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 Monde. The startling turnaround in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affaire has nothing to do with what happened May 14 in the now famous Sofitel hotel room 2806. It is all about the credibility of the plaintiff, the Guinean housekeeper who has accused "DSK" of sexual assault. For the American judicial ...

The scrum of reporters assembles in the pre-dawn quiet two blocks from the border of Chinatown. It is more than two hours before Dominique Strauss-Kahn is scheduled to make an appearance, but it doesn't matter. On Monday the curtain will lift on Act I of the trial of the new century, and the courtroom has precious few seats. Two hours early might be too late. After being herded through metal detectors, we ride the nearest elevator to ...

Sweden's latest hip hotel is — but of course — impeccably designed. The Nobis, in downtown Stockholm, is all clean Scandinavian lines, muted colors and modernist furnishings, generating a coziness that beckons through the windows running along the east side of Norrmalmstorg Square. Adding to the draw are stores by local design collective Acne, and Finnish fashion label Marimekko, both located in the building. And within the Acne store is the vault where, in 1973, robbers ...

If you want a hotel in London this weekend, good luck. With the always-popular Chelsea Flower Show in full bloom , hotel availability was already at a premium. But on May 28, the final of the European Champions League soccer competition will be played at Wembley Stadium, and fans — and corporate hospitality departments — are taking over the town. London's never cheap, but the demand has pushed the rate for quite ordinary hotel rooms ...

It's past midnight in Zamboanga and Benigno Aquino III slouches in his chair, a glass of Coke in one hand and a cigarette in another. He's tired and bleary-eyed and wracked by a cold. A grueling day of audiences, processions and interviews in three different provinces across the southern Philippine island of Mindanao is drawing to a close in the hotel lobby. While aides and well-wishers murmur around him, Aquino stands and holds out his arms as if awaiting ...

On the evening of Wednesday, June 13, Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, retreated to his room at the Conrad Hilton hotel in Brussels and wrestled with an unfamiliar feeling — one of impending defeat. Just eight months before, he had, it seemed, pulled off a stunning coup. Welch had always coveted Honeywell International, whose business making advanced electronics for the aviation industry, he thought, made a perfect fit with GE, one of three leading global manufacturers ...

Martin Sheen says he understands the recent hell his son Charlie has been going through, because he's been there. As he told the U.K.'s Telegraph March 21, he's experienced his own "psychotic episodes," including some in public. "One of them was on camera: the opening scene of Apocalypse Now," the elder Sheen said. "And when you do something like that, that is out of control, that's the most difficult thing." "Out of control" might be a good way to ...

The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in the Oberoi Trident hotel in Mumbai , where some 40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India. "We love this as our country, but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he asked via telephone. No answer came. But then he probably wasn't expecting one. ...

Mia Wasikowska slips through the lobby of New York City's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, hat pulled low, scarf wrapped high, face scrubbed clean, a marvel of unadornment. If you hadn't spent the previous evening at a screening of her new film, Jane Eyre, absorbed in her performance as the original plain Jane, you'd hardly notice her. This is entirely in sync with the 21-year-old's career goals. She has no desire to be in Us Weekly, is content with not getting what ...

When you think about skiing over the holidays, the holiday that comes to mind is Christmas. But Christmas at major ski resorts, while festive enough, also means peak prices for hotel rooms and condos, long lift lines, and the same crowd trying to get overpriced lunches at the mountaintop lodges at the same time. And besides, it's the dead of winter, the absolute worst time to ski — freezing temperatures, nasty winds, and the potential for frostbite. ...