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PARIS FROM OCTOBER 27 through mid-November, young men rampaged through urban areas around Paris and on the fringes of most major cities in France. They set fire to cars, buses, [...]

PARIS THE SUSPENSE about whether President Jacques Chirac of France will run for a third five-year mandate in 2007 seems to be over. On September 2 he was hospitalized, apparently [...]

PARIS THE PRO-EUROPEAN Union (EU) consensus of France's mainstream politicians tends to make for predictable debates on the subject, with the most overtly contrary voices naturally coming from the far [...]

PARIS THIS YEAR'S Bastille Day celebrations on July 14 also marked the centenary of the Entente cordiale between France and Britain. The Royal Horse Guards brought a splash of red [...]

MONTPELLIER VIDEO SCREENS, disco music, colored lights--Montpellier's skating rink was a throng of teenagers, except for a few mothers like myself. Parties of boys and girls swirled about on the [...]

PARIS LAST SPRING'S French presidential election, with its dramatic runoff between neo-Gaullist Jacques Chirac and xenophobic extreme Rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen, may have initiated a reshaping of political thought here. [...]

PARIS FRENCH GARDENERS and politicians dread May: The weather and people's moods are apt to swing abruptly from sunny mildness to bud-nipping frostiness. In 1968 France flirted with heady revolutionary [...]

PARIS DURING a television interview on December 5, France's Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin finally admitted that he would 'probably' be a candidate in this spring's presidential elections. No one [...]

Paris The students who in May 1968 briefly took over the center of Paris, defying their elders from behind makeshift barricades, are now middle-aged citizens worried about jobs, mortgages and [...]

PARIS Assumption Day, on August 15. is one of the religious feasts that survived Republican attempts to secularize the French calendar. For Catholics, the anniversary of Mary's elevation to heaven [...]

'There is something absurd and unfair about our society. Globally it has never been so rich, yet thousands of people sleep in the streets, go without medical care for lack [...]

Fatima was born in France, but at the age of 16 she was taken to Algeria by her parents and married to a middle-aged man. Ten years later, she managed [...]

FRENCH journalists have rushed in where French judges feared to tread. On April 13, a court here dismissed the latest charges brought against Paul Touvier, one of the leaders of [...]

PIERCING THE FOG Britain's Ulstergate HAD SHE LIVED in the 14th century, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would probably have dismissed King Richard II as a 'wet' (moderate). Yet she has [...]

BARCELONA MEETING THE PRESS August 6 on Majorca, the island where King Juan Carlos traditionally spends part of the summer, Spain's Center-Right Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, went over some [...]

PARIS WITHOUT ACTUALLY saying so, Jacques Chirac, France's neo-Gaullist President, and Lionel Jospin, his Socialist Prime Minister, are limbering up for next year's presidential race. Barring the unexpected, each will [...]

PARIS PEACE is as brittle as glass, more precious than any diamond. That is no doubt why architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who designed the 'Wall For Peace' with artist Clara Halter, [...]

PARIS WHEN James Boswell 'inquired into the situation of he affairs of Corsica, he found the utmost disorder and confusion. There was no subordination, no discipline, no money.... The country [...]

TIME WAS when its schools, with their austere, barracks-like buildings, bare floorboards and dark-coated teachers, were the pride of France. Virtually everyone, from ministers down to the humblest farmhands, saw [...]

PARIS AFTER A FALL that saw flooding and mudslides in Mexico, tidal waves in India, and a double-decker deluge in the United States as hurricanes Floyd and Irene hit southern [...]

PARIS FOR SEVERAL MONTHS now the French farming world has been bubbling with unrest like a vat of fermenting apples. Summer and fall regularly bring a glut of tomatoes, peaches, [...]

AIX-EN-PROVENCE Like Stratford-on-Avon in Britain, the French cities of Avignon and Aix-en-Provence are quiet places most of the year. Their historic city centers are roughly the same size as William [...]

LIKE ALL OTHER European Union (EU) citizens, the French will go to the polls on June 13 to elect their European Parliament representatives. Who wins and who loses will indicate [...]

PARIS 'WE HATE FAMILIES,' was a popular slogan of the May 1968 student uprising in Paris. Thirty years on, French families are not what they used to be and the [...]

PARIS THERE ARE times when politicians and their constituents seem to take pains to outdo their own stereotypical image. France provided a striking example in the lead-up to the war [...]

In sharp contrast to the lurid coverage President Bill Clinton's personal affairs have been receiving in the U.S., the French media refrain from trespassing on the private lives of public [...]

BARCELONA At a time when many voters throughout Europe feel their political leaders are often out of touch, Spain's Socialists have offered a lesson in democracy by holding primaries to [...]

From the perspective of Gaullist President Jacques Chirac and Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein chose exactly the right moment to bully his way back into the [...]

PARIS In France, the offices paying out unemployment benefits do not go in for welcome mats. One that I visited was situated on the outskirts of a small but sprawling [...]

Inevitably there was the usual international gathering of crowns and coronets but it was, as royal weddings go, almost a homey affair. Certainly it was very much a Spanish get-together. [...]

In French, intellectual can be an insult or a compliment. As early as the 1 890s the nationalist, anti-Semitic press was applying it contemptuously to the writers. scientists, journalists, teachers. [...]

'I don't think I believe in real philosophy,' Sophie's mother declares toward the end of Jostein Gaarder's internationally bestselling novel, Sophie's World. 'Everything is synthetic.' Perhaps because many things, from [...]

Paris That the Arab world enthusiastically hailed President Jacques Chirac's October 22 shoving match with Israeli security men in East Jerusalem hardly surprised France's Jewish community. What disturbed it was [...]

Paris Last April Abbe Pierre, an elderly priest long respected for his crusade on behalf of France's homeless, rose to defend Roger Garaudy's The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, a [...]

PARIS DURING THE campaign preceding his May 1995 election as President, neo-Gaullist Jacques Chirac conjured up a sunny image of the future. Eager to dissipate the grayness of Francois Mitterrand's [...]

A RECENT cartoon appearing in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaini shows French President Jacques Chirac reading a letter to Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre: 'Listen to this.... The Armed Islamic [...]

Barcelona Felipe Gonzalez, who became General Secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in 1974 at age 32, is this country's most prominent post-Franco political figure. In 1982, after [...]

France's new Center-Right President, Jacques Chirac, is eager - in theory - to break with 14 years of Socialism. Yet he has put forward some pseudo-Keynesian measures and institutional reforms [...]

PARIS IT WAS A depressing evening. On September 12, France's Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand, appeared on television to address two urgent national concerns: his worsening prostate cancer, and the new [...]

MADRID FOR SPAIN'S Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, this year's Bastille Day celebration provided a welcome break. As the guest of French President Francois Mitterrand, he attended the traditional July 14 [...]

THE first Frenchman ever charged with crimes against humanity, Paul Touvier, received a life sentence on April 20 for having ordered the execution of seven Jews in 1944. The same [...]

PARIS WHILE MORTAR SHELLS killed children playing in the snow and people going to the market in Sarajevo, Western capitals continued to exchange heated diplomatic crossfire about the best way [...]

THE VOICES of 100 people, scattered across an Arab-Muslim world whose inhabitants number a billion or so, may seem a whisper in the desert. Yet when they are the voices [...]

Unlike their French neighbors, who ousted the governing Socialists last April, Spaniards on June 6 renewed the mandate of the Socialist Party (PSOE) headed by Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, giving [...]

IN SMYRNA, Turkey, back in 1929, fairies must have watched over the cradle of France's new Prime Minister, Edouard Balladur. Editorial deference, a 73 per cent popularity rating, a standing [...]

ANDORRA LA VELLA IN MARCH 14, one of Europe's tiniest countries decided to grow up and join the ranks of dent states beyond the ring of mountains that had long [...]

A hint of envy could be heard in the voices of French commentators covering Bill Clinton's accession to the Presidency. However complex America's problems may be, the face at the [...]

PARIS A FORMAL APOLOGY by President FranCois Mitterrand several weeks ago could not quiet what has become a national scandal here: I t is now evident that in 1985 French [...]

DAZED BY THE profound monetary tumult in Britain and Italy, many observers are taking a gloomy view of the prospects for the European Community (EC). Yet the crises in those [...]

Solstices, especially the summer one when the weather is better, fascinate sunworshipping cranks. Last June a motley of pilgrims gathered in this southern French town, where the solstice sun sends [...]