The stunningly beautiful Hazrat Ali Mazar (Shrine of Ali) in central Mazar-e-Sharif

As the Afghan people face further suffering and the big powers and international agencies debate how to deal with the new […]

Traditional dance at Hamid Karzai’s rally during the 2004 presidential election

A new period in Afghanistan’s history has opened up with the return of the Taliban to power and the hasty departure of US […]

Thousands of far-right fanatics, many of them armed, gather in front of the seat of government, whipped-up by fake news and racist propaganda, convinced that the political elite is mired in corruption. They […]

The French police are the subject of much controversy these days. They have always faced a certain amount of opposition, sometimes of an extremely radical nature. Here’s an example from 110 years a […]

Worldwide protests over the murder of George Floyd have given a new boost to campaigns against police brutality and racism in France. Ministers have promised action, while insisting that “France is not the U […]

Who’d have thought anything could push a global pandemic out of the lead story spot? Well, a nine-minute video of a US cop murdering a black man has and it’s sparked protests around the world. In Paris yes […]

It will be back to nearly normal for most of France next Tuesday but Parisians will have to drink their coffees en terrasse and wait a while before they can go to the gym, the theatre or Disneyland. Meanwhile, […]

The River Marne from the Pont du Petit Parc between Joinville-le-Pont and Saint-Maur-des-Fossés Photo: Tony Cross

Afternoons on the river Marne are pretty busy these days – teenagers canoeing or sitting on th […]

The government is to start a consultation on salvaging the health service this afternoon. It will be by videoconference, Coronavirus oblige. The choice of chair does not bode well for anyone hoping for […]

France’s rules on using hydroxychloroquine are to change following the Lancet’s publication of two studies indicating that it can be dangerous when used to fight Covid-19.

Health Minister Olivier Véran has […]

Don’t put your faith in miracles – Rembrandt’s The Raising of Lazarus

Today is a long weekend in France, thanks to Thursday being the Feast of the Ascension, a public holiday in a secular country that still […]

Some stalls missing but the charcuterie is there Photo: Tony Cross

Champigny market has reopened, with a restricted number of stalls, still tightly packed in some places. As a new Covid-19 cluster is noted in […]

Che Guevara. You’ve bought the T-shirt, hung the poster on your wall (when you were a student, of course), collected the stamp, maybe even slept under the Che duvet cover, now you can see that saintly face d […]

The French government is to order one billion masks from local manufacturers. To which the only possible reaction is, what took you so long?

Having told the general public that we didn’t need masks when the e […]

I went walking in the woods. For the first time since lockdown started.

Frogs croaked in the ponds, the sun dappled the ground and I couldn’t believe how loud the birdsong was.

The Japanese have a p […]

As more French pupils go back to school this Monday, 70 new cases of Covid-19 have been identified in infant schools, which partially reopened last week. Several schools, in various parts of the country, have had […]

The Gilets Jaunes are back. A few of them, anyway. And 25 clusters of Covid-19 cases have been identified in France since lockdown was lifted, although the situation does still seem to be improving.

A few […]

Lockdown seems to have worked. The number of deaths per day has declined since a high point of 600 a day of the beginning of April.

Graph by Insee

In fact, numbers crunched by the official statistics […]

Hydroxychloroquine isn’t a miracle cure, then. It appears that Professor Didier Raoult is a bit of a bullshitter and President Donald Trump is a bit of a mug. Who’d have thought it?

The Raoult cult – a Mar […]