PARIS — France will establish a “memories and truth” commission to review the country’s colonial history in Algeria, following a key recommendation in a new, much-anticipated report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron and released on Wednesday. The report also presented a series of other proposals to address longstanding grievances. But it ruled out issuing an […]
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Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. Over the past four years, Doug Mills, a photographer in The New York Times’s Washington bureau since 2002, has taken tens of thousands of shots of President Trump. With a new administration coming in, Mr. […]
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Around the world, the shock of Wednesday’s assault on Capitol Hill brought into sharp focus a question that has been smoldering for four years among America’s allies and adversaries. “And again the doubt,” wrote Emma Riverola in El Periódico de Catalunya, a Barcelona daily, in painfully graphic terms. “Is this just a final burst of […]
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PARIS — The choreography was unusual: President Emmanuel Macron of France, standing before the Stars and Stripes, declaring in English that “We believe in the strength of our democracies. We believe in the strength of American democracy.” And so the presidency of Donald Trump draws to a close with a French leader obliged to declare […]
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BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Thursday placed the blame for the mob violence at the U.S. Capitol a day before squarely on President Trump, although she and other leaders of the United State’s strongest allies in Europe expressed faith in the strength of American democracy. “These pictures made me angry and sad,” […]
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LONDON — An image from my sepia-toned memory in the 1950s: by a summery wheat field freckled with poppies in northern France, English vacationers have halted for tea. A man primes a hand-cranked paraffin stove. A battered kettle is produced, and a teapot. Driving by in their bouncy Citroën 2CVs and curvy Renault Dauphines, French […]
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PARIS — A week after he first tested positive for the coronavirus, President Emmanuel Macron of France has stopped isolating himself because he no longer shows symptoms, a statement from the Élysée Palace, his official office, said on Thursday. Throughout his quarantine, Mr. Macron — who had typical symptoms of Covid-19, such as fatigue, coughing […]
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China and the European Commission appeared close to announcing a landmark agreement this week that would make it easier for their companies to invest in each other’s economies. Then it hit another snag: A tweet by a top aide to Joseph R. Biden Jr. signaled that the president-elect was not happy about the deal. The […]
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PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron of France has tested positive for the coronavirus and will work in isolation for the next week, prompting other European leaders he has met to take precautionary measures and complicating Europe’s efforts to overcome a crippling second wave of the pandemic. The presidential Élysée Palace announced the illness on Thursday […]
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PARIS — He was the boy wonder of Western politics in 2017, soaring above outmoded cleavages between left and right. He was the whip-smart former banker who was going to turn a tradition-bound society into a start-up nation. He was the liberal bulwark against rising populism in Europe — an anti-Trump. But with an eye […]
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PARIS — He has declared war on the Islamist “enemy within” and halal food shelves in supermarkets. He launched what he described as a “massive” operation against 76 of France’s mosques, and sought to criminalize the filming of police officers. And he announced that he “can’t breathe” when he hears the term “police violence” — […]
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PARIS — The French government, determined to combat an ideology it views as “the enemy of the Republic,” on Wednesday unveiled draft legislation to combat radical Islamism, calling the measure “a law of freedom” essential to peaceful coexistence in French society. The law, which has been assailed by Turkey and other Muslim countries, and criticized […]
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LONDON — It can be hard, in the climactic days of a high-stakes negotiation, to separate theatrics from substance — and so it was on Saturday evening, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, hung up after an hourlong phone call. Ms. von der […]
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In the wake of two horrific incidents of Islamist terrorism in France, President Emmanuel Macron and many of his countrymen have reacted angrily to criticism from abroad suggesting that French policies, and especially the French version of state-enforced secularism, somehow contributed to the lethal radicalization of a sliver of the country’s large Muslim population. The […]
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PARIS — Without the video, Michel Zecler believes his case would have been reduced, at most, to a brief news item. Maybe something like this: “A young man, Black, wearing a sweatshirt and a hood, a shoulder bag, assaulted police officers, attempted to seize their weapons,” Mr. Zecler said in an interview on Thursday. “If […]
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PARIS — In recent months, Fabrice Chabance has had plenty to keep him awake at night. Two foreign-owned factories in Saint-Florent-sur-Cher, a region of 11,000 people where he is a political leader, have announced plans to move parts of their production lines to countries with lower labor costs. Nearly 200 jobs will be lost, a […]
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PARIS — Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across France on Saturday to protest a security bill that would restrict sharing images of police officers and strengthen government surveillance tools, the latest sign that anger over recent cases of police violence is galvanizing opposition. Media organizations and human rights groups held rallies […]
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PARIS — Video of police officers beating a Black man in Paris caused an outcry in France on Thursday, fueling criticism of a new bill that would place restrictions on sharing footage of security forces as the French authorities grapple with longstanding accusations of police racism and brutality. The beating, on Saturday, only came to […]
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PARIS — A rightward push by the French government is alarming civil liberties advocates in France and raising questions about President Emmanuel Macron’s positioning ahead of an expected electoral challenge from the far right in 2022. Propelled by a national wave of anxiety following recent terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists, two proposed new laws underscore […]
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The president has some bones to pick with the American media: about our “bias,” our obsession with racism, our views on terrorism, our reluctance to express solidarity, even for a moment, with his embattled republic. So President Emmanuel Macron of France called me on Thursday afternoon from his gilded office in the Élysée Palace to […]
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BERLIN — Austria would allow courts to extend the sentences of convicted terrorists and it would establish a new criminal offense for people who “create the breeding ground” for terrorism, as part of a package of legislative proposals announced a week after an Islamic State sympathizer killed four people in Vienna. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced […]
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LONDON — At least he wasn’t left waiting by the phone. British officials expressed relief that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was included in President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first round of calls with foreign leaders on Tuesday, along with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Micheal Martin of […]
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WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. fielded congratulatory calls from European leaders on Tuesday, even as some of President Trump’s authoritarian allies maintained a conspicuous silence about the election that could foreshadow coming tensions with the Biden administration. Mr. Biden spoke on Tuesday with President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, […]
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LONDON — When Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, joined a parade of foreign leaders in congratulating President-elect Joe Biden this week, he conspicuously failed to note that Mr. Biden had actually beaten his friend, President Trump. Like other right-wing populists, from Britain and Brazil to Poland and Germany, Mr. Orban was still coming to […]
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LONDON — When Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, joined a parade of foreign leaders in congratulating President-elect Joe Biden this week, he conspicuously failed to note that Mr. Biden had actually beaten his friend, President Trump. Like other right-wing populists, from Britain and Brazil to Poland and Germany, Mr. Orban was still coming to […]
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PARIS — October’s knife slayings by freelance terrorists shocked the French but have not led to the global outpouring of sympathy for France seen after Islamist massacres in 2015 and 2016. European leaders have expressed solidarity, but the Muslim world has been convulsed with anti-French demonstrations and calls for a boycott. Beyond the magnitude of […]
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BRUSSELS — In the “America First” landscape that President Trump created, Joseph R. Biden Jr. was an outdated romantic trans-Atlanticist. So there is relief in Europe about having a well-disposed friend in the White House who is more likely to support than to berate, harangue and insult. A former French ambassador to Washington, Gérard Araud, […]
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MARSEILLE, France — Once again, terrorism strikes France — and once again, terrorism is exposing the country’s dangerous contradictions. First there was the murder of Samuel Paty, a history teacher who was decapitated near Paris on Oct. 16 by a young Chechen man after Mr. Paty showed students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a […]
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NICE, France — When the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in early September, it triggered a chain of events that included two stabbings, protests in Muslim nations, the boycott of French goods and criticism from allies. Tensions rose higher when one young Islamist extremist beheaded a teacher near Paris this […]
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BERLIN — When Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the latest round of restrictions on public life, she named bars, restaurants, theaters, concert halls, gyms and tattoo parlors as institutions that would be forced to close. But missing from the list released on Wednesday were schools and day care centers — among the first to be shuttered […]
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IVRY-SUR-SEINE, France — At age 42, Mehdy Belabbas embodied the French republican promise of upward social mobility: the son of a Muslim construction worker of Algerian descent, he was the first in his family to attend graduate school and served for 12 years as the deputy mayor of the working-class city where he grew up. […]
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