John Laurenson

Latest Stories (71)

Tourism that caters to Muslims is growing worldwide

Dec 26, 2016
One French B&B offers meals that follow halal dietary laws and other amenities.
The Chateau de la Roche-Tinard B&B caters to Muslim guests.
John Laurenson

Laptops and smartphones on the New Silk Road

Oct 11, 2016
Duisburg is the biggest inland container port in the world, and you've probably never heard of it.
Loading a container on the train for China.
John Laurenson/Marketplace

Chinese investors are buying up French farmland

Sep 19, 2016
French farmland is being sought by China in a bid to assure its own food supplies.
A farmer drives a combine harvester during a wheat harvest in Monthodon near Tours, central France.

 
GUILLAUME SOUVANT/AFP/Getty Images

The rise of Trump tourism in Kallstadt, Germany

Sep 16, 2016
This tiny Rhineland village is the ancestral home of Trump's grandparents.
The house in Kallstadt, Germany, where Donald Trump's grandfather once lived.
John Laurenson

Business bottling a person's "olfactive signature"

Jan 18, 2016
What if you could keep the smell of the ones you love?

Parisian skyscrapers raise sky-high concerns

Jul 9, 2013
Lifted ban on high rise office towers in Paris has created a building boom and controversy in the city of light.

In France, resistance to restaurants' ready-made meals

Jul 5, 2013
Lawmakers in France's lower house have voted to ban restaurants from passing off dishes cooked off-site as freshly prepared on the premises.

Many German Christians quit church to avoid tax

Apr 1, 2013
In Germany, taxes are levied on believers to fund the churches. Many Germany are now leaving their church in order to avoid the tax.

French counseling firms teach the art of seduction

Mar 1, 2013
From books and plays like "Dangerous Liaisons" and Molière's "Don Juan" to the recent movie "Heartbreaker," seduction has always loomed large in French culture. But is it still true today?

Life on the edge in Spanish slum

Jan 14, 2013
In a shantytown outside of Madrid, a crowded, uneasy life for 30,000 people on the margins of Spain’s struggling economy