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 Nouvel Observateur. PARIS All of France is abuzz Friday with news of the overnight story by the New York Times reporting that the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn was "on the verge of collapse." The U.S. newspaper reported that prosecutors had growing doubts about the credibility of the ...

It was launched by President Nicolas Sarkozy's government three months ago with much hype and patriotic ebullition — a series of 100-plus town hall meetings across France to debate what it means to be French in the 21st century. And even after opponents on the left and right alike criticized the initiative as a Machiavellian way of casting immigrants, their French-born children and especially Muslims as a threat to France's national identity, government officials defiantly took the ...

Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique Stauss-Kahn were never friends — one conservative, the other Socialist, their political ambitions setting them on a collision course. Yet, soon after Sarkozy's 2007 election as President of France, he surprised most people by nominating Strauss-Kahn to be Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, a heartening reach across party lines. Others, however, saw a more devious motive: Sarkozy was moving his most potent challenger to the IMF's Washington, D.C. headquarters and depriving ...

France's investigating magistrates have been a central pillar of the country's Napoleonic justice system for over 200 years. Acting as independent, neutral investigators into crimes, they collect evidence that is then used by justice officials to either try or dismiss a case. Feared and respected, hailed and derided, the juge d'instruction has been immortalized in literature and film. French novelist and playwright Honor de Balzac once described his role as that of the "most powerful man" in ...

The 10-day-old coalition waging military strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's forces converged in London on Tuesday for the first time since it began bombing Libya on March 19, in order to thrash out how the campaign could edge, push or coax Gaddafi out of power after nearly 42 years of stifling dictatorship. In a frenzied round of closed-door meetings, hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron, officials from across Europe and parts of the Arab world attempted to ...

When the severed heads of seven French Trappist monks were found in a remote mountainous region of Algeria in May 1996, it was natural to assume the murders were the latest gruesome act by jihadists in their long-running and bloody campaign against the Algerian government. Thirteen years on, however, the victims' families, church officials and the French and Algerian publics have been shocked by the revelation that the monks may have been killed as the result of ...

President Nicolas Sarkozy may have triumphed over the millions of protesters and strikers who opposed his effort to raise the retirement age in France by two years. But his law to keep people working longer and paying into the pension system longer won't succeed unless he persuades French bosses to play along; they have a nasty habit of dumping employees older than 50. Bonne chance, Mr. President . Virtually no one in France contests the logic of the law, which Sarkozy ...

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 ...

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 ...