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French arrest 10 in connection with terror probe By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press Writer Authorities in France, Germany and the Netherlands on Friday detained at least 10 people suspected of helping to fund al-Qaida-linked militants with roots in Uzbekistan, officials said. One suspect was detained in Germany, another in the Netherlands, with the rest detained in France, said a senior French police official who was only authorized to discuss the arrests on condition of anonymity. The suspects' nationalities were not given but officials said they were Turkic-speaking. French police suspect they collected funds for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a...

The French are... well, what are they? Twenty-three miles away, our nearest neighbours and oldest enemies. No other nation stirs such conflicting emotions in the British breast. Two anniversaries will underline this over the coming week. On Friday, it’s a year since Nicolas Sarkozy officially became president. Granted, this didn’t make much impact in Britain - until his wife made an official visit to our country a few weeks ago. Mr Sarkozy came too, but only to carry Carla’s bags. This was to ensure that she’d brought some clothes.

Telegraph - Print Version Sean Penn warns Barack Obama at Cannes Film Festival opening By Anita Singh, Showbusiness Editor Last updated: 8:05 PM BST 14/05/2008 The Cannes Film Festival got off to a lively start with Sean Penn, president of this year's jury, sounding off about US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama and the opening movie almost being upstaged by a bunch of performing pandas. Penn joined fellow judge Natalie Portman on the red carpet for the premiere of the first night film, Blindness, a thriller starring Julianne Moore. At a press conference beforehand, the actor, an outspoken critic of the...

Schools will shut, business activity will slow and aperitifs will flow in sun-soaked gardens today while the French confirm their status as the world holiday champions with an unofficial day off. Ignoring the call from President Sarkozy to work harder, millions of employees will down tools to travel to the seaside and the countryside on what is, in theory, an ordinary working day. Millions of French workers are on le pont, the name for an unofficial day off between two Bank Holidays The upshot was two-hour traffic jams around Paris last night as residents headed out of the city, a...

PARIS, France – Nicolas Sarkozy, the America-loving conservative, may be the new president, but he has some work to do changing the culture of a country largely in love with socialism. The front door of the European news bureau of the state-owned Radio France displays a bumper sticker reading "Capitalism … the social disease." Recently, WND correspondent Franklin Raff visited the impressive edifice of Radio France, located at the Maison de la Radio, a round building situated in the center of Paris. (Story continues below) All radio stations were nationalized when Nazi Germany invaded... (snip) When France was liberated by...

Why is the capital of French snobbery starting to look like a mini-America? A city like Paris never stands still. The dollar may be down, but America is up. France prides itself on its exquisite culture--especially in comparison with ours--but American technology and American ways are spreading throughout the world, even here. People in Paris see an easier lifestyle, and the young in particular are ready for a change. Despite their severe criticism of the United States, that's where many want to go. McDonald's and Starbucks are thriving and multiplying all over Paris. The first McDonald's (pronounced McDoze) opened in...

Silvio Berlusconi's re-election as Italy's Prime Minister is more promising and more important for Italy and the United States, and for trans-Atlantic relations generally, than most commentators have admitted. Although the Bush Administration has just nine months left in office, significant progress is both possible and desirable in enhancing ties between America and Europe. President Bush's critics have been quick to assign him blame for weakened trans-Atlantic relations, particularly because of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. They argue that public opinion polls show European popular sentiments turning against the United States. They gloat that two of Bush's staunchest personal and...

HANOVER, N.H. (AP) — A former Dartmouth College teacher and medical school researcher sent e-mails to some of her former students saying she plans to sue them because they "harassed, compromised, abused or discriminated against" her. Priya Venkatesan, 39, who received her bachelor's degree from Dartmouth in 1990, last week e-mailed the former students in her Science, Technology and Society course with the news that she is pursuing a federal civil-rights lawsuit against some of them. Venkatesan, now at Northwestern University, said in an interview with the Valley News that she is still searching for a lawyer to take her...

From the Wall Street Journal: Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their “anti-intellectualism” violated her civil rights. Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of “French narrative theory” that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will “name...

Nestled in a mountain pass, high in the Alps of southern France, there is a most amazing place that, like the fictitious Shangri-La, is hidden away from the rest of the world and is truly unlike anything one's ever seen. The place is a picturesque mountain hamlet that is as quaint as it is supremely restful, and as serene as it is breathtakingly beautiful.... ...It was in May of the year 1664 that the little hamlet of Laus received a most wondrous gift, a visit from a queen of unfathomable greatness, who would make of Laus a sanctuary in the...

PARIS (AP) — A Roman Catholic bishop said Sunday that the church has officially recognized that the Virgin Mary appeared to a 17th-century shepherd girl in the French Alps. Speaking at Mass in remarks broadcast nationally on France-2 television, Monsignor Jean-Michel di Falco Leandri said he recognized the "supernatural origin" of the apparitions to 17-year-old Benoite Rencurel from 1664 to 1718.

In less than a week the major political parties of the Right in Britain and Italy scored unprecedented electoral victories by winning mayoral races in Rome and then in London. Since the end of the Second World War, the Right had never controlled those two offices. To grasp what this means, consider that "Londonistan" is the title of an excellent book by Melanie Phillips which warns of the descent of that great city into a radical Moslem polity. The citizens of Londonistan have chosen an iconoclastic Conservative Party leader, Boris Johnson, who has campaigned on the need to reduce crime...

French primary school children will be learning multiplication tables by rote and conjugating verbs in the pluperfect tense under a back-to-basics programme to be introduced after the summer holidays. Critics denouced Xavier Darcos, the Education Minister who developed the plan, as old-fashioned, out-of-touch and reactionary, and unions called for a strike over the reform.He responded by saying: “It's not by listening to a great pianist for hours on end that you become one, it's by doing your scales.” The programme is an attempt to prioritise French and mathematics on a primary school curriculum that has been loaded with subjects such...

I'd like to say so myself. It's time we realize we're actually in a war together and that all of us who do NOT participate at the front line have a special kind of obligation towards the brave men and women who ARE. I'm 38 years old and one thing I've learned from being alive this long is that a group of people who stand united, devoted to something of eternal value are, virtually, indestructable as such. Apart from being somewhat "old", I'm of Swedish stock (- like food a lot, but I'm not a Swedish chef in fact:D -)...

France led a walkout at the United Nations last week after Libya’s Deputy Ambassador compared the Israeli military’s treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza to the way the Nazis sent Jews to concentration camps. French Ambassador Jean Maurice Ripert was followed by Americian, British, Belgian and Costa Rican diplomats after Ibrahim Dabbashi made the comments during a private meeting on the situation in the Middle East. The meeting was postponed following the walkout. Britain's deputy ambassador, Karen Pierce, said: “A number of council members were dismayed by the approach taken by Libya and do not believe that such language helps...

Well, actually, maybe it would’ve been an “important” endorsement 25 years ago? This is video of James Duke Mason, son of 1980’s pop sensation Belinda Carlisle and former Reagan administration official Morgan Mason (who is the son of legendary actor James Mason) — telling the world that his Mom Belinda is endorsing Hillary Clinton! Heaven IS a Place on Earth, Hillary!

French Prisons: Up to 70% of Inmates Are Muslims April 29, 2008 Muslims make up only about 12 percent of France’s population — but account for from 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country’s prisons. French prison officials blame that remarkable statistic on the poverty of people who have moved to France from North Africa and other Muslim nations in recent decades. French Muslim leaders further hold racism and discrimination as the root cause of unemployment and crime rates among the Muslim minority, according to the Islam Online Web site. In Britain, Muslims reportedly make up 3...

Paris, Apr 29, 2008 / 12:37 pm (CNA).- The Bishops’ Conference of France has officially announced that Pope Benedict XVI will travel to France for the 150th anniversary of the Marian apparitions that took place in Lourdes. The trip, which is scheduled for September 12-15, 2008, will begin with a greeting by French officials after which the Holy Father will head to the College des Bernardins where he will address the “world of culture.”  Then the Pope will pray vespers at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.  Following the prayer service, he will address young people gathered at the Cathedral.  On...

Samia El Alaoui Talibi walks her beat in a cream-colored head scarf and an ink-black robe with sunset-orange piping, an outfit she picked up at a yard sale. After passing a bulletproof window, El Alaoui Talibi trudges through half a dozen heavy, locked doors to reach the Muslim faithful to whom she ministers in the women's cellblock of the Lille-Sequedin Detention Center in far northern France. It took her years to earn this access, said El Alaoui Talibi, one of only four Muslim holy women allowed to work in French prisons. "Everyone has the same prejudices and negative image of...

CALAIS, France: It is midnight, and eight hooded figures slip around the side of a freight truck at a gas station on the outskirts of this northern French port. They wait in the orange half-light while one tries the locked truck door. It doesn't give, and seconds later the figures vanish among the dozens of semi-trailers at this, the last truck stop before England. Most weeknights, a smuggler leads clandestine migrants across the maze of motorways that encircle Calais to parking lots like this, where drivers sleep before catching a ferry to Dover, 33 kilometers, or 21 miles, away. Truckers...

A young French minister who provoked a political storm by branding her male colleagues as cowardly has defended herself by describing the women in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s cabinet as more “original” than the men. Sometimes described as one of the brainiest women in government, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, 34, the junior environment minister, catapulted herself into the limelight earlier this month by accusing senior party members of “cowardice” in their policy towards genetically modified crops, which she firmly opposes. It was the latest in a series of embarrassments for the government and in the ensuing uproar she was struck from a list...

THE crew of a Spanish fishing boat seized by pirates off Somalia have been freed... The Playa de Bakio trawler has been taken to "safer waters", escorted by a Spanish warship, and the government is making plans to repatriate the 13 Spaniards and 13 Africans, she said. Speaking at a press conference, she did not indicate the circumstances in which the crew were released, or whether a ransom had been paid. Spanish news media said earlier a ransom of 1 million euros...had been demanded, and negotiations were taking place at a London hotel. The 76-metre trawler and its crew were...

Le Pen: Auschwitz didn't have gas chambers Extreme right-wing leader repeats claim that no Jews were gassed or burned at Nazi death camps, says Auschwitz inmates worked as laborers for factory Far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen sparked a chorus of outrage in France on Friday by repeating an incendiary claim that the Nazi gas chambers were a "detail of history." Anti-racism and Jewish groups threatened immediate legal action against the National Front chief - who already holds several similar convictions - after he made the comments in a magazine interview. "I said the gas chambers were a detail of...

I fear that the French are wasting their time. The problem is that every time they look at Waterloo they say that Napoleon won on points. Napoleon’s army was the best he had commanded since he advanced into Russia – an army of veterans, 200,000 strong. Wellington referred to his force as “an infamous army”. My predecessor, David Chandler, who wrote the definitive account of Napoleon’s campaigns, said that the Emperor’s idea had been to get between the Prussians and the British. “I will defeat the British and the Prussians, then the Austrians, then the Russians, and Europe will be...

Unpopular Sarkozy turns 'gold into lead' By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 8:13pm BST 24/04/2008 President Nicolas Sarkozy is battling to convince an angry and disillusioned France that he deserves another chance a year after claiming power, amid accusations that he has turned his political capital from "gold into lead". President Sarkozy's government has been damaged by bickering between ministers Mr Sarkozy had an hour and a half last night on prime time television to counter claims that his reforms are half-baked, his glitzy style and turbulent private life inappropriate for a president, and that he has failed to...

BEIJING -- European business officials warned Wednesday that anti-French protests in China could spark a backlash against Chinese exports, while reports surfaced that protesters had confronted an American outside an outlet of French retailer Carrefour. The incident with the American occurred when dozens of protesters confronted 22-year-old James Galvin, an English teacher working in the southern city of Zhuzhou, mistakenly thinking he might have been French. Galvin was quickly whisked away by police and was not hurt in the Sunday incident, said Helen Claire Sievers, executive director of the WorldTeach program based in Cambridge, Mass. "It was frightening for him...

Photos of carefree Parisians lazing in cafes, flocking to cinemas or enjoying a day at the races during the Nazi occupation have sparked outrage in Paris and calls for the exhibit to be shut down.

Many French Oppose Sarkozy's China Overtures WSJ[Wednesday, April 23, 2008 10:30] By STACY MEICHTRY PARIS -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign to calm Chinese anger over the Olympic torch's rough-and-tumble journey through the French capital faces one big obstacle: the French. Mr. Sarkozy has tapped three top French officials, including a former prime minister, to travel to China this week to mend relations. He has sent letters to President Hu Jintao of China and athlete Jin Jing, known as "angel in a wheelchair" in China for shielding the Olympic torch from pro-Tibetan protesters as she carried it through the streets...

Somali forces rescued a hijacked ship carrying food to this desperately poor African nation Tuesday, as a top security official accused U.S. troops stationed off the lawless coast of failing to combat growing piracy. Seven pirates were arrested and three were wounded in the raid on the Dubai-flagged al-Khaleej, said Abdullahi Said Samatar... "It is sad that the American forces off the coast of Somalia are here for fun and are not combatting the pirates," ... A spokesman for the transitional government, Abdi Hagi Gobdon, welcomed French and U.S. efforts to combat piracy and guard the country's coastline. The transitional...

Spain appealed to France, the United States and NATO on Monday for help in ending a crisis sparked when pirates seized 26 crew members of a Spanish fishing boat off the Somali coast. The defence ministry said a Spanish military frigate was heading to the area off east Africa, where the pirates have demanded money for the release of the crew, a day after storming the vessel armed with grenade launchers. The coastal waters off Somalia, which has not had an effective central government for more than 17 years and is plagued by insecurity, are considered to be among the...

Spain appealed to France, the United States and NATO on Monday for help in ending a crisis sparked when pirates seized 26 crew members of a Spanish fishing boat off the Somali coast. The defence ministry said a Spanish military frigate was heading to the area off east Africa, where the pirates have demanded money for the release of the crew, a day after storming the vessel armed with grenade launchers. It said the ship would arrive in 24 to 36 hours. Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega chaired a meeting of senior cabinet members, including Foreign...

Bardot’s “crimes,” such as they are, are straightforward: She has committed the sin of speaking frankly and unapologetically about her country’s hostile Muslim immigrant population and – what is evidently worse – questioning the compatibility of some Muslim religious practices with Western society. Common sense, one might think, or least subjects fit for fruitful debate. Her mistake was in thinking that she had the freedom to say so. But as France struggles to control a large (Muslims make up nearly ten percent of the country) and increasingly radicalized Muslim population critics of Islamism are finding themselves more actively persecuted by...

RABAT, APRIL 18 - Visiting French Prime Minister, Francois Fillon pledged that his country is determined to help Morocco get an advanced status in its relations with the European Union. "We want to help Morocco to have the special status it seeks in the European Union," Fillon said on the sidelines of a dinner banquet held in his honor by his Moroccan counterpart, Abbas El Fassi, Map news agency reports. The French official, who started yesterday a two-day visit to Morocco to co-chair with El Fassi the 9th high-level Moroccan-French joint commission, added that "we seek to widen the cooperation...

BEIJING - Demonstrations against French supermarket chain Carrefour erupted in cities across China on Saturday, fueled by anger over the disruption of the Olympic torch relay when it went through Paris nearly two weeks ago. Other protesters gathered outside the French Embassy and the Beijing French School. The recent unrest in Tibet and protests during the worldwide Olympic torch relay have created a backlash of anger inside China against those viewed as supporting independence for Tibet. The nationalist outburst comes as Chinese state media has launched a sustained attack against foreign critics of China's Tibet policy and on the Dalai...

Anti-French protests erupt in central China and Beijing AFP[Saturday, April 19, 2008 12:25] Locals burn a French national flag outside a Carrefour supermarket in Qingdao, Shandong province April 18, 2008. Chinese official media have sought to temper nationalist calls to boycott foreign businesses accused of backing Tibetan independence, urging angry citizens to focus on economic development. (Stringer/Reuters) BEIJING, April 19 - Hundreds of Chinese citizens protested on Saturday in the central city of Wuhan and in Beijing against France's attitude towards Tibet and the Olympic Games, according to police and witnesses. Many of the demonstrators congregated in front of Carrefour,...

Diplomacy: Democrats have hammered the Bush administration for supposedly losing allies and global standing. But a look at U.S. ties shows Bush to be a master diplomat who is strengthening U.S. relations all over."The world owes President Bush a debt of gratitude in leading the world in our determination to root out terrorism," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a man whose recent elevation to office was supposed to denote a "cooling" of relations with the U.S. and a tilt toward Europe. But Europe isn't really "cooling," either. France is now led by a man elected as "le Americain." Like...

GESTE, France (AP) — Mayor Jean-Pierre Leger was married and baptized his children at Saint-Pierre-aux-Liens church in this village in western France. Not without sadness, he is now planning to bulldoze the 19th century building. The dilemma of what to do with churches that have fallen out of favor — and into disrepair — is facing towns and villages across France and other European countries. Some communities have dynamited churches deemed too expensive to maintain. Others have taken a less radical approach, selling them as housing. In traditionally Roman Catholic France, fewer than 5 percent of the nation's 62 million...

ALERT - A senior cadre of TF1 is in custody Patrick Binet, a senior officer responsible for the acquisition and audiovisual rights of the private television channel TF1 French is in custody at the 2nd division of the police. The body of a man was discovered in the night of Wednesday to Thursday at his home in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. An overdose drug GHB, a substance also known as the "drug of the rapist," might be the cause of death. According to a source close to the investigation, two men who were in the apartment of Patrick...

Six Somali men involved in capturing a French yacht and holding its 30 crew hostage have said they were part of a maritime militia group with a written code of conduct... The men were captured in the Somali desert by French troops on Friday after holding the yacht and its crew off Somalia for a week and fleeing with part of the ransom, which was recovered. They were flown to France this week to face trial. The yacht's captain told investigators the ransom paid was $2 million (1 million pounds). But the half-dozen men are just part of a larger...

Good references are not enough for Mr Camara to stay In his rented flat in the Paris suburbs of Seine-St-Denis, Bakary Camara leafs through pages of character references from friends and colleagues. The praise is fulsome, but so far to no avail. Despite his job with a local roofing company, the 29-year-old has been given formal notice to leave the country and risks being sent back to Mali. He is not alone. President Nicolas Sarkozy's government has pledged to deport 25,000 illegal immigrants each year, in spite of a plea from employers who say the clampdown is also penalising...

PARIS (AP) — To the barricades! That's the message of language purists aghast that the lyrics of France's entry in a hugely popular European song contest are — mon Dieu! — in English. Critics, including the French government, are adamant: Sebastien Tellier should not perform "Divine" at Eurovision — unless it is in French. "A song represents the soul of a country," said Marc Favre d'Echallens, who heads a group dedicated to defending French against the growing use of English. "It appears logical that a song representing France be a French song sung in French," he said, denouncing cultural "uniformity"...

Brazil and Russia signed an agreement on Tuesday to jointly develop top-line jet fighters and satellite launch vehicles. Brazil's Strategic Affairs Minister Roberto Mangabeira Unger told reporters the agreement will lead to the development of fifth-generation jet fighters that are built using sophisticated engineering, such as composite materials, stealth technology and advanced radar. The agreement signed by Unger and the deputy secretary of Russia's Security Council, Valentin Sobolev, includes the construction of rockets capable of hurling several kinds of satellites into space. Brazil builds its own small and medium-size rockets that are launched from the Alcantara base in the northeastern...

PARIS (Reuters) - French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers. Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts". Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim...

PARIS (Reuters) - French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers. Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts." Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim...

Dramatic video released by the French defense ministry this week shows French helicopters pursuing Somali pirates through the desert as they tried to escape following a weeklong hijacking. The military managed to apprehend six of the 10 pirates, who now sit aboard a French military vessel awaiting word on their fate. The hostages, 30 crew members of a luxury French yacht, are back in France where they are recovering from their ordeal.

France may outlaw inciting thinness By DEVORAH LAUTER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 20 minutes ago The French parliament's lower house adopted a groundbreaking bill Tuesday that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites — to publicly incite extreme thinness. The National Assembly approved the bill in a series of votes Tuesday, after the legislation won unanimous support from the ruling conservative UMP party. It goes to the Senate in the coming weeks. Fashion industry experts said that, if passed, the law would be the strongest of its kind anywhere. Leaders in French...

Europeans have been hyperventilating over their self-perceived “victories” vis-à-vis the United States at the recent NATO Summit in Romania from April 2-4. “France and Germany Thwart Bush’s Plans,” ran a triumphant headline in the Hamburg-based Der Spiegel. “Europe Waits Out the Bush Administration,” read another. “Only One Lame Duck Here” said the London-based Guardian in commentary that waxes giddy about Russia’s growing stranglehold over Europe. “NATO Should Disappear” said the Madrid-based El Pais. But behind the spin, the 26-member NATO Summit (arguably the most important such gathering since the end of the Cold War) exposed a security-dependent Europe that is...

I'm Absolut Swedish but NEVER EVER again will I buy Absolut Vodka and I will, at least, TRY to avoid other products of V&S Group (their repertoire is a pretty broad one though and I kinda party from time to time..), a former Swedish company which recently was sold to French Pernod Ricard (for the sum of €5,626 billion). I've also managed to convince my father and some of my friends to join my initiative and I'll continue to campaign! The background is, of course, the already infamous Absolut Vodka ad with the words "In an Absolut World" slapped over...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

via translation - France calls for "international force" against maritime piracy TOKYO - France calls for the creation of an "international force" under a UN mandate to combat acts of piracy at sea, such as the diversion of Ponant by Somalis, said Saturday french Prime Minister Francois Fillon you! a visit to Japan. "We are going to ask that under UN mandate an international force, to which France is naturally ready to participate, to work towards the safety and security of maritime transport in the region, as in the Malacca Strait," said M . Fillon in a speech before the...