are waiting for the bus that will take them to the workshops of […]
Before the release of their first record in years, a rare sit-down with the legendary techno band, from their roots in France to surprising new inspirations from Hotel California.
Yahoo! wanted to buy the video platform Dailymotion, owned by France Telecom. But with the French government opposed come reminders of what needs fixing in France’s startup world.
PARIS – Will the young women of 2033 laugh when they learn that their mothers chose their foundation and makeup by themselves? Without a microscope or a telephone? This is what Givenchy is betting on. The French luxury cosmetics company just launched its first Spectrocolorimeter in three of its Paris stores. Developed by X-Rite, the […]
20 MINUTES, MARIE CLAIRE, LA DEPECHE (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – This doesn’t sound very French. A group has declared Friday “Asexuality Day” in France. Organized by the AVA (Association for Asexual Visibility), the goal of the celebration is to inform the public about this little-known category of sexual identity of those people who do not […]
RUE 89 (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – When Britain’s former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died on April 8, 2013, the Office of the President of the French Republic issued a communiqué on its official homepage that paid tribute to the “Iron Lady“. So far, nothing to write home about. But when they tried to come up […]
CULLY – He is majestic. The concert has just ended, and the audience is on fire. Opening his long thin arms, he takes a bow; in his checked shirt, he has the body of a Maasai warrior. The Cully Jazz Festival audience is shell-shocked by the performance they have just witnessed – totally under the […]
LE PARISIEN, LE MONDE, LIBERATION, FIGARO, EUROPE 1 (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – The French National Assembly legalized gay marriage on Tuesday, after months of tumultuous debate both in Parliament and on the streets. The law was passed with 331 votes in favor, and 225 opposed. “It is a historic vote,” wrote Le Parisien newspaper, as […]
PARIS – In the last years of his life, French novelist Marcel Proust mostly fed himself with café au lait. Made by the two best roasters in Paris, Proust’s coffee came from freshly ground beans that were extracted drop by drop according to an unchangeable ritual. Sometimes the verdict would be without mercy: “Celeste, how […]
TOULOUSE – In France alone, there are 500,000 deaf people, and that doesn’t even include those who are partially deaf or have hearing problems. About half of deaf people in France are unemployed. Launched in 2001, French start-up Websourd is a cooperative that publishes videos in sign language on the Internet, which can also help […]
PARIS – Should the 500 euros bill be taken out of circulation? A study by Merrill Lynch raised the question, and it is not a small question, as those bills comprise one-third of the total monetary value of bills currently in circulation, that is to say some 300 billion euros. Still, the bills are very […]
Son of immigrants, Redoine Faïd, 40, dealt drugs on the outskirts of Paris before turning to armed robbery. After repenting on French TV, a daring prison break has added to his legend.
COLMAR – The world’s love affair with French macarons is here to stay. In order to meet global demands, the pastry chef who made macarons famous, Pierre Hermé, is about to step up production in the factory where most of his macarons are created – always by hand. “The goal is to triple production from […]
PARIS – This year’s results just came in and all your executives are gathered together in one of those soulless convention centers. Everyone is listening to the top honchos giving a speech about how next year will be full of opportunities – but only if each employee rolls up their sleeves. After two weeks of […]
LA DEPECHE, SUD OUEST (France) Worldcrunch METZ – What is it with French old-timers getting stuck in weird places? On Sunday in Metz, northeastern France, an 82-year-old patient was rescued from the Sainte-Blandine hospital after trying to flee John-McLane-style via the ventilation ducts. “The patient, who was undergoing treatment for diabetes, managed to climb into […]
Rhetorical outrage and new codes of ethics have followed revelations that France’s Budget Minister had a secret Swiss bank account. But there may be other, more subtle lessons to learn.
AFP, LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – The Chief Rabbi of France was forced to step aside, after a scandal over alleged plagiarism and lying about his education background, reports Le Monde. Gilles Bernheim, 60, announced the decision on Thursday, following an emergency session of the Central Consistory, the main Jewish administering institution in France. […]
UKRAINE’S PM TO PUSH FOR MORE REGIONAL POWERUkraine’s Interim Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk pledged to grant regions with more powers, adding that the Parliament should adopt a law allowing local referendums, AP reports. This came as he travelled to the eastern city of Donetsk as an ultimatum for pro-Russian protesters to leave occupied government buildings […]
PARIS – The combination of the Arab Spring and the economic crisis in southern Europe has led to a quiet panic spreading in hospitals across the Mediterranean Basin. “With the disorganization of medical services, the number of infections resisting most known antibiotics has literally exploded,” says professor Patrice Nordmann, chief of the bacteriology-virology-parasitology department at […]
RANGOON –Two years after the official end of the Burmese military regime, some citizens are skeptical, whilst others remain deeply critical of the current government. Some people fear the reforms will keep running into many obstacles. Still, there is one point everyone agrees on: the clearest sign that the democratization process is happening is that […]
CALAIS – Jacques Gounon is very happy. The CEO of the Eurotunnel Group has just announced the launch of a huge real-estate project in Sangatte, on France’s northern coast. If the name rings a bell to newspaper readers, it is because Sangatte is where up until 2002, there was a massive refugee center, housing asylum […]
This classic Paris address, which inspired the movie Ratatouille, is even more fancy — and delicious — in real life.
FRANCE 3 BRETAGNE, LE TELEGRAMME (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – From Ernest Hemingway to Carla Bruni, the French capital has seen its fair share of notable visitors over the years. But this week saw a surprising arrival from the provinces: four black woolly sheep brought in from Ouessant Island, a remote island to the west of […]
AFP, LE MONDE (France), HAARETZ (Israel) Worldcrunch PARIS – The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has admitted to having plagiarized and lied, after it emerged that several parts of his book Forty Jewish Meditations were taken from other sources, reports Le Monde. “The plagiarizing unmasked on the Internet is true,” Bernheim wrote in a […]
The most memorable graffiti and wall murals are often demolished by the force of urban real estate development projects.
Mediapart uses old-school reporting to get major scoops, including a probe that just forced France’s Budget Minister to resign. But you have to pay to read. A news model for the future?
LE MONDE, FRANCE 24, JEROME-CAHUZAC.COM, LIBERATION, L’HUMANITE, LA VOIX DU NORD (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – French President Francois Hollande appeared in a brief televised address broadcast on Wednesday, after his former Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac admitted he was guilty of tax fraud. In the pre-recorded broadcast, Hollande said Cahuzac had “fooled the highest authorities of […]
LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch PARIS – These are not the sorts of “islands” where you’d plan your next tropical vacation. Located in vast areas of the world’s Oceans, by some accounts comprising an area twice as big as Texas, they are home to neither human nor animal life. Instead these islands are instead simply monstrious […]
LYON – Those familiar with the Freegan movement know that dumpster diving to find food to eat is nothing new. But organizing free food distributions to denounce food waste is a novel form of Freeganism – as practiced by the activists from the Gars Pilleurs organization founded by two young men from Lyon, east-central France. […]
L’EXPRESS, FRANCE 24 (France), BLOOMBERG, REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met his French counterpart on Wednesday for talks about aid to the Syrian opposition and the situation in Mali, where the United Nations has just recommended a force of UN 11,200 peacekeeping troops. Kerry held breakfast talks in Paris with […]
-Essay- RABAT – A year ago, Tuareg rebels from the Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) decided to launch an attack to take back the territory of Azawad in northern Mali that they claim as their native land. They managed to chase Mali military troops from their land, but weren’t able to gain the upper hand […]
Occasionally, D-Day artifacts still wash up on the beaches of Normandy. But these days, it is rare for someone in France to be able to trace them back to America’s Greatest Generation.
FRANCE 24, LE MONDE, BBC, REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS –Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been placed under formal investigation over claims his 2007 campaign was funded by “exploiting the weakness” of elderly Liliane Bettencourt, the L’Oréal heiress and France’s richest woman. Le Monde reports that Sarkozy’s supporters in the current center-right opposition called the decision […]
LIBERATION, LE PARISIEN, LES ECHOS (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – French President Francois Hollande’s government faces its first confidence vote Wednesday over its handling of the country’s finances as a government heavyweight resigns over allegations of tax fraud. The confidence vote was called by the opposition Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP). While it is […]