French media has long had a thing for First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Nowadays, however, the model turned pop singer is having to share the spotlight with another politician’s partner, former television news presenter Valérie Trierweiler.
Tag: france
Getting ahead these days in the land of Baudelaire and Balzac means mastering the language of Shakespeare – or at least, Zuckerberg. No longer just a plus, strong English is often required for both entry level and top manager slots. But it’s brou
From the flower fields of Grasse to the crystal perfume bottles sold in Paris, the process of creating a best-selling and enduring fragrance like Chanel N°5 or Poison by Dior is a long and delicate journey in a cut-throat business where competition and po
Unlike Germany, which is in a major row with Switzerland over Germans stashing away money in Swiss bank accounts, France has kept quiet on the issue. A French investigative journalist suspects France’s current presidential election campaign may o
With an increasing number of products marketed as “green” and activists raising the pressure on people to think about the environment day and night, more and more consumers are getting grouchy about having to always be eco-friendly.
A new insurance product promises to protect families against damages to their e-reputation, a new but important concept in this era of fading privacy. But one writer wonders if this isn’t all just a scare-mongering way to make new business.
Paul Lacoste’s new mouth-watering documentary, “Entre les Bras” (“Step Up To The Plate”), chronicles a complex father-son dynamic in the kitchen, as acclaimed chef Michel Bras gets ready to hand down his multiple Michelin-star
Whether it is to avoid the nursing home, loneliness or rising rents, co-housing is the new trend for a generation of baby-boomers staring at 60 and beyond.
Cinzia Pasquali had the honor of restoring Leonardo Da Vinci’s prized oil painting “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,” now featured at the Louvre. The assignment was 18 months fraught with nerves, in-fighting and endless int
As Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers fight to have his civil suit dismissed in New York, he faces an even more difficult legal fight in the French city of Lille. Stephanie Ausbart, the magistrate who has just charged DSK with “aggravated pimping,
It took only a few years for this little start-up to become a digital ‘what-to-do’ phenomenon: without any advertising, it has 800.000 readers and growing…
Mohammed Melah invoked Islamic jihad in the killings of three French soldiers, and three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Muslims in France, who comprise some 8% of the country’s population, are worried about a major backlas
How did French intelligence track down Mohammed Merah, the presumed responsible for last week’s slayings in and around Toulouse? Agency director Bernard Squarcini walks Le Monde through two years of surveillance and shares some of Merah’
In late 2010, the art world was stunned when retired French electrician Pierre Le Guennec made it known that they were in possession of no fewer than 271 previously unseen Picassos. Digging deep, Le Monde finds connections directly to the master himself.
Op-Ed: The bloodshed in Toulouse is sure to affect France’s presidential campaign. Predictably, the far-right’s Marine Le Pen is already using the terrorist killings to stir anti-immigrant sentiment. It’s a trap that Sarkozy and the other candida
A campaign that was focused on economic struggles and personality comparisons may suddenly shift to the topic of crime and security, which could benefit President Nicolas Sarkozy. There are echoes of the campaign of 2002, marked by a brutal shooting just
Southwest France has seen its third deadly shooting in the past week, as a killer rides up on a scooter at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Police are investigating possible links with recent killings of French soldiers in the region.
We’ve seen so many reproductions of Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece we’re not sure how she really looks. Even at the Louvre, huge crowds and a glass case make seeing her hard. Now French cultural officials have *the* photo to re
A new survey shows that the French have also become experts in digital romance, with both its highs and its heartbreaks and whole new ways of hooking up.
Long considered “lonely hunters,” at least one species of sharks, the blacktip reef shark, is inclined to mingle across a variety of social ties and relationships. Researchers were able to apply new insights from studies of the way Faceb
Mickey Mouse muscled his way into the French tourism market in 1992 with the opening of Euro Disney. Now called Disneyland-Paris, the park is France’s top tourism attraction and employs nearly 15,000 people. But not all are thrilled.
The mayor of Cousolre, a small village in northern France, was recently sentenced by a court for slapping a wisecracking teenager. The verdict led to an outpouring of support for the 63-year-old “disciplinarian,” and has even entered the French president
Accelerated by the financial crisis, Europe has seen a trend for small businesses looking to make more cashless exchanges. Nantes is becoming Europe’s first major city to experiment with a virtual currency that can be used both businesses and ind
Whether they realize it or not, French fans of Philip Roth and John Irving know the work of Josée Kamoun as well. The Parisian woman has translated novels by more than a dozen writers. The work is “painstaking and solitary” but fulfils a
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Mitt Romney, The French Years
From 1966-1968, Romney spread “the word of Jesus,” door-to-door from Bordeaux to Paris, as a Mormon missionary. It was a tumultuous period, both politically and personally for young Mitt. Indeed, some say his French tribulations are the source of his ambi
Some 65% of French people surveyed in a new Ipsos-Logica poll aren’t particularly interested in France’s presidential race. Still 78% still plan to vote, according to the poll that also found President Nicolas Sarkozy still trailing his Socialist party ch
Analysis: The unprecedented Academy award victory capped a perfect storm of French culture, Hollywood nostalgia and the “Napoleonic” tactics of U.S. producer Harvey Weinstein.
Debate rages over genetically-modified organisms (GMO) used in the agriculture industry, as health experts and environmentalists try to keep a ban in place. In the Gironde region of France, a single corn and vegetable farmer staunchly defends his right to
Analysis: Trailing in the polls, French President Sarkozy is struggling to connect with voters the way he did on his way to victory five years ago. Can he tap into his core attributes, or will they wind up driving him to defeat?
Florent Goncalves was running the Versailles prison where Emma Arbabzadeh, a 17-year-old who had lured the Jewish victim of a high-profile hate crime, was an inmate. The warden and prisoner fell in love. Now he’ll be serving time of his own.
On the southern outskirts of Paris, Grigny-2 is an often desolate, and dangerous, place. Three Catholic nuns have chosen to move into the vast housing project and spread the gospel by, first of all, being good neighbors.
Has technology made love letters obsolete? Not quite. Old-fashioned epistles take time to write and send. But in these days of nearly instantaneous communication, that “delightful delay” – and the thought that goes into it – may be just the thing to set h
Keeping up a tradition that dates back more than five centuries, some contemporary collectors continue to assemble “curiosity cabinets,” privately-owned assortments of skulls, stuffed animals, preserved octopi and other natural odds and
Michel Debout, a well-known psychiatrist and forensic science professor, used historical data linking unemployment to suicide, concluding that France’s economic woes prompted at least 10,000 people to try to take their lives during the three year
Op-Ed: After being forced to shelve their proposal for a European-appointed Greek budget commissioner, the German-France “Merkozy” duo now are floating the idea of a special account for Greek debt. But this is just one more symbolic atte
The rumors are real: Rebel film director Abel Ferrara plans to shoot a film about the Dominique Strass-Kahn sex scandal with legendary French actor Gerard Depardieu as the lead. Filming could begin as early as June, Ferrara has told Le Monde.
What do Rafael Nadal, Marion Cotillard and Zinedine Zidane have in common? They’ve all had their portraits taken at the legendary Parisian photo studio Harcourt. Now you too can get one of Harcourt’s distinctive glamor shots – in a photo
A blog post on the French site of Elle magazine declared that black fashion has finally become “chic” thanks to the high style of Michele and Barack Obama. The article has come under sharp criticism from several prominent black leaders a
Desperate for all the help they can get, backers of French President Nicolas Sarkozy are welcoming a recent show of support from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Sarkozy is trailing his socialist rival, François Hollande, ahead of France’s May election.
With French stepping up enforcement, more and more prostitutes are commuting across the border to work in Switzerland, where the practice is state regulated. It is part of an ongoing migratory ebb and flow in Europe within the world’s oldest prof