
The arms dealer, the general's daughter and the speed demon: An inheritance battle
He explained a little later that he wanted to anchor it off the coast of Louisiana or Quebec, both French-speaking regions, and turn it into "a kind of floating museum, designed to showcase the many artistic and technical achievements of French genius," according to an interview with Le Monde published on January 23, 1978. "All my cultural upbringing has been French since my earliest childhood," he explained. "And feelings for a woman or... a country, you just can't explain them."

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LeMonde
a day ago
- LeMonde
The arms dealer, the general's daughter and the speed demon: An inheritance battle
This unknown man had just saved the France. On October 24, 1977, Akram Ojjeh, a businessman born in Syria and a Saudi citizen, posed for the press in Paris, grinning from ear to ear. He held a model of the ocean liner in his hands. The ship called France had been a source of national pride when it was launched in 1960. It carried out transatlantic crossings and cruises around the world until 1974. Lack of profitability, the oil crisis and competition from air travel had all taken their toll. It had been decommissioned for three years, moored in Le Havre, awaiting either the scrapyard or a new owner, when Ojjeh decided to buy it. He explained a little later that he wanted to anchor it off the coast of Louisiana or Quebec, both French-speaking regions, and turn it into "a kind of floating museum, designed to showcase the many artistic and technical achievements of French genius," according to an interview with Le Monde published on January 23, 1978. "All my cultural upbringing has been French since my earliest childhood," he explained. "And feelings for a woman or... a country, you just can't explain them."


Euronews
2 days ago
- Euronews
Could this chore-tracking app help balance inequality at home?
Ever argued about who does the most chores at home with your partner? A Swedish app, called Accord, says it can help couples and families share and track their household chores such as laundry, cleaning or grocery shopping. 'Accord is for couples and families who simply want less stress and more harmony in their day-to-day lives,' Victor Fredrikson, a co-founder of Accord, told Euronews Next. The app functions as a checklist for households to share. A couple or family creates a group, adds tasks to shared lists, and marks them off as they are completed. The app then tracks who has done what and displays the division of labour on a progress page. This allows families to see how household work is distributed over time, according to the developers of the app. The app is available in multiple languages including Spanish, French, German, English and Swedish. The team behind the app says it's determined to tackle inequalities in household chores. 'It's a challenge to find family harmony. And one of the biggest factors preventing this from happening is the inequalities between men and women,' Fredrikson said. 'This causes a lot of frustration and tension in relationships. So what Accord does is it brings families closer to organise chores and activities together and to work on this, minimising the stresses and arguments that so often come with it,' he added. In Europe, 79 per cent of women do cooking and housework every day, compared to just 34 per cent of men, according to data from the European Commission. 'And there's a really interesting sociology study showing that when families divide chores more fairly and each family member's stress levels reduce drastically and communication improves. And this eventually leads to happier relationships and better relationships,' Fredrikson said. Gender gap reduced by 60 per cent among users The team started building the app in 2023. In just ten months since its launch in September 2024, it has gained more than 25,000 users in Europe. The app was developed by three male students at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. 'Two years ago, I was still living at home with my parents and my dad was always nagging at me to clean my room. One day, he asked, 'Why don't you just programme an app so I don't have to nag at you anymore?'' Frederikson said. 'I took it maybe a bit more seriously than he thought I would take it. The next day, in school, I pitched the idea to my then-classmate,' he added. 'We dived deeper into the core problem within households. Why is this nagging always coming up? Where are the arguments coming from?'. Fredrikson and his co-founders quickly realised that the lack of structure to organise households, compared to the workplace, was an underlying issue causing common arguments about chores. He says the gender gap in household chores has shrunk significantly among the app's users – from women doing about twice as much as men, to a gap that's been reduced by 60 per cent, which Fredrikson calls a 'huge improvement'. The developers say users report that the app is an integral part of their lives and has improved their day-to-day. Lina-Marie Lundqvist works part-time as a special educator at a preschool and uses Accord. She said the app has made a 'big difference' for her household with her partner, kids and pets. 'Now there are tasks that are distributed clearly, and everyone has taken responsibility for taking this,' Lundqvist says. 'I don't have to be the project manager and be the initiator all the time. 'Can you empty the dishwasher?', 'Can you do this?', 'Can you do that?'. So now the kids and my partner can do things without me having to be the initiator,' she added. More than a strict 50-50 The Accord team said fairness is more about understanding and communication than strict equality. 'I think one thing maybe that scares people off from the app a little bit is thinking that we want absolute fairness and 50-50 in terms of the amount of tasks or the exact time that you spend on different things,' Fredrikson said. 'But it's way more about this conversation to be had. Seeing, appreciating what the other person is actually doing and getting that visualisation very clear on who's doing what, how much, and then ultimately starting that conversation,' he added. Fredrikson also noted that fairness in the home isn't only about how much time a task takes, but how it feels to the person doing it. When designing the app's summary view, his team began thinking not just about time management, but about energy management. 'I spoke to a woman [ app user] who talked a little bit more about energy management. So, for example, she hated doing the dishes, but had no problem cooking, even though that took longer than doing the dishes. So for her, the fairness in distribution was less about splitting chores down the middle by minutes and more about balancing the tasks that drained her compared to energising her,' Fredrikson said. 'And that's what we've been doing with adding on effort points, where you can weigh the tasks depending on how difficult they are and how much you feel that they're taking from you,' he added. In Lundqvist's household, she says, she still does most of the chores since she works part-time while her partner works full-time. 'But you look at these circles [in the dashboard] where you can see in the app how many tasks have been done, and then you can really see with the colour scale that we are being helped, that there is a 'team spirit' in a different way,' she said. She also believes it's not about splitting everything exactly down the middle, but about feeling seen and supported. 'When I got home from work one day and the laundry was folded and the dishwasher was unpicked without me even having to remind. It was such a hallelujah moment,' Lundqvist added. For more on this story, watch the video in the media player above.


Le Figaro
4 days ago
- Le Figaro
Are Parents Too Afraid to Say No? Rethinking How We Speak to Our Children
In their quest to raise happy children, many parents have turned to 'gentle parenting.' But this approach, filled with ready-made phrases and a fear of saying 'no,' sometimes has its limits. 'I understand that you're angry', 'all your emotions are valid', 'would you rather brush your teeth now or in five minutes?'... Repeated over and over again in parenting books, blogs or magazines, these 'gentle parenting' formulas have become mantras. Guided by a commendable desire for mutual respect and non-violent upbringing, this approach has spread widely over the past 15 years. Yet in practice, it sometimes leaves parents disoriented and children without clear boundaries. On April 6, the French TV investigation program Zone Interdite devoted a segment to these new educational practices. Their reportage featured a couple dealing with their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, in the midst of a tantrum because she wasn't allowed to watch a cartoon during dinner. Sticking to their principles, the parents stay calm, explain the situation, and negotiate — only to ultimately give in to her request. The episode sparked debate: can words alone truly raise a child? Are they capable of understanding their parents' explanations? Publicité The reality principle For French psychologist Didier Pleux, author of L'éducation bienveillante, ça suffit! ('Enough with Gentle Parenting!'), the answer is non: 'True positive education is definitely not the French way,' he says. "Explaining and talking are fine at first. But if the child breaks a rule and there's never any consequences, it just won't work. There are some children whose temperament can't be regulated by language alone." In his view, some children need to be confronted with reality in order to integrate limits. However, in a world saturated with screens and accustomed to comfort, tolerance of frustration is becoming rare, and frustration is often resented. 'We've forgotten the reality principle,' he explains. A child needs to identify with parents, to do everyday activities with them, to understand that we also have constraints and small obligations. Reality can't be experienced through communication alone." Instead of 'explaining things all the time,' the psychologist advocates re-establishing family rules. "If a driver runs a red light, at some point he'll be fined, because there's a traffic code. We also need a family code to stop children from pushing boundaries", he says, citing dessert bans as an example. According to him, fostering self-esteem doesn't eliminate the need to teach children how to handle waiting, failure, or prohibition. Even among advocates of gentle parenting, there's consensus on the importance of limits. One of the biggest misunderstandings around positive education has been the erasure of boundaries and prohibitions under the assumption that communication alone would solve everything. Marie-Paule Thollon-Béhar, a developmental psychologist and author of Communiquer, penser, parler avec le petit enfant ('Communicating, Thinking, Talking with Young Children'), explains:"Parents are now afraid to say 'no'. But to set limits calmly, you need to be convinced. A parent's strength lies in consistency and conviction when they've decided on a rule. A lack of clarity doesn't give a child structure.' In her view, it's all about balance — between letting the child explore their environment and helping them integrate daily constraints like bedtime or bath time. Fear of displeasing Setting limits doesn't mean parents aren't good to their children, or don't listen to what they have to say. This can be shown through a look, an attitude, a gesture... Marie-Paule Thollon-Béhar also warns of 'technoference', i.e. the lack of availability of parents in their interactions with their children due to screens interfering, and pleads for parents to really 'listen' to 'what the child has to say'. While the intention to be kind is precious, it must not be transformed into a series of ready-made phrases or a panicked fear of displeasing. 'It's not enough to say 'you're the best, my princess', with no intention behind it, but you have to sincerely encourage your child', Thollon-Béhar points out. Building solid foundations for a child's development into a responsible, autonomous person isn't just about doling out praise. Compliments, yes, but in a meaningful way: "You also have to be able to explain to your child that they need to make progress, and that certain efforts are expected of them. According to Didier Pleux, true positive education is about 'reinforcing everything that works well in a child, to give them self-confidence'. Publicité For Florence Millot, also a psychologist and author of Comment parler à ses enfants ("How To Talk To Your Children"), "you can't pretend to always be benevolent, in a good mood and attentive. That's an impossible expectation in daily life." What are the consequences for a parent who always wants to be benevolent on a daily basis, even when their heart isn't in it? 'The child becomes less and less attentive, the parent gets angry after a while, either because he's had enough, or he gives up and ends up saying 'yes' to everything.' The result is more and more aggressiveness, with burned-out parents and anxious children. As she sees it, everyone needs to define their own educational benchmarks, according to personal values but also constraints. "A single parent who comes home at 7 p.m. can't do the same as a stay-at-home parent. The important thing is to be consistent, to question your own values and what kind of framework you want to set up." Indeed, it's inconsistent to tell a child not to watch screens too much, only to leave them alone in front of the TV when you're tired and switch it off without explanation. That's why it's so important to set up a simple, coherent framework that's adapted to each family's lifestyle. She also urges us to sort out what we share with our children: 'Today, we tell children too much, we explain everything, all the time: wars, climate, unemployment... They don't have the emotional capacity to deal with it.' As a result, we end up with a generation of anxious children, who take on adult issues at a very early age. "Children don't need explanations; what they want is to act. They need something real. For example, sort things out, put the garbage away, go and see a grandmother, help out." How did we get here? Is Françoise Dolto to blame, the French psychoanalyst whose precepts are still debated today? 'She never said that you should tell children everything, but that you should talk 'truthfully' with them when there's a situation that directly affects them, whether it's a separation, a bereavement, something that's going to change their lives', says Florence Millot. She also believes that while neuroscience has brought many benefits, it has also done a great deal of damage. 'Studies have shown that when you talk harshly to a child, it has repercussions on their brain,' she explains. In fact, parents often feel that as soon as they speak badly to their children, or send them off, they traumatize them forever, right down to their neuronal connections. They don't dare say anything. We've grasped all the scientific studies without understanding them." The psychologist therefore calls for a return to 'embodied' and ' thoughtful' benevolence, with more 'parental instinct'. Ultimately, educating is not just about explaining, it's also about acting, embodying, deciding. And sometimes that means simply saying no.