LE WEB FRANÇAIS As of today, France has a new multilingual Web site for visitors, France.fr, which has already crashed because of excess traffic. And the city of Paris recently gave its own site an attractive, much-needed redesign. Both are … Read More
ELECTRIFYING NEWS The city of Paris plans to place eight electricity-generating water turbines in four sites in the Seine where the current is strong. Bids have been requested from contractors for this experiment in renewable-energy production, which joins a geothermal-energy … Read More
OCCUPATION RECORDS TO GO PUBLIC Paris’s Préfecture de Police will soon begin digitizing all police records dating from the period of Nazi occupation (1940-44) and will make them available online to the public in 2015-16. Until now, only historians were … Read More
ACCESS DENIED France has never been in the vanguard when it comes to disabled access, and now a study by the Association pour Adultes et Jeunes Handicapés shows that only between 5 percent and 15 percent of 330,000 French public … Read More
RATE PARIS REAL ESTATE A rooftop house on top of another building in Saint Ouen, by Freaks freearchitects. Express your opinion about the Paris region’s modern architecture by voting online for the Prix Grand Public des Architectures Contemporaines de la … Read More
NEW SCAM ALERT A new street scam has popped up in Paris to add the list enumerated by David Jaggard last year in Paris Update. This one has an extra nasty twist because it takes advantage of those rare people … Read More
NEVER (SHOP) ON SUNDAY The Paris City Council has said no to Mammon, refusing to extend the right to stay open on Sunday to more categories of retail stores. “Do we want to live in a world where consumerism reigns … Read More
RACISM ON THE RISE Racial prejudice is on the rise in France, according to a poll taken in May by SOS Racisme and the Union of Jewish Students. More than 27.6 percent of the 1,029 respondents over the age of … Read More
FEMALE SCOFFLAWS UNITE! This woman could be arrested for wearing trousers in Paris. Photo © Ron Fox Clothes are very important to the French, and the proposed new law forbidding the wearing of the burqa is not the first instance … Read More
INSURANCE FOR LIBERTARIANS Perhaps the Paris Métro should revise its payment system: passengers are trusted to buy a ticket, and those who don’t are only occasionally caught and made to pay a fine. Charles Bremner reports in the Times Online … Read More
