A long chapter in French colonial and post-colonial rule is drawing to a close as France looks to pull back troops fighting Islamist extremists in western Africa and other countries make their own power plays in the region, Don Murray writes.

For many in France, Napoleon Bonaparte is the epitome of French achievement, having conquered much of Europe and remade the structures of his country. But it's a complicated legacy for the sharp-tongued emperor against whom most modern French presidents are still measured 200 years after his death.

After becoming the poster child of Europe with the lowest number of cases as a percentage of population in the European Union, the Czech Republic now leads the world in new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population, according to the World Health Organization.

Poland and Hungary belong to the European Union and profit from it, but their leaders' ideas on democracy and the rule of law, principles their countries agreed to uphold when joining in 2004, are far from those endorsed by EU leaders in Brussels.

Sexual abuse within families had long been a problem France failed to confront. That appears to have changed recently with the release of a book that exposed a dark and decades-old secret of a prominent French family.