2024-12-09
7 分钟The Economist.
Hi there, this is Jason Palmer,
co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs show.
This is Editor's Picks,
where we take an unmissable article from the latest edition of The Economist and get someone with better diction than mine to read it aloud.
Have a listen.
On December the 7th,
50 heads of state and government will take their places to celebrate the reopening of Notre Dame,
Paris' 12th century Gothic cathedral, gutted by fire five years ago,
but now restored with astonishing speed and loving skill.
Donald Trump will be there, Joe Biden, only the second Catholic President of America,
sadly will not, to witness France at its best.
It has pulled off, on time and to budget,
a feat of craftsmanship and renewal that surely no other country could have managed.
Yet that same magnificent France is also mired in a deep political crisis.
The government was sacked by parliament on December the 4th.
Its Prime Minister, Michel Barnier,
had tried to force through his budget for 2025 two days earlier,
but met the brutal reality of life without a majority and became the shortest-serving Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic.
In a grubby political compact, Marine Le Pen,