Day: 4 November 2016

The feminist newsletter Les Glorieuses, launched in fall of 2015, has a bone to pick about pay inequality in France.
The collective group, made up of women and men who believe “beyond the fundamental notion of feminism but rather the empowerment of all women in society”, has made an appeal to French women to stop working on Monday, November 7, at exactly 4:34:07 pm. Why the extra seven seconds? From this point in the calendar, according to the calculations, women work for free until the end of the year.
The World Economic Forum’s 2016 Global Gender Gap Report, which looks at 144 countries, revealed that it would take until the year 2186 (or 170 years) to achieve pay equality in France and elsewhere, where men earned 23.5% more than women in 2015. The study did indicate, however, that France was fifth overall in the countries that improved the most in closing the gender gap last year.
Les Glorieuses are not just asking the 13.8 million women in the French workforce to stop working on Monday but also to sign a petition for equal pay.
The WEF report also showed the US dropped 17 spots, from 28th to 45th over last year, citing greater “transparency measures in determining income”. Imagine what could happen after the November 8 elections.

The spitting image of her mother HSH Princess Caroline of Hanover, Charlotte Casiraghi, 30, condemned the paparazzi in a Vanity Fair France interview published October 26, 2016.
“I find it unacceptable that they take over my private life. That I can be observed at any time, my private life scrutinized. It’s a breach of my personal freedom.”
The granddaughter of Grace Kelly has no presence on social media yet can be found regularly in the gossip magazines which dissect her love life (and that of her mother). “Today we live in a society of obscenity, of staging one’s life … I believe that not disclosing oneself is a form of good etiquette.”
The Princess, an accomplished equestrian – “With the horse, you are not in a relationship of power, but a relationship of trust” – is a regular fixture at Jumping International held annually in June in the Principality, but her other passion is philosophy. She has been published in the French daily, Liberation, writing a book review on the “Défense du secret d’Anne Dufourmantelle” with a byline “Charlotte Casiraghi, President of Les Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco”, an association she founded in 2015.
Les Rencontres holds a series of monthly workshops with guest speakers in different locations across Monaco from October to April. The theme for 2016-17 is “The Body”. The next conference – “Quels maux pour le corps? Le corps souffrant” – takes place Thursday, November 17, at Théâtre des Variétés, from 7 to 9 pm.
A full schedule can be found on Les Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco website.
Article first published November 2, 2016.

Last Friday, to mark the centenary of the Battle of Verdun, HSH Prince Albert II visited the First World War memorials.
The Prince made a point to go to the site of one of the most violent confrontations of the First World War in memory of Monegasque volunteer fighters (chief among them his great-grandfather, Prince Louis II) and residents of the Principality mobilised during the conflict.
Hosted at the World Peace Centre, the Sovereign also visited the new memorial and Fort Douaumont. Accompanied by the Bishop of Verdun, he spent a moment at the ossuary, which has a carving of the Principality’s coat of arms.
The martyred city of Verdun was decorated by Prince Louis II, in 1929, with the Order of St. Charles.
 
© Photos: E. Mahon / Princely Palace

On Thursday, November 3, Gilles Tonelli, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, received HE Mr Sihasak Phuangketkeow, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of Thailand; HE Ms. Aichetou Me Haiham Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Mauritania, HE Mr. George Karolyi, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Hungary, who presented, in the morning, their letters of appointment to HSH the Sovereign Prince.
Following this interview, an official lunch, chaired by Mr Tonelli, was held at the Hotel Hermitage.
HE Mr. Sihasak Phuangketkeow began his diplomatic career in 1979 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE). He then joined the Embassy in Washington and was appointed to the Department of Political Affairs. In 1999 he became Deputy Director General of Southeast Asia Affairs and held the position of Managing Director
Department of Information from 2002 to 2004. He was also Consul General in Hong Kong, Ambassador Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, and Ambassador of Thailand to Japan.
After a period? in the Department of Education and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, HE Ms Aichetou M’Haiham was appointed Secretary of State for the Status of Women in 1997. In 1998, she became president of a National NGO for the promotion of women in rural areas. From 2005, she successively occupied the posts of Adviser to the Presidency of the Republic, in charge of Cultural and Social Affairs, deputy Commissioner for Food Security and the Commissioner for Human Rights and Humanitarian Action.
Attaché to the Commercial Department of the National Industrial Aerospace, in service contracts sale of the Concorde aircraft in 1971, HE Mr Georges Karolyi integrated the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 1974 as Chief of Staff of the Director General before becoming responsible for Studies and Research in Directorate
Studies. He joined the Fiat company in Paris in 1978 where he held the post of Assistant to CEO then the Director of the Company’s Controlling. He is the founder of the Joseph Karolyi foundation, an organisation to promote the European opening of Hungary.