Month: February 2024

After watching “Navalny,” the documentary about Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, a Chinese businesswoman sent me a message: “Ren Zhiqiang is the Navalny of China.” She was talking about the retired real estate tycoon who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for criticizing Chinese leader Xi Jinping.After Mr. Navalny's tragic death this month, a young dissident living in Berlin posted on X: "Professor Li is the closest to the Chinese version of Navalny. » He was referring to the rebel influencer known as Teacher Li, who used social media to share information about protests in China and now…

A Gifi low-cost store, March 20, 2019, in Toulouse. PASCAL PAVANI / AFP The Casino Group's recovery has not yet been completed and another French distributor is already asking for help. According to several sources, a first meeting was organized, Monday February 26, under the aegis of the interministerial committee for industrial restructuring, attached to Bercy, concerning the GiFi group, which has 600 points of sale and employs 6,800 people, for a figure business of 1.3 billion euros in 2023. The brand, specializing in low-cost home and family equipment, founded in 1981 by Philippe Ginestet – “Gi” for Ginestet and…

The construction site of the A69 motorway between Toulouse and Castres, near Puylaurens (Tarn), February 20, 2024. ED JONES / AFP Among the trees, opponents as determined as ever. In Paris, deputies who will look into the matter for several months... For several days, the construction of the A69, a 53-kilometer motorway between Toulouse and Castres, has been at the center of all attention. On the ground, the tension does not subside. Tuesday, February 27, “squirrels”​, these demonstrators firmly opposed to the project, were still perched ​in cabins built in oaks and plane trees of the Crém'Arbre, the name of…

Brett Stephens: Hi, Gail. I know we're going to talk about Donald Trump's big victory in the South Carolina primary, but first I want to get you thinking about Joe Biden's State of the Union address. That won't happen until next week, but I guess the White House speechwriters are working hard on it now.Any advice on what the president should say and how he should say it?Gail Collins: Suppose he tells the country how well things are going in the economy, the progress he's made on priorities like improving America's infrastructure and relieving people drowning in debt students.Brett: I'll…

The Federal Reserve may have a housing problem. At the very least, there is a housing conundrum.Overall inflation has declined significantly over the past year. But housing proved a stubborn – and surprising – exception. The cost of housing rose 6 percent in January from a year earlier, and rose faster on a monthly basis than in December, according to the Labor Department. This acceleration was one of the main reasons for the overall rise in consumer prices last month.The persistence of housing inflation poses a problem for Fed officials, who are wondering when to cut interest rates. Housing is…

Two years after the start of the large-scale war, the dynamic of Western support for Kiev is losing momentum: newly committed aid is down over the period from August 2023 to January 2024 compared to the same period of the 'last year, according to the latest report from the Kiel Institutepublished in February 2024. And this trend could continue, with the American Senate struggling to pass aid, and the European Union (EU) having had great difficulty in passing aid of 50 billion on 1uh 2024, due to the Hungarian blockade. Please note, these two aid packages are not yet taken…

Laurent Gardinier, owner, with his brothers Thierry and Stéphane, of the restaurant Le Taillevent where he poses, in 2015. He also became, in 2023, president of the Relais & Châteaux association. VINCENT CAPMAN The group headed by brothers Thierry, Stéphane and Laurent Gardinier and their approximately 350 employees is today devoted almost exclusively to the gastronomy and hospitality professions. But the family business has undergone several changes since its creation in 1926. At the end of the First World War, Lucien Gardinier, grandfather of the current leaders, made his fortune thanks to organic fertilizers. Two of his nine children, Xavier…

Last May, Anthropic, one of the world's hottest artificial intelligence startups, raised $450 million from investors including Google and Salesforce. It was the start of an astonishing fundraising frenzy.In August, Anthropic received $100 million from two Asian telecommunications companies. Then Amazon committed $4 billion, followed by another $2 billion from Google.This month, venture capital firm Menlo Ventures reached a deal to invest $750 million in Anthropic.In total, the AI ​​start-up raised $7.3 billion in one year. Its five financing operations stood out not only for their speed and scale, but also for their unusual structures.In one of those deals, Anthropic…

Book. Never, when he slipped into the artist's dressing room in the spring of 2019, Simon Shuster would have imagined writing a book on Volodymyr Zelensky. Of Russian-Ukrainian origin, magazine journalist Timewho has been wandering for ten years from the east to the west of Ukraine as before in Russia, confesses in the first lines of the 480 pages of The showman (Harper Collins, 21.90 euros) – curiously translated in France as We will vanquish. The work is dedicated to one of the most observed men on the planet. The journalist met Zelensky “behind the scenes” that day, during one…

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Dan Perkin and Scott Bissmeyer, vacationing work buddies, sat on metal bleachers watching the Portland Timbers take on the San Jose Earthquakes in the first of four Major League Soccer preseason games this that day.They had spent $125 each on VIP day passes, which included food, drinks and access to tents for refreshments. Self-described “MLS road trippers,” they have visited many MLS stadiums and watched teams in Tucson, Arizona, where up to 11 clubs have gathered for pre-season training in the past.But this year, as 12 MLS teams — including two from the United Soccer…