Author: Anselme Gaudet

Picture this: Costumed dancers and fire-hurling acrobats perform on an open-air stage next to the River Seine, the Eiffel Tower sparkling in the background. A parade of musicians, their clothes and instruments decorated with neon glow lights, lead partygoers along the quay to a series of moored river boats. There they embark for a midnight cruise on the world-famous waterway that will take center stage for the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games 2024. This was the soirée scene at Rendez-vous en France, French tourism’s largest B2B trade show. The return to Paris for the 16th edition was highly anticipated.…

The Commission of the European Union (EU) has announced closer ties with Turkey and the countries of the region, in line with the future goals of the Union.Maros Sefcovic, Vice President of the EU Commission for Interagency Relations and Foresight, held a press conference on the 2021 version of the report, the first of which was published last year. Šefčović said that as they moved towards 2050, they discussed 5 major topics that will affect the EU, including climate change and other environmental issues, digital hyperconnectivity and technological transformation, pressure on democracy and values, and changing global order and demographics.…

Protests in France escalated over the weekend with officers firing more than 4,000 nonlethal dispersion grenades at people who were voicing their concerns over French President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms. More than a million people have taken to the streets in recent weeks after Macron said he would increase the retirement age from 62 to 64. In western France, police and environmental activists clashed over the weekend, resulting in hundreds of arrests and dozens of injuries. Former President François Hollande, Macron’s predecessor said, “Anger and resentment are at a level that I have rarely seen.” The protests have been reinvigorated after they successfully derailed…

Those who can fight all over the world are invincible, but those who can’t be beaten and still have to fight are scoundrels. Turkey is the latter, which has provoked most of the major powers in the world, and has problems with Britain, France, the United States, Russia, Germany, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iran. Provoking the above-mentioned countries is tantamount to kicking the iron plate. Turkey just hit the south wall, like a little bully in Eurasia. Even Australia, which is far away in the Pacific Ocean, has had a relatively fierce sea confrontation with Turkey. Looking at the…

PARIS (AP) — France’s prime minister insisted Sunday that the government’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 is “no longer negotiable,” further angering parliamentary opponents and unions who plan new mass protests and disruptive strikes this week. Raising the pension age is one part of a broad bill that is the flagship measure of President Emmanuel Macron’s second term. The bill is meeting widespread popular resistance — more than 1 million people marched against it earlier this month — and misunderstanding about what it will mean for today’s French workers. In an interview with France-Info radio…

PARIS — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had a meeting this week in Paris and was asked by a gracious host how he takes his coffee. “Un sucre?” French President Emmanuel Macron asked. Over that coffee, the leader of the NBA and the leader of France struck a deal to work together with hopes of continuing to grow the game of basketball internationally — a marriage of perfect timing, given how French star Victor Wembanyama is a few months from coming to the NBA and the Paris Olympics are about 18 months away. The NBA announced some details Thursday, including a collaboration…

French Football Federation president Noel Le Graet came under fire on Monday as he was forced to apologise for what he dubbed “clumsy remarks” about Zinedine Zidane’s potential interest in coaching the France national team. Le Graet had quipped dismissively in an interview to French radio station RMC on Sunday that he “wouldn’t even have taken his call” when asked whether Les Bleus legend Zidane had rung him to express an interest in taking over as coach from Didier Deschamps. That drew criticism from France and Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappe, who said Le Graet had shown “a lack of…

A 69-year-old gunman opened fire at a Kurdish cultural centre and a hairdressing salon in Paris on Friday, killing three people and injuring three others, witnesses and prosecutors said. The shots shortly before midday (1100 GMT) caused panic in rue d’Enghien in the trendy 10th district of the capital, a bustling area of shops and restaurants that is home to a large Kurdish population. Witnesses told AFP that the gunman, described by police as white and known for two previous attempted murders, initially targeted the Kurdish cultural centre before entering a nearby hairdressing salon where he was arrested by police. “We saw…