Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright; The Guardian, May 11, 2026

 Kim Willsher, The Guardian; Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright

"Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English: the last word in historical literature, drama, wit and satire.

Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century dramatist has been revived after scholars at the Sorbonne University in Paris used artificial intelligence to help write an experimental play in his style.

L’Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer, or False Omens), a three-act comedy, made its debut at the Royal Opera at the Château de Versailles last week.

The two-hour play tells the story of a wealthy bourgeois Parisian who, under the instruction of a charlatan astrologer called Pseudoramus, insists his daughter Lucile marry a debt-ridden and elderly wigmaker.

While the theme could well have been dreamed up by Molière, the dialogue, music, costumes and scenery were all created with the help of a French AI tool called Le Chat (The Cat).

A group of researchers at the Sorbonne worked on the project, called Molière Ex Machina, for two and a half years. The team included a three-person group of artists and researchers called Obvious."

A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality; The New York Times, April 17, 2026

 M. GESSEN, The New York Times; A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality 

"At the conference I met Rebecca Hamilton, a cheerful war-crimes lawyer who is now a law professor at American University in Washington. Corporate complicity is her area of study. In a 2022 law review article titled “Platform-Enabled Crimes,” she wrote that Facebook (now Meta) could have acted to help prevent the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar in 2017 but that it had chosen not to. The decision not to act, Hamilton wrote, had been driven by both the profit motive and a lack of interest in local context. Now Hamilton is working on a book on corporate enablers of atrocity crime. “Securing profit isn’t some abstraction achieved in pristine boardrooms in capital cities,” she wrote in an email to me on Monday after the Lafarge verdict, which had made her, too, very happy. “It is a process that plays out in real locations, with real people, including those living through conflict.”"

Louvre Director Resigns, Months After Burglars Stole Crown Jewels; The New York Times, February 24, 2026

 Mark Landler, The New York Times; Louvre Director Resigns, Months After Burglars Stole Crown Jewels

Laurence des Cars’s departure is the latest setback for the world’s largest museum. Her tenure was marred by labor strikes, water leaks and security lapses that led to the heist in October.

"Laurence des Cars, the first female president of the Louvre Museum, resigned on Tuesday, less than three months after an audacious theft raised thorny questions about security at one of the world’s most famous museums.

Ms. des Cars submitted her resignation to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who had appointed her in 2021 and championed her plans for an ambitious refurbishment of the museum, known as “Louvre — New Renaissance.”

The president’s office said in a statement that Mr. Macron had accepted Ms. des Cars’s resignation “as an act of responsibility at a time when the world’s largest museum needs both stability and a strong new impetus to successfully complete major security and modernization projects.”

Ms. des Cars’s resignation came a day before she was scheduled to testify before the French Parliament about the security lapses that led to the theft of a collection of jewels, which were valued at more than $100 million."

X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok; BBC, February 3, 2026

 Liv McMahon, BBC; X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

"The French offices of Elon Musk's X have been raided by the Paris prosecutor's cyber-crime unit, as part of an investigation into suspected offences including unlawful data extraction and complicity in the possession of child pornography.

The prosecutor's office also said both Musk and former X chief executive Linda Yaccarino had been summoned to appear at hearings in April.

In a separate development, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced a probe into Musk's AI tool, Grok, over its "potential to produce harmful sexualised image and video content."

X is yet to respond to either investigation - the BBC has approached it for comment."

Arrests in Louvre Heist Show Power of DNA Databases in Solving Crimes; The New York Times, November 3, 2025

 Catherine Porter , The New York Times; Arrests in Louvre Heist Show Power of DNA Databases in Solving Crimes

"It took less than a week for the police to track down two of the suspects who they say broke into the Louvre and made off with eight of France’s historic crown jewels. A third person, a suspected accomplice, was tracked down on Wednesday.

In all three cases, DNA was an essential part of the search.

The chief prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said the DNA of the two men who broke into the museum and snatched $100 million worth of jewelry was found on the window and on one of the two high-powered motor scooters the thieves used to get away."

Want the legal right to ignore your boss outside working hours? Learn from the French; The Guardian, August 23, 2024

 Alexander Hurst, The Guardian; Want the legal right to ignore your boss outside working hours? Learn from the French

"Every August, the same set of transatlantic memes about work and holiday circulate on social media. The European is depicted as out of the office with a strict attitude towards switching off and not responding to clients (“I’m away camping for the summer – please contact me as of 2 September”) while for the American there is no such luxury (“I’m in the hospital – I’m so so sorry for the 30-minute delay in getting back to you!”)...

Since 2017, French labour law has included the “right to disconnect” – a measure the UK government is now also considering. The law, which applies to companies with more than 50 workers, obliges businesses to clearly define normal working hours and set out policies around work communications negotiated with employees, andallows workers to be unreachable, or to not reply, when work is over. Other European countries, including Belgium, Spain and Italy, have since followed suit.

Sarah Wachter, communications manager at a Paris-based fintech company, says that at her workplace “there is so much encouragement not to respond after hours”, which she attributes to “a combination of knowing it’s the law and knowing that people support it. I feel 100% in my rights to disconnect every weekend, in the evenings, when I’m sick, on vacation. I feel no pressure to answer my emails or other work communications.”

In contrast, Sabina, a 29-year-old American currently working remotely from Paris, told me that she was seeking a transfer to her company’s European office – in part because she was fed up with the expectation that she would always be available."

Rishi Sunak says sorry for leaving D-day events early to record TV interview; The Guardian, June 7, 2024

Aletha Adu, Eleni Coureaand Jim Waterson , The Guardian; Rishi Sunak says sorry for leaving D-day events early to record TV interview

"The shadow defence secretary, John Healey, has sent a letter to his cabinet colleague Grant Shapps asking when the decision for Sunak to skip the commemorations was made. He also queried whether the French government was correct in saying they were told a week ago that the prime minister would not attend the D-day 80th commemoration.

He added: “The prime minister’s decision not to attend the events in Normandy yesterday – apparently in favour of recording a TV interview – raised worrying questions about both his judgment and his priorities.”"

The Future of Open Government; Huffington Post, 12/19/16

Manish Bapna, Huffington Post; The Future of Open Government:

"This blog post is co-authored with Jean-Vincent Placé, French Minister of State for State Reform and Simplification, attached to the Prime Minister.

More than 4,000 people gathered in Paris from 7-9th December for the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit 2016 hosted by the Government of France. OGP is a unique partnership dedicated to making government decision making more open, inclusive and responsive. Summit attendees included representatives from 80 governments, many of them heads of state and senior ministers; leaders from cities, municipalities and regions; and leading civil society organizations from around the world.

The goal for the summit was to highlight the crucial role of open government as a countervailing force to the rise of various forms of nationalism and populism around the world."