Europe’s reaction Friday to news of a sweeping international digital surveillance program by the U.S. government ranged from the outrage of citizens and politicians to the muted envy of some law enforcement agencies on this side of the Atlantic. Privacy is an emotional issue in Europe, where memories of state-sponsored snooping by communist and fascist regimes still linger. And so the revelation Thursday that the U.S. National Security Agency had obtained routine access to e-mail, Web searches and other online data from many of the biggest U.S. Internet companies â€" whose users stretch far beyond U.S. shores â€" prompted hand-wringing about America’s moral authority. “If the U.S. complains about foreign governments spying and then it turns out it is doing the same thing â€" well, what are you complaining about?†said Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey, where anger over restrictions on civil liberties has fueled anti-government protests. Eric Pfanner reports from Serraval, France and James Kanter reports from Brussels.
On a normal day, Taksim Square is a mess of buses and crowds, a tangle of plazas, streets, shops and taxi horns. Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is determined to clean it up and make it into a pedestrian zone, with a new mall, mosque and tunnels for traffic to move underground. The outrage in response has filled the square with noisy, angry, determined protesters. At midday, the muezzin’s call to prayer now mixes with the chants of union workers and bullhorn speeches from the Anti-Capitalist Muslims. At night, drummers and singers agitate the throngs until dawn. After Egypt’s Tahrir Square and New York’s Zuccotti Park, Taksim is the latest reminder of the power of public space. The square has become an arena for clashing world views: a leader’s top-down, neo-Ottoman, conservative vision of the nation as a regional power versus a bottom-up, pluralist, disordered, primarily young but not exclusively secular vision of the country as a modern democracy. Michael Kimmelman reports from Istanbul.
The parade of foreign executives who flew into dirt-poor Myanmar over the past year in the hopes of tapping into what is described as Asia’s last major frontier market often came away skeptical, befuddled or outright disappointed. ‘‘Look, listen, learn â€" and leave,’’ was the catchphrase that described trips here by executives who saw firsthand the lack of electricity, terrible roads, an eager but very undereducated work force and overwhelmed government officials. Yet two years after Myanmar’s civilian government came to power, the country now appears to be tiptoeing into another stretch of its journey from military dictatorship to democratic market economy. Flirtations by foreign investors are turning to commitments, vague promises into dollars. Some of the world’s most prominent multinational companies â€" Coca-Cola, Unilever, General Electric, Philips, Visa â€" have started doing business in the country. Thomas Fuller reports from Naypyidaw, Myanmar.
ARTS
“Signac. Les couleurs de l’eau†(The colors of water), on view in Giverny at the Musée des Impressionnismes through July 2, is one of those unforgettable shows that radically change an artist’s image. Paul Signac comes out as one of the greatest painters active in the late 19th and early 20th century. No other show dealing with Impressionism and its offshoots has revealed so many little-known pictures. That alone makes it the artistic coup of the year. Born in 1863, Signac who was younger than Claude Monet by 23 years, felt compelled to become a painter on discovering the pictures of the grand master of Impressionism on the premises of a magazine, “La Vie Moderne.†“What appealed to me in this artist,†Signac later wrote to Maximilien Luce, “was the revolutionary aspect of his oeuvre.†Souren Melikian reports from Giverny, France.
SPORTS
In the first men’s semifinal at Roland Garros on Friday, the French fans got a dream match. In the second, the one the locals had anticipated even more than the epic between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, they got a nightmare. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was trying to become the first Frenchman to make the final at Roland Garros since 1988 â€" and the first to win it in 30 years. But David Ferrer gave Spain the final it had wished for. Ferrer beat Tsonga, 6-1, 7-6 (3), 6-2, to reach his first Grand Slam final. Ferrer’s victory set up the first all-Spanish final at the French Open since 2002. Ferrer went down on his back in delight when the match ended. Nadal holds a 19-4 career edge over Ferrer, who has not beaten Nadal since the quarterfinals of the 2011 Australian Open. Nadal, a seven-time champion here, has won the last eight meetings, all on clay. Judy Batista reports from Paris.
