This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Le Figaro. On this rainy spring morning, the Pic de Bugarach in southern France is completely shrouded in mist. But though the peak, at 4,000 ft., is invisible today, its rugged outline is known all over the world. Hundreds of websites are claiming that after an apocalypse on December 21, 2012, only the small village ...

Try not to forget what you saw last week. You say now that it would be impossible to forget: Filipinos armed to the teeth with rosaries and flowers, / massing in front of tanks, and the tanks stopping, and some of the soldiers who were the enemy embracing the people and their flowers. Call that a revolution? Where were the heads stuck on pikes? Where were the torches for the estates of the rich? The rich were in the streets ...

Height: 6 ft. 2 inches. Age: 25. Eyes: Blue. Cheeks: Pink. Hair: Sandy. Feet: Large. When he arrived at the Embassy in France no shoes big enough were handy. Habits: Smokes not; drinks not. Does not gamble. Eats a thoroughgoing breakfast. Prefers light luncheon and dinner when permitted. Avoids rich dishes. Likes sweets. Calligraphy: From examination of his handwriting Dr. Camille Streletski, Secretary of the French Graphological Society, concluded: Superiority, intellectualism, cerebration, idealism, even mysticism. Characteristics: Modesty, taciturnity, diffidence , ...

In 1783, Louis-Sbastian Lenormand climbed to the top of an observatory tower in Montpellier, France, leaned over the edge, and jumped. An astonished crowd watched as he fell to the ground with the aid of a new contraption called the parachute and landed unhurt. The legend of the daredevil building-hop continued Oct. 18 with the 29th annual Bridge Day in Fayetteville, West Virginia — the largest group BASE jumping event in the world. 383 people made the 876-foot ...

A group of Arab nationalists has confronted the U.N. General Assembly, convening in New York this week, with one of those practical moral and political problems which, from time to time, make the U.N. a genuine world forum. Since the U.S. will have a decisive voice in the debate, the problem is one for all Americans: What is the U.S. attitude towards modern colonialism? Arab Rights. The specific issue is the right of the Arabs, claiming to represent 90% of ...

France: In Search of Bin Laden's Urologist Osama Bin Laden may be in less danger from smart bombs than from kidney stones, according to a report in the French daily Le Figaro. In a report picked up throughout Europe the Paris paper and Radio France International claimed the Saudi terrorist checked himself into Dubai's American Hospital in July, where he spent 10 days undergoing urgent treatment to his ailing renal system. "Intelligence sources believe that bin Laden ...

We'll never know what it was like to be aboard Air France Flight 447 as it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on May 31, apparently killing all 228 aboard. For now, the closest we may get is listening to the passengers on a similar Airbus 330 jet whose flight computer put it into an uncommanded dive over northwestern Australia last October. Qantas Flight 72 had been airborne for three hours, flying uneventfully on autopilot from Singapore to Perth, ...

Know what's contagious? Fear is contagious. On the day more than 1 million Egyptians took to the streets demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, the monarch governing a desert kingdom right next door saw fit to dismiss his Prime Minister and appoint ... a new government. This was in Jordan, where the statement issued by the Palace of King Abdullah II made clear the first orders to the newly minted Premier, former general Marouf Bakhit: "to ...

Former champions France have been handed a tough task against Ireland in the European playoffs to qualify for next year's World Cup finals in South Africa. France, who won the World Cup on home soil in 1998, finished a distant second to Serbia after a lackluster campaign in Group 7, while the Irish pushed Italy hard in their group. France coach Raymond Domenech is under pressure going into the two-legged affair on November 14 and 18, but told the official ...

Barclays is planning to spin off a 4bn ($6.3) portfolio of complex credit assets as the bank presses ahead with a process to clean up its balance sheet and ease shareholder concerns over its investments. The bank is looking at a deal to shift up to 4bn of the assets off its balance sheet in an echo of a similar transaction it undertook last month with a 12.3bn portfolio, people familiar with the matter said. That deal involved a team ...