Europe

A woman walks amid both open and closed shops during a Sunday morning stroll at the Butte Montmartre in Paris, in July. Under France's Byzantine rules on Sunday trading, shops at the top of the hill are in a designated tourist area and so can open, but th

World News

France Rethinks The Sanctity Of Its Day Of Rest

8:34pm November 08, 2013

by Eleanor Beardsley

For more than a century, French law has allowed stores to open on Sundays only under specific conditions. It also tightly controls other types of Sunday work. Several stores are now challenging that ban, as people question the tradition amid a languishing economy and a 24/7 world.

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Algeria-born Albert Camus poses for a portrait in Paris following the announcement that he is being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. Camus' views on his birthplace still stoke controversy.

Camus' Stance On Algeria Still Stokes Debate In France

2:56pm November 07, 2013

by Eleanor Beardsley

A hundred years after his birth, French writer Albert Camus is perhaps best known for novels like The Stranger and his philosophy of absurdism. But it's his views on Algeria's fight for independence that continues\ to get scrutiny.

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A player from the Vatican's new cricket team of priests and seminarians returns a ball during a training session at the Mater Ecclesiae Catholic college in Rome last month. The Vatican officially declared its intention to defeat the Church of England —

The Vatican Reaches Out, A Cricket Match At A Time

6:21pm November 06, 2013

by Sylvia Poggioli

The Vatican is vowing to defeat the Church of England — not in the pews but on the cricket pitch. The Vatican has launched a cricket club, which draws from seminarians and priests of different nationalities who live and study in Rome. It's hoped the club will forge ties with teams of other faiths.

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A young man gives a Catholic skullcap to Pope Francis as he greets the crowd before his general audience at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Oct. 16.

In A Church Built On Tradition, The Pope Likes Spontaneity

8:36pm November 01, 2013

by Sylvia Poggioli

Seven months into his papacy, Pope Francis is shaking up the Catholic world, with outspoken interviews and cold calls to ordinary people. But some Catholic conservatives are deeply uncomfortable and worried that the Vatican has lost control of the papal message.

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A Marmaray Project train awaits its inauguration ceremony in Istanbul on Tuesday.

World News

Ottoman Dream Come True: Train Links East And West In Istanbul

9:04pm October 30, 2013

by Peter Kenyon

Istanbul inaugurated the world's first continent-connecting train line this week. It's not the Orient Express, but the subway does make real an idea first proposed in the mid-19th century.

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World News

Ethnic Divisions In Russia Grow Sharper

10:12am October 28, 2013

Police in Moscow have been rounding up hundreds of migrant workers after an ethnic riot in the southern part of the city. Thousands of ethnic Slavic men rioted after an ethnic Slav was murdered — allegedly by a migrant from the North Caucasus region. Migrants from southern Russia and the Central Asian republics are routinely blamed for crimes in the Russian capital.

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Spying Allegations Rock U.S.-German Relations

8:00am October 28, 2013

German officials are scrambling to gather more information and U.S. officials are assessing diplomatic options in the wake of claims that the U.S. National Security Agency has been monitoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone for more than a decade. Renee Montagne talks to Tim Naftali of the New America Foundation about America's history of spying and what this recent news means for the U.S. relationship with its European allies.

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Ava Gene's, a Roman-inspired restaurant in Portland, Ore., incorporates colatura, a modern descendant of ancient Roman fish sauce, into several of its dishes.

Fish Sauce: An Ancient Roman Condiment Rises Again

11:19am October 26, 2013

by Deena Prichep

We usually associate fish sauce with Southeast Asian cooking. But it turns out the briny condiment also has deep roots in Europe, dating back to the Roman Empire. What caused its decline? Historians say it boils down to taxes, and pirates.

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Pablo Picasso drew L'Homme au Gibus, or Man With Opera Hat, in 1914.

Arts

Forget The Lottery; You Have Better Odds Of Winning This Picasso

7:55pm October 25, 2013

by Margot Adler

Man With Opera Hat is being raffled off to raise money for Tyre, an ancient Phoenician city in Lebanon. At $135, tickets don't come cheap, but your chances of winning are much better than the megalotteries a lot of people enter, and it's still the closest many will come to owning one of Pablo Picasso's works.

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France's government has taken legal steps to protect the country's independent booksellers from behemoths like Amazon. It already prohibits discounts of more than 5 percent on books. Now it's considering a law that would not allow online retailers like Am

Little 'Libraires' That Could: French Law Would Keep Amazon At Bay

7:55pm October 25, 2013

by Eleanor Beardsley

A proposed law in France prevents online booksellers like Amazon from pricing books at deep discounts. It's the French government's latest effort to protect the country's many independent bookshops.

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