The arrogant superpower demands fealty from the lesser states, and quashes any back talk. We've heard it all before. But that familiar take on Washington's push for war in Iraq took a delicious twist last week when France marched blithely into the role of bogeyman. French President Jacques Chirac's intemperate broadside at European Union candidate countries who back America's stance on Iraq — he called them "not very well behaved and rather reckless" and said they had "missed a good ...

One day in 1871, legend has it, a French artist named Claude Monet walked into a food shop in Amsterdam, where he had gone to escape the Prussian siege of Paris. There he spotted some Japanese prints being used as wrapping paper. He was so taken by the engravings that he bought one on the spot. The purchase changed his life — and the history of Western art. Monet went on to collect 231 Japanese prints, which greatly influenced his work ...

Among the army of burger flippers at work across America in the 1960s was a French chef putting his training to use at Howard Johnson's on Queens Boulevard in New York City. I worked for HoJo's from the summer of 1960 to the spring of 1970, doing my American apprenticeship, learning about mass production and marketing. The company had been started in 1925 in Massachusetts by Howard Deering Johnson, and by the mid-1960s its sales exceeded that of Burger King, ...

As the military action against Libya to give teeth to U.N. Security Resolution 1973 began, one question kept nagging away: Why, precisely, were the governments of Britain and France in the lead? Why were their armed forces taking part in the military action, and why had their diplomats done the grunt work in the negotiations that led to the adoption of Resolution 1973? It is not an easy question to answer. British Prime Minister David Cameron said that ...

Cars, trucks, and vans stacked with families and their personal belongings had poured out of Benghazi on for most of Saturday, heading toward the eastern city of Beida, about 125 miles away. Many of the Libyans said they would continue on to Tobruk and even Egypt. "We are fleeing Benghazi, and we are going to Egypt," said one man driving a large van with his and his neighbor's family packed into it. Like many others reaching ...

For foreign residents in Japan, it's been pandemonium. The ex-pat exodus from Tokyo is in full force. But I'm going to stick it out. As a journalist it's just too important to be here at this time. I've had a deluge of emails telling me to do otherwise, as well as Facebook messages and calls from family and friends abroad, worried sick. They've been glued to the TV news watching the unfolding drama of triple whammy 3/11 ...

Barack Obama arrived in Strasbourg on Friday for this weekend's NATO summit enthusing about the military organization, which he described at a joint press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy as "the most successful alliance in modern history." That it may have been. But Obama's praise contrasts starkly with the scathing assessment of the state of NATO, now 60 years old, by European military analysts, who say that the gap in military capability between the United ...

By my watch, the takeoff roll for Air France flight 380 lasted 35 seconds. "39 seconds," corrected Laurent Bonnard, a French historian, as we chatted in a lounge area later. Either way, all the planiacs on board Air France's inaugural A380 Airbus flight from New York City to Paris agreed the takeoff was a thing of beauty. Imagine an apartment building with wings that steps into the sky with the quiet grace of a ballet dancer. The lack of ...

Former French President Jacques Chirac must stand trial on corruption charges, French public radio reported Friday.

American tennis legend Andre Agassi has admitted using crystal methamphetamine a year before he won the French Open in 1998, and that he lied to the sport's governing bodies in the same period about a positive drugs test to avoid a ban.Later in the year an Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) doctor confirmed to Agassi -- who is currently married to former number one women's tennis player Steffi Graf -- that his use of recreational drugs had shown up in ...