The New York Times: Ο Κόσμος: Οι αποτυχίες του Εμανουέλ Μακρόν – Αυξάνεται η πίεση στον Ζελένσκι – Ξέπλυμα παράνομου χρυσού στη Μαδαγασκάρη – Προστατεύοντας το παλαιότερο εστιατόριο του Λονδίνου – Ο άνθρωπος που δεν έσωσε τη Γαλλία – Το αρχαιότερο ναυάγιο στον κόσμο (ίσως) – Η διάκριση μεταξύ «καθαρού» και «βρώμικου» χρυσού είναι μύθος. Υπάρχει απλώς χρυσός – Προστατεύοντας για πάντα το στέκι του Ντίκενς – Κοτόπουλο κατσαρόλας – Η ισραηλινή αστυνομία συνέλαβε τουλάχιστον 10 εποίκους μετά από πρόσφατες επιθέσεις στη Δυτική Όχθη εναντίον Παλαιστινίων, Ευρωπαίων διπλωματών και ενός Αμερικανού φωτορεπόρτερ – Η πολιτοφυλακή των Χούθι, που υποστηρίζεται από το Ιράν, εκτόξευσε βαλλιστικούς πυραύλους βαθιά στην κεντρική Υεμένη, με αποτέλεσμα να σκοτωθούν τουλάχιστον 47 άνθρωποι και να τραυματιστούν άλλοι 53, σύμφωνα με τις ένοπλες δυνάμεις της Υεμένης

October 20, 2026	By Katrin Bennhold

Good morning, world. Watching France burn this weekend made me think of that moment in 2017 when Emmanuel Macron became president on a platform of change and hope and, well, “Révolution.” That was the title of the book he published before the election as a kind of manifesto for how to beat the far right.

Less than a year after Brexit and Donald Trump’s first election, Macron did beat Marine Le Pen. I was living in London at the time, where there were French families who spontaneously left to return to France to be part of his “mouvement.”

Almost a decade later, Le Pen looks more likely than ever to become France’s next president. Today I write about how Macron may get his revolution — but not the one he was hoping for.

Also

Emmanuel Macron in Brussels last week. Yves Herman/Reuters

The man who didn’t save France

There were already signs that Macron wasn’t totally checked in.

When thousands of high school students took to the streets earlier this month protesting funding cuts in education, the French president chose to spend the day on a warship off the coast of Brittany. As my colleague Mark Landler reported, Macron watched a new ballistic missile being fired from a French nuclear-powered submarine, leaving it to his prime minister to try to reassure the French people that the government was on top of the crisis.

Then things got worse.

By the time Macron finally spoke publicly on Sunday, the student protests had snowballed into broader, violent riots across the country with many more people. Crowds smashed windows, burned cars, looted stores and vandalized public buildings, including the near-destruction of the historic town hall in the city of Limoges.

Both the government’s failure to foresee the riots and its response to them have been criticized across the political spectrum. Even before the violence, Macron’s approval rating stood at an abysmal 15 percent. He doesn’t have much lower to fall.

It’s all a far cry from 2017, when he took office at 39 years old, fresh-faced and confident, promising sweeping economic reforms to save France from stagnating growth, an ascendant far right and perhaps above all, a prevailing sense that France was no longer a functional society.

It hasn’t worked.

Paris on Saturday. Carl Court/Getty Images

Not trickling down

Macron, a former investment banker who had served as an economics minister in a center-left government, beat Le Pen in 2017 by pitching himself as neither left nor right. He promised to unite a fiercely divided country and to make sure French voters would “never have a reason to vote for extremism again.”

He also ran on an unabashedly free-market platform: Make it easier and cheaper for companies to invest in France. They’ll create jobs and economic growth. That’s how you win back voters from the far right, the argument went.

Over the past nine years, Macron cut corporate taxes and payroll taxes and abolished a wealth tax. But none of that has meaningfully boosted economic growth, nor has it reduced France’s ballooning debt.

The tax cuts cost the French treasury tens of billions of euros a year. The debt level — never low — is now widely seen as unsustainable. French taxpayers could spend more on the interest on their public debt next year than on defense and education. There’s now a widespread sense of systemic crisis and social injustice.

Many of these problems predated Macron and were made worse by events that were out of his control, like the pandemic. But it’s against this backdrop that this weekend’s protests descended into the worst riots in years.

Street protests are part of the political culture in France. When I lived there, I covered many. But Saturday’s rioting, which came after half a million people marched against the rising cost of living and deteriorating conditions in schools, was unlike anything I ever saw.

The large-scale protests from students and union members made clear that almost 10 years of Emmanuel Macron have not fixed France’s problems. And the violence and looting that followed, in which rioters damaged an estimated 3,000 businesses, along with multiple symbols of the French state, could make some voters more willing to vote for the Le Pen presidency Macron had pledged to prevent.

Marine Le Pen last week. Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Le Pen’s campaign mode

Before this weekend, Le Pen was already the favorite to win the presidency in next year’s elections. But in the aftermath of the violence, her National Rally party wasted no time.

While Macron’s government and the far left were busy pointing fingers at each other for the rioting, team Le Pen went straight into campaign mode.

“People need to wake up now,” said Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally party. “They need to make the right political choices, and in any case, we stand ready to restore order in the country.”

On Sunday evening, Le Pen released a video address in which she painted a picture of a divided France. She was filmed sitting behind a wooden desk, with the French flag behind her, hands clasped — the image of a president in waiting, as one of my colleagues put it.

Macron’s relative youth and rousing rhetoric once invited comparisons to Barack Obama, whose message of hope he sought to emulate. But, like Obama, Macron’s elite credentials and intellectual manner also made him seem out-of-touch to many voters.

Now, Macron’s legacy looks likely to be very different from what he’d envisioned — and, like Obama’s, it will be shaped by who takes office once he’s gone.

Related:

Click to watch. The New York Times

Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pressure mounts on Zelensky

President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to meet U.S. envoys in Norway today, a day after telling reporters that President Trump was trying to convince Ukraine to surrender to Russia. He was referring to recent moves by the U.S. administration that could bolster Russia’s war machine while squeezing Ukraine’s ability to fight.

Trump’s disdain for Zelensky is hardly new. But in the words of my colleague David E. Sanger, who has covered five presidents, what’s different now is Trump’s increased determination to force a deal on Zelensky, telling him that holding out to retain occupied land isn’t worth it — and that there is money to be made for Ukraine, as well, if it would only drop its objections.

That will be the American message in Oslo. Also participating in the discussion, officials say, will be Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, which has become an enthusiastic member of NATO. In World War II, it ceded about 12 percent of its territory to Russia, and has never gotten it back.

Related: A mysterious Russian satellite last weekend moved threateningly close to a U.S. commercial satellite that provides imagery to the Ukrainian military, then backed off.

Click to watch. The New York Times

TOP OF THE WORLD

The most clicked link in your newsletter yesterday was about a new restoration of a once-scandalous film.

Basketball: LeBron James defended his controversial helicopter commute from New York to Philadelphia as “just another way of transportation.”

Triathlon: Solveig Lovseth, arguably the world’s fittest woman, credits her success to being kind to herself.

Tennis: Elina Svitolina announced the end of her marriage to fellow star Gaël Monfils, citing the emotional and mental impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Hakan Oniz/Akdeniz University

The world’s oldest shipwreck (maybe)

More than a dozen ceramic jars found off the Turkish island of Kekova date to more than 4,000 years old, according to new research. That means the ship carrying them could have sunk around when the Great Pyramid of Giza rose, which would make it the oldest shipwreck ever discovered. One archaeologist who was not involved expressed caution: “We’re all excited by ‘maybe,’ but the burden of proof is pretty high archaeologically.”

A mine in Madagascar in June. Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

The difference between “clean” and “dirty” gold is a fiction. There is just gold.

A Times investigation found that the London Bullion Market Association, which banks and governments rely on to police the market, repeatedly allowed the sale of gold from criminals and cartel members. In Madagascar, where thousands of children work in illegal mines, the association helped change and backdate key paperwork that certified gold as free from abuse. Read more here.

Sam Mellish/In Pictures, via Getty Images

Protecting Dickens’s haunt forever

Rules, a 228-year-old restaurant that serves game meat along with British classics like steak and kidney pie, has a good claim to be the oldest restaurant in London. Its patrons have included King Edward VII, Charles Dickens, Graham Greene and Liza Minnelli. (And me!)

Now, Rules plans to keep serving its English fare in perpetuity. The National Trust, a British charity that preserves the country’s heritage, is the restaurant’s new owner. Read more about how its place in history will be ensured.

Watch: A new adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” has a looser and more realistic vibe, our critic writes.

Read: Here are the best sci-fi novels featuring monsters and other creatures.

Browse: A Swedish couple renovating a villa near Lake Como discovered one pleasant surprise after another.

Listen: This playlist features performances by Joni Mitchell and Bill Withers recorded live at Carnegie Hall.

Rikki Snyder for The New York Times

This chicken casserole, based on two French recipes, is simple to prepare yet stunning. The addition of seedless grapes elevates it from easy everyday to dinner-party material. Be sure the grapes you select are sweet and have green stems, a sign of freshness.