Word: libs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Welcome to the cruel downside of Vélib' - the enormously popular bike-rental scheme offering Parisians a cheap, environmentally friendly form of urban transportation. Since its introduction in July 2007, Paris' Vélib' program has facilitated 42 million rentals by 177,000 people with annual subscriptions to the system and countless others who have rented bikes on a one-off basis. The program allows riders to use credit cards or subscriptions to hop onto one of the program's 20,600 bikes from 1,451 stations around Paris and its nearby suburbs. And the ride is free...
Even so, some of Europe's most hide-bound institutions are realizing that drastic change may not be such a bad thing. France's truculent leftist daily, Libération, was founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and a group of former Maoists in 1973. In its early firebrand days, employees from the editor to the janitor all received the same salary. It's been on life support for years, and it's a wonder no one's pulled the plug...
...Today, Libé has a new benefactor in the form of Edouard de Rothschild, and a new unstarry-eyed editor, Laurent Joffrin. The paper flirted briefly with break-even in 2007 and it's trying to find a way to go post-ideological, sort of. The Net, conferences, French open-shirted philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy shilling with advertisers - the new Libé will try almost anything. Joffrin even invited Carla Bruni, wife of France's rightist President Nicolas Sarkozy, to serve as celebrity editor for a day, but that was a step too far and Joffrin was forced...
...said that the Elysée is intensely observing the slightest sign of revolt," wrote Laurent Joffrin in Friday's edition of Libération - whose cover featured French students waving their fists in protest over the headline "After Greece: Can France Ignite?" "It's a wise precaution: divided, anguished, disillusioned, France has a Greek profile...
...Competent, determined and conviction-founded, Martine Aubry represents Socialist continuity and an attachment to the classic left; unpredictable, modern, telegenic, Ségolène Royal is the TV Madonna gifted with an iron will and whirring pragmatism," wrote daily Libération editor Laurent Joffrin in his Op-Ed Friday. "Martine Aubry wants to safeguard the homestead, while Ségolène Royal chases adventure," Joffrin continued, noting that in the absence of any major ideological gulf between the two reform-minded women, "there is an incontestable opposition of style...