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Jillian Deutsch

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food / travel

Take 5: Vromageries And Other Restaurants Turning Traditional Cuisine Vegan

Restaurants around the world take the meat and dairy out of food to make traditional food trendy.

PARIS — Cheese boutiques (or "fromageries' in French) line the streets of almost all French towns. Their expertly crafted — and sometimes infamously stinky — cheeses draw locals every week and tourists from around the world.

But one new cheese shop in the heart of Paris is making something a bit different: vegan cheese, or as the French might one day say, "vromage."

Venezuela-born Mary Carmen Iriarte Jähnke got the idea for the inventive cheese after she moved to Paris to study and started to go vegan a few years later, in 2010. For a culture so proud of its special cheese, Jähnke found it difficult to not partake in the cuisine.

Cheeses were her "Achilles heel, especially in France , where they are so good," Jähnke told French daily Libération in mid-March.

Ten years after arriving in the city, Jähnke is now the founder, owner and chief vegan cheese maker at Jay & Joy near Bastille, in Paris' 11th arrondissement.

The idea of dairy-less cheese might make the French pose questions (and possibly cringe), but Jähnke hopes their curiosity will make them actually taste it. She also has "joyourts," vegan yogurt made from rice, and "fat joy," vegan foie gras from cashew nuts.

Jay & Joy is not the first place to turn a culture's key cuisine vegan. Across the globe, examples abound — from Mexico City to Seoul:

GERMAN CURRYWURST

Vegans don't really flock to Germany for the food. The country's culinary culture relies heavily on brats and beer, the latter of which might be vegan but isn't advised as a sole source of nutrients. But Berlin, the nation's capital and hipster hotspot, has vegan currywurst spots that allow vegans to partake in a local favorite.

Photo: Curry at the Wall's Official Website

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Sources

After Trump, Missing My American Pride In A Foreign Land

PARIS — I'm on the bus when "Proud to Be An American" pops into my head. Once it was Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved." Another time, the Frosted Flakes cereal theme song. Nearly a year after moving to France , my brain keeps regurgitating America.

I moved to the suburbs of Paris in September to begin a seven-month job teaching English to high schoolers, sponsored by the French government. Since I was 16, surrounded by the many strip malls and cornfields that make up my home state of Illinois, I dreamed of moving to France to converse in cafes with cigarette smoke wafting and walk down streets lined with Haussmannian buildings. So here I was, at the age of 22, finally finding my feet — and footing — on French soil. But there was something that risked ruining this postcard moment: it coincided with the election of a new president back in my home country. I found myself glued to American news coverage in the days and weeks after moving to France.

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Sources

Sexism, From The Streets To The Screen

-Analysis-

Battles over sexism are being waged all over the world. In India , Muslim women have brought the "triple talaq" law, which allows men to cut off their wives by repeating "divorce" three times, to the country's Supreme Court. In the Republic of Congo, widows are suing over a tradition that forces them to give their belongings to their deceased husband's family. And in Argentina , a woman took a man to court for street harassment in the country's first "catcalling case."

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THE WASHINGTON POST

Donald Trump's Week-Long Stumble Across The World Stage

WASHINGTON — President Trump arrived in Jerusalem this week with a most curious bit of information for Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.

"We just got back from the Middle East," Trump announced . "We just got back from Saudi Arabia."

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Geopolitics

Controlling Information, From Montana To Manchester

—Analysis—

The simmering tensions between reporters and politicians in the U.S. have moved beyond the White House press room — and beyond just words.

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Geopolitics

Manchester, When Terrorism Aims At Teens

News broke shortly after 10:30 p.m. local time Monday night: an explosion at an Ariana Grande concert in the northern British city of Manchester. At least 22 people were confirmed dead and 60 injured in an attack authorities are investigating as an act of terrorism . Islamic terror group ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack early Tuesday afternoon, according to AFP .

A lone male suicide attacker is believed to have set off the explosion, and the BBC is reporting that armed police have arrested a 23-year-old man in a town south Manchester early Tuesday in connection with the attack.

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Geopolitics

We Syrians Must Rebuild People, Not Countries

Orient Research Centre associate Zeina Yagan discusses one of the many dilemmas that has emerged for Syrians during the conflict: How does one bridge the deep, sometimes emotionally charged, divides in the Syrian community?

When the Syrian conflict began in 2011, I deleted my Facebook profile, thinking that real-life, face-to-face discussions counted for much more than my virtual life on social media. I convinced myself it would be a good break from the negative circles and from the regular disputes among Syrians on Facebook, which had become a platform for both supporters of and protesters against the Syrian regime to accuse each other of betraying the nation.

In the past six Facebook-less years, my life has changed completely. I left my home country of Syria and settled with my family in the cosmopolitan city of Dubai. I started a new job as a researcher. I established a new network, surrounding myself with friends from a variety of nationalities and backgrounds. I believed that all these changes and beginnings would help me live and work in peace, shielded from the divided Syrian community .

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Countries

Nuance, Truth And Twitter — Q&A With La Stampa's Anna Masera

In the second installment of a new series of articles to get to better know journalists and journalism around the world, Worldcrunch spoke to Anna Masera , public editor of top Italian daily La Stampa , about the differences between Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi, foreign media's focus on the pope and engaging with citizens via social media.

NOTE: If you are a journalist, translator or have an expertise/interest to share, sign up here to Worldcrunch iQ , our new global contributor platform.

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Sources

Hijabs, From Main Street To Malaysian Shampoo

The hijab still makes Western societies squirm. Passing someone wearing the Islamic headscarf is too often seen as proof that Muslim women are "docile, oppressed, silenced," notes Hend Amry, a practicing Muslim and activist who writes about why she wears a hijab.

But, for better or worse, things are changing.

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Sources

Elections That Matter, And The Ones That Don't

-Analysis-

Donald Trump makes a lot of noise. In the past week alone, he made headlines for saying he thought being president of the United States "would be easier" and for calling North Korea's Kim Jong-un "a tough cookie." But friends and foes alike have advised us to pay attention to what he does more than what he says.

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Geopolitics

Will The French Left Do The Right Thing?

Leftists in France will not vote Le Pen on Sunday. But will they vote Macron?

PARIS — The French Left doesn't have a candidate of its own for the country's presidential election runoff on Sunday.

The choice of the ruling Socialists, Benoît Hamon, scored an abysmal 6.4% in the first round of the vote, which some have predicted could lead to the death of the longstanding party of the establishment Left. Many would-be Hamon voters opted instead for far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who garnered a surprising 19.6%, but still came in fourth place.

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Geopolitics

Trump, Kim, Hamas, Putin: When Diplomacy Is Like A Crêpe

-Analysis-

PARIS — Here in France , one learns that the first step to flipping a crêpe is to ensure the batter is cooked all the way through. Only then can you shake the edges loose, and with a flick of the wrist, flip the crêpe high in the air. The kitchen of foreign diplomacy has been hectic lately, with some new cooks — and some old cooks with new recipes — leaving the world with the prospect of longstanding positions flipping from one extreme to the other.

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