A. Craig Copetas

Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesPARIS—The French political system, casually referred to as the “Republic of Friends,” is in the throes of one of its humiliating nervous breakdowns.Now, a few weeks before an estimated 15 million baffled visitors, 10,500 bemused athletes and more than 1 billion bewildered TV viewers tune into Paris for the Summer Olympics, there’s an odds-on chance the government will be run by the sort of feral right-wing regime not seen in France since the Vichy administration ruled the country in cahoots with the Nazis between 1940 and 1944.Time and nostalgia are a double-edged sword in France. What ended here 80 years ago with 567,600 corpses has been resurrected with such fiendish intensity that President Emmanuel Macron immediately drew a line in the sand, scheduling needless legislative elections on June 30 and July 7.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesPARIS—Just inside the art deco doors of the French Institute of International Relations, the beefy director of the Estonian Intelligence Service straightens his shoulders and shoots icy stares at some 80 people gathered to hear him address what the organizers describe as the “Spectre” of the growing Russian menace in Europe.“There are a couple of Russian agents and a couple of Russian contacts here,” Kaupo Rosen informs the seated audience, fomenting an anxiety that triggers the man with the turtle-head mole over his right eyebrow to turn around and glower at me for asking Estonia’s ersatz James Bond to reckon how many in the room were on Vladimir Putin’s espionage payroll.Through Soviet-era dental work, he says casually in Russian: “не смей—don’t you dare.”Read more at The Daily Beast.