Lionel Laurent

A year ago, the course of the pandemic changed, thanks to the first safe and effective vaccines against Covid-19. Today, after administering 7.3 billion doses and preventing countless deaths, we have more data than ever to justify that early enthusiasm — and the need to keep jabbing. On top of…

Betting on the “death of the city” after Covid always looked extreme — Classical Athens survived far worse plagues and disasters. Yet places like London and Paris are once again having to confront the risk of hardening into enclaves for the rich. Even as the scars of past lockdowns keep tourism…

History always repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. We seem to have both when it comes to Brexit. The UK is once again threatening to walk away from trade terms it signed with the European Union, lambasting them as unworkable despite having signed up to them in 2019. The EU, even as it…

Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. European politicians are scrambling to pin the blame for a painful surge in wholesale energy prices on reliable punching-bags — the shift to cleaner power sources, the price of carbon, greedy utilities — while conveniently missing the bigger…

Bitcoin is a virtual currency with a very physical footprint in the form of the big, power-hungry facilities that have sprouted up to mine it. The size of this footprint and its impact on the environment have become a hotly contested issue: The network’s power consumption this year will likely be a…

In true Jupiterian style, French President Emmanuel Macron said nothing publicly when the AUKUS debacle erupted, letting his ministers and European partners do the talking after Australia scrapped a $66 billion submarine deal with Paris in favor of an American-led alliance in the Indo-Pacific. …

Over the past 18 months, humanity has dutifully trooped into lockdown and back out again — offering up a massive amount of personal data along the way. Remote work, Zoom schooling and contact-tracing became part of daily life; even today, in the name of public health, diners in Paris have their…

The cryptocurrency crowd has wasted no time in dancing on the grave of China’s “FUD” (internet speak for fear, uncertainty and doubt). Last week’s move by the People’s Bank of China to ban crypto transactions and mining dented the prices of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies, but…

The list of candidates hoping to take on Emmanuel Macron for the French presidency in April is getting long. About 30 people have thrown their hats in the ring, including Paris’ Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. Similar…

The UK’s “Freedom Day” has been declared a damp squib by taxi firm Addison Lee, and it’s hard to disagree. Even with hospitalizations and deaths low — and cases falling — mobility is plateauing and below pre-pandemic levels in some areas. Brits are exercising their freedom to mingle selectively. We…