EUROPE 1, LE FIGARO (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Unemployment has reached a new record high in the eurozone, with European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi saying Friday that the single currency would not recover until the second half of 2013. “We have not yet emerged from the crisis,” Draghi told France’s Europe 1 radio […]
Tag: france
Worldcrunch PARIS – Get it!? Ok, we know our pronunciation of both French and Mandarin is less than perfect…But this is the sort of stuff that gets mashed together at Worldcrunch HQ, where the continents converge, cultures cross and alcohol is not forbidden. So we hope you like our super-fresh bottle of Bo Xilai Nouveau […]
PARIS – “An exceptional year for Bollinger champagne…” Considering the current economic situation, Jérôme Philipon’s comment is refreshing indeed. Even as the overall champagne market was down by 5% at the end of September, the family-run Bollinger producers predict record sales for 2013, says Philipon, the CEO of the champagne house. He expects a growth […]
PARIS – To look at them, you would never know the agony these young men, relaxed and self-assured, have endured. Drinking wine and eating blinis in their comfortable Parisian apartment, Nicolas (not his real name), Bertrand, Fabrice and Damien all tell a similar story. Raised in practicing Catholic families, and believers themselves, they have taken […]
PARIS – She has always wanted this kind of assignment. As far back as she can remember, Mireille Ballestrazzi, 58, has dreamed of a job where “adventure and exercising responsibility” would come together. In many ways, it has already been her mission for the past 30 years inside the French police force. But now things […]
PARIS – Ever seen a human scalp transformed into a drumhead? Or a shrunken head with its lips sewn shut to keep the dead from casting spells from beyond the grave? With their hair uncannily preserved, these centuries-old trophies seem to have retained all their eerie powers. They are some of the key pieces of […]
ATLANTICO, MARIANNE (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Since becoming France’s first lady, Valerie Trierweiler has caused “nothing but trouble” at the magazine where she’s been working, according to a new biography of her boss, French publisher Arnaud Lagardère. Lagardère, the billionaire owner of French celebrity weekly Paris Match, is said to view the 47-year-old divorcee and […]
LE MONDE (France), VICE, USENIX SECURITY (USA) Worldcrunch Remember that scene in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi when Darth Vader learns about Luke’s sister just by reading his thoughts? “Your thoughts betray you,” says Darth Vader Well the same might just happen to you soon – and if you don’t happen to […]
PARIS – In the United States, “China bashing” is in full swing. Denigrating China has been a mainstay of the American presidential campaign, in a time of economic one-upmanship between Washington and Beijing. During the final televised debate, devoted to foreign policy, Republican candidate Mitt Romney once again accused Beijing of manipulating its currency and […]
THE TIMES, THE TELEGRAPH, THE MIRROR (U.K.), ABC (U.S.), Worldcrunch In his new book Running My Life, Sebastian Coe, the former track star who led Britain’s move to secure the 2012 Olympics for London, recounts the final sprint to see who would host the Summer Games. Coe says Paris was the favorite of the Olympic […]
PARIS – The new tablets and smartphones have blurred the boundaries between businesses and their employees, partners and customers. The danger of computer piracy has never been so great. The threat is invisible but incessant, as the recent large-scale attack on British bank HSBC shows. In information technology, we live in a time of fantastic […]
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Rats! Is Animal Testing On The Way Out?
Were they the “right rats?” The controversial study by Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen, on the toxicity of genetically modified NK603 corn and the weed killer Roundup, has raised a host of questions concerning the type of rodent used in the experiment. Is the Sprague-Dawley rat appropriate for two-year feeding experiments, when this […]
-Essay- PARIS – If we ask the French what they don’t understand about the U.S. elections, we are spoiled for choices. Having seen French commentary on the Obama-Romney duel, the most pointed area of incomprehension is “what it means to be an American Republican.” We just can’t seem to wrap our French brains around this […]
LE PARISIEN, LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, LE FIGARO (France) PARIS – Parisians strolling along the chic Place de l’Alma and the Bastille are running straight into a huge new billboard (3 by 6-meter, or almost 10 by 20-feet) featuring saucy photos of four presidents of France: François Hollande, the current head of state, and predecessors Nicolas […]
LE MONDE (France), L’ÉQUIPE (France), CYCLING WEEKLY (UK) Worldcrunch PARIS – Le Tour d’Après. Literally “The Tour, After.” This is the name Christian Prudhomme, the French race’s organizer, has decided to give to the 2013 edition of the Tour de France, which he will be presenting this week at Paris’ Palais des Congrès. “After,” as […]
TBILISSI – A new French prime minister will soon be installed. But not in France – in Georgia, in the former Soviet Union. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has nominated Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire leader of the opposition, as prime minister. For those who didn’t know: Ivanishvili had been French by citizenship, not Georgian. Luckily for […]
-Essay- PARIS – Twitter is a great tool, capable of changing lives. It opens a window on the world, an embodiment of a new kind of digital solidarity. All the same, in the past few days, many people in France had an eye-opening experience as they discovered Twitter’s unsavory side. The anti-Semitic hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew), […]
PARIS – Although Switzerland’s Art Basel is still incontestably the top fair for contemporary art, London’s Frieze, which took place last week at Regent’s Park, and Paris’s FIAC, which begins Thursday, are now sharing the second place on the podium. “Each fair has a different identity and energy. Paris is more established, while London is […]
NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR (France) Worldcrunch One hundred years before Felix Baumgartner, there was … Franz Reichelt. According to French magazine Nouvel Observateur, this tailor from Vienna had moved to France as a young man and become a French citizen — and an inventor. Reichelt created a prototype parachute that he believed could save the lives of […]
-Analysis- PARIS – In Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist, the shepherd Santiago travels to the ends of the earth seeking a treasure that was close by all along. And sometimes, too, we find the key to understanding what is happening in our country today by reading about things far away. Two scholarly articles published last […]
LE MONDE (France), DIE WELT, DIE ZEIT, FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG (Germany), FINANCIAL TIMES (U.K.) Worldcrunch The European Union’s privacy commission issued a sharp reprimand to Google, ordering the company to change its way of informing people how their data is being used, or face sanctions, the Financial Times reported. Le Monde reported that the decision […]
LE MONDE, AFP, (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS – Like the United States, France now finds itself in front of an open “reparations question” for its past role in slavery. Visiting Africa for the first time since his election, French President François Hollande found himself entangled in the thorny question of compensation for the descendents of […]
LE MONDE (France), DW-TV (Germany) EFE Worldcrunch From London, Barcelona, and Rio de Janeiro, the list of cities worldwide that are being enticed by the allure of suspended cable cars is growing, heralded as a cheap, green and safe means of transport suspended above the normal rush of urban traffic. Although the cable car systems […]
Contemporary French historian Henri Rousso’s seminal book Syndrome de Vichy (The Vichy Syndrome) came out in 1987. Its subject was the way the French dealt with the Nazi occupation, and it in Rousso coined an iconic phrase: “The past that does not pass…” Now, however, Rousso says, “The past is past. It’s not forgotten, but […]
Chinese routers from Huawei and ZTE are “a threat” for the United States, or even the world, according to a U.S. Congressional intelligence committee report made public on October 8. The committee suspects that these machines, which transmit Internet communications, could be working for the Chinese government. With this report, the American Congress has launched […]
PARIS – This time, it was definitely not a bug. Facebook has admitted to spying on all private conversations on its network, looking for Internet links being exchanged and for possible “criminal activities.” The admission opens the network up to many questions concerning privacy and legal rights. The Next Web, a popular technology site, found […]
LE POINT (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former leader of France’s Socialist Party and ex-head of the International Monetary Fund, has spent the past year trying to return the focus of attention to his economic acumen. But no doubt, his first interview since September 2011, set to be published in French weekly […]
-Analysis- PARIS – A specter is looming over France. That specter is called Qatar. Qatar’s announcement that it would invest 50 million euros in the impoverished suburbs outside Paris, an investment that will be matched by a fund partly financed by the French government and partly by the private sector, has sparked growing controversy. Some […]
One million CVs. That is how many resumes L’Oréal receives, year in, year out, in the 130 countries where the cosmetic giant has offices. From “job dating” on social networks to the avatars on Second Life, there have been various attempts to kill off the CV, but it keeps on being reinvented. Trends have come […]
Categories
Why Living Rich Is Costing More And More
PARIS – The price of luxury products is skyrocketing. The quasi-hypnotic appeal of some brands and the increasing number of extremely wealthy clients throughout the world is enabling luxury brands to hike prices to stratospheric levels year after year. A pair of John Lobb shoes, a Kelly Hermès bag, a kilo of Petrossian Sevruga caviar, […]
PARIS – For months, consumption has been stagnating, and purchasing power is not improving. Will the French, like the Spanish, start buying their yogurts one by one instead of in packs as a way to face the global financial crisis? Remarks by Jan Zijderveld, head of European operations for the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever, on the […]
LES ECHOS, METRO, 20 MINUTES (France), BBC, THE TELEGRAPH (UK) Worldcrunch Facebook has been forced to deny reports that private messages have been appearing publicly on the social networking site, as millions of users panic and company share prices plummet. France’s leading business daily Les Echos reports that the French government has summoned Facebook managers […]
EKANTIPUR (Nepal), AFP (France), CNN (USA) Worldcrunch Rescue workers have resumed their search Monday morning for mountaineers trapped by an avalanche on Mount Manaslu in Nepal. At least 11 people have been confirmed dead, reports Nepal’s Ekantipur news publication, including climbers from France, Spain, Germany and Nepal. AFP reported that Christian Trommsdorff, the vice-president of […]
PARIS – Pirates, spies, moles, thieves: those who want to steal the scientific treasures of French research laboratories had better be careful. With a new measure to protect the “nation’s scientific and technical potential,” in the next few months every organization, university and engineering school will be receiving instructions on how to protect themselves. Indeed, […]
LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Genetically modified corn from Monsanto, touted as safe for human consumption, has been shown to cause breast tumors in female rats and kidney and liver disease in male rats, a new study shows. NK603 corn was originally engineered by Monsanto, a worldwide agricultural conglomerate, to be resistant to the […]
LE MONDE, AFP, LA LIBÉRATION (France) Worldcrunch France is bracing itself for repercussions after satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad Wednesday. Le Monde reports that a small Syrian organization called Syrian Freedom Association has filed a legal complaint against the French weekly. It accuses Charlie Hebdo of “throwing oil on […]
PARIS – If you go by its website, Mars Kebab is the only fast-food restaurant in Paris that delivers sandwiches to the planet Mars. In the real world, Mars Kebab doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t keep it from having an excellent reputation on the web. Its promotional video has been viewed 105,000 times on YouTube, […]
LE MONDE, i-TELE (France), RTL (Luxembourg) Worldcrunch PARIS – Riot police have been sent to guard the offices of controversial French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in preparation of their publication of cartoons mocking Islam’s Prophet Muhammad Wednesday. The French weekly yesterday announced it would publish satirical cartoons of the prophet in this week’s edition. The […]
PARIS – Is there a way that the countries of southern Europe can avoid sinking further into debt at unsustainable interest rates, without resorting to euro bonds, which Germany refuses to consider? Former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has an idea that he presented this past weekend at the YES (Yalta European Strategy) Forum which was […]