VIGINUM: French defense against cyber-attacks & fake news
AAPA members met with former Lt. Col. Marc-Antoine Brillant, director of VIGINUM, the government body responsible for vigilance and protection against foreign digital interference. VIGINUM is attached to the General Secretariat of Defense and National Security (SGDSN) which is under the authority of the French Prime Minister. Mr. Brillant explained that VIGINUM’s mission is to detect…
Breakfast with H.E. JAWED ASHRAF, Ambassador of India
H.E. Jawed Ashraf, Ambassador of India to the Republic of France and Principality of Monaco, invited members of the AAPA to breakfast at his residence in Paris on April 9 for an on-the-record wide ranging discussion just ten days before India's national elections (April 19 - June 1). India has 968 million registered voters, he pointed out, and the country has installed 1.2 million polling…
US elections key to Ukraine’s future: security analyst François Heisbourg
The outcome of the war in Ukraine will likely turn not only on issues as Europe’s ability to ramp up its defense spending to produce artillery shells for Kyiv, but particularly on what happens in the November US elections, defense and security analyst Francois Heisbourg told AAPA members on March 12 via Zoom. The return of former President Donald Trump to power would be “catastrophic” for…
Visit to the Olympic Aquatic Centre
On March 6, AAPA became the first group of journalists to visit the newly finished Olympic Aquatic Centre. The Centre claims to be "the only permanent sports facility to be built for the Paris 2024 Games". We were shown around for hours by the two architects, Laure Mériaud and Cécile Gross. We were wowed by what a state-of-the-art 2020s building can look like: made largely of pinewood,…
Ukrainian Ambassador Highlights Need for Western Support
On January 30, the AAPA met for more than an hour with Vadym Omelchenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to France and Monaco, at the embassy in Paris. During the mostly off-the-record meeting, Omelchenko briefed us on the latest on the battlefield in Ukraine, likening it to the "trench warfare" of World War I and noting that the bilateral deals Ukraine is now making with Germany, France, Britain and…
AAPA visits France’s unicorn DOCTOLIB
On January 12, the AAPA met with Doctolib founder Stanislas Niox-Chateau at the company headquarters in Levallois. Since founding Doctolib in 2013 at the age of 26, Mr Niox-Chateau has grown the company to 2800 employees that serves upwards of 80 million people in France, Germany and Italy. It is now the number one French unicorn company and has truly revolutionized French healthcare. Mr…
Repurposing the Paris 2024 Olympic Village
Dominique Perrault is the architect and urbanist who conceived of the Paris 2024 Olympic Village. On December 12 he gave the AAPA a fascinating presentation on the thinking behind the village, which is meant to become a new, durable neighbourhood of the city following the Games, part of a great number of building works now underway in Seine-St-Denis, the poorest department in mainland…
Jane Goodall has a double in Paris
Jane Goodall, world expert on chimpanzees and militant ecologist, answered questions from AAPA members on December 1 2023 just before her waxwork figure was unveiled at the Musée Grévin. Goodall realized early on in her long career as an ethologist—she will be 90 next April—that saving chimpanzees and other wildlife was not possible without protecting the environment in which they live.…
Visit to Villa Windsor, Historic Residence of Charles de Gaulle, British Royalty
Villa Windsor in the Bois de Boulogne On November 14, about 20 AAPA members visited the Villa Windsor in the Bois de Boulogne. It's the former home of Charles De Gaulle (from the Liberation until 1947), of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (from 1953 until their respective deaths in their bedrooms here in 1972 and 1986), and finally of the Harrods proprietor Mohamed Al-Fayed. None of these people…
Thierry Marx and the free cooking schools
Thierry Marx, the chef étoilé with a rags-to-riches story who in 2012 founded a network of free cooking schools -- 10 so far -- to boost the disadvantaged into employment and a sense of purpose, met with AAPA members on November 8. The venue was the eastern Paris headquarters of his Cuisine Mode d'Emploi(s), not far from the bohemian Menilmonant district where Marx grew up. In a free-flowing…