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The French parliament has decided to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan. In the next few weeks, France will send more helicopters and other equipment to Afghanistan, together with 100 extra troops.

See previous Trooper'gate posts hereIt's been a slow whirlwind of activity on the dual (and dueling) investigations of Sarah Palin, known as Trooper'gate. So I'll catch you up on both the legislation investigation (aka, the "witchhunt") and the Personnel Board investigation (aka the authority via Alaskan State law to hear complaints under the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.) The brief version so many like to have? (which I never recommend, since you should read and form your own opinions...) The legislative investigation has piled on yet one more event in their process that has the AG eyeing them and their...

I have run across some very explosive audio from an Alaska Joint Judicial Committee Hearing. What you will hear is the committee discussing who's really running the investigation. One of the committee members tells the "independent" investigator Branchflower that he has the right to put someone on the subpoena list who was omitted for some reason. However, investigator Branchflower refuses to do so, saying that he must consult with Mr. French, the Alaskan Democratic Senator leading the "troopergate" investigation. This confuses the committee member, who wonders why he has to consult with Hollis French at all. Does that mean Hollis...

And now, Fox News reports that Obama’s campaign has met with the three lead investigating legislators meeting at Obama HQ in July - FOX NEWS VIDEO: Fox News Video McCain camp has pictures.

Greetings, Please take a moment today to thank Senator Hollis French – our pro-choice champion! It was an intense legislative session in Juneau. We battled two bills, House Bill 301 and House Bill 364, that would have had disastrous affects on the state of reproductive health in Alaska. Thanks to our champion, Senator Hollis French, we were able to stop these bad bills in the Senate. Please take a moment today and thank him and his staff for supporting the reproductive health and rights of thousands of women, men and teens across this great state. It has been a tough...

ONE in four cafes, snack bars and seafront restaurants in tourist hotspots across France are breaking hygiene rules or serving food unfit for consumption, the agriculture ministry said today. French health inspectors visiting 9,400 food establishments found more than 2,600 to be in breach of at least one hygiene rule, Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Michel Barnier told Le Parisien daily. Warnings were issued for dirty toilets and kitchens and for poor hygiene among staff. As well, inspection teams carted away 30 tonnes of food unfit to serve from 550 food shacks and restaurants. Thirty-seven establishments were shut down altogether, for...

PARIS (AFP) – The Dalai Lama accused China on Wednesday of pursuing a crackdown in Tibet in spite of the Olympic Games, French lawmakers said following talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. Asked during a private meeting at the Paris Senate whether China was respecting the "Olympic truce", the Dalai Lama's "answer was very clear: no," said former French justice minister Robert Badinter. "While the Games are taking place, the oppression of the Tibetan people and repression continue," said the opposition lawmaker, who oversaw the abolition of the death penalty in France. The 73-year-old Buddhist leader, who arrived on...

CONTROVERSIAL French swimmer Laure Manaudou is at the centre of a nude picture controversy. Her Italian swimmer former boyfriend Luca Marin is accused of posting video and pictures of Manaudou, who is the Olympic and world 400m world champion. The pair had a spat at the European short course swimming championships in Hungary at the weekend. "I know nothing about the video and have only seen the photos. Yes, it looks like it's really her but it is ridiculous to think it was me who put them there,'' Marin told the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport.

Belgium is in danger of falling apart. For more than six months, the country has been unable to form a government that is able to unite the French-speaking Walloons (32% of the population) and Dutch-speaking Flemish (58%). The Belgian monarch, Albert II, is desperately trying to stop his subjects from breaking up the nation-state. But perhaps we should all care at least a little, for what is happening in Belgium is unusual but not at all unique. The Czechs and Slovaks already parted ways, as did the different nations of Yugoslavia. Many Basques would like to break away from Spain,...

A French court’s decision last month not to grant French citizenship to a burqa-clad Muslim woman provided a ray of hope to those willing to stand up for western values and oppose Islamization of their societies. But you would never know it according to the New York Times. While the media focus was on the head-to-toe, body-encompassing robe that leaves only a slit for the eyes, the part of the ruling stating the Moroccan citizen had adopted as her religious practice a very dangerous strain of Islamic fundamentalism was mostly ignored. Previously, citizenship had been denied to those involved with...

It is an example of the stale and distasteful practice of social engineering that many Canadians outside of Alberta have come to think of as part of Canadian culture.....

Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard gave an interview to a French magazine. "Psychologies Magazine", July-August 2008 issue "I didn't say that insurance companies destroyed the towers. I said that I don't trust what the US government and the media say. My words have been misunderstood. I think there are a lot of shadows in the official version. Numerous American citizens ask to reopen the 911 investigation. A real investigation.

Remember the tightwad tourist whose baggy shorts, frequent complaining and shouted questions about why none of the locals spoke any English made the ugly American the world's Visitor From Hell? Well, it's time for Archie Bunker to move over and make way for Petulant Pierre. According to a recent international survey, the French are now considered the most obnoxious tourists from European nations, and behind only Indians and the last-place Chinese as the worst among all countries worldwide. And it's not only the rest of the world that have a gripe with the Gallic attitude: the French also finished second...

A French couple has been charged and arrested for running an immigration scam that cheated more than 100 people of thousands of dollars. 4 July 2008 LOS ANGELES - A French woman was arrested in California early Thursday on charges of running an immigration scam with her husband that netted thousands of dollars, US justice officials said. Deborah Sion, 25, was detained without incident by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, one day after charges were filed against her and her husband, who is in custody in France in an unrelated fraud scheme. Sion was due to appear in a...

Customs officials in Gothenburg were at a loss as to how to deal with Jacques Abdelaziz and his two four-legged pack animals when the trio wandered off a ferry boat from Denmark on Sunday afternoon. * Dropped French bid hits TeliaSonera shares (30 Jun 08) * France Telecom ups bid for TeliaSonera (30 Jun 08) * Gothenburg club and concert tips - June 27 - 29 (26 Jun 08) Abdelaziz, who hails from Brittany in northwestern France, has been wandering around Europe for the past two months with his two donkeys, Nounou and Toutoune, according to the Göteborg-Posten (GP) newspaper....

CARCASSONNE, France (AFP) — President Nicolas Sarkozy promised swift and severe punishment Monday after a soldier shot and wounded 17 people, including a three-year-old boy and both his parents, at an open day at an army barracks. The sergeant opened up with an assault rifle, firing live rounds instead of blanks into a crowd of hundreds of visitors watching a hostage-taking exercise Sunday at the base near the southwestern city of Carcassonne. A man who witnessed the shooting told AFP that "suddenly, people were falling, we thought it was part of the exercise, and then we saw blood."

King Arthur is propaganda, say French By Peter Allen in Paris Last Updated: 10:56PM BST 29/06/2008 French historians have accused the English of propagating the legend of King Arthur for "political reasons". King Arthur: 'a mythical character who was invented at a certain point in history for essentially political reasons'Even if a character who vaguely resembled the fabled leader did exist, he would probably have been a Welshman with strong connections to Brittany and whose sworn enemies were the Anglo-Saxons, they said. The organisers of a conference and exhibition to be held at Rennes university in northern France next month...

French marines shoot children in bungled hostage display By Our Foreign Staff Last Updated: 11:39PM BST 29/06/2008 Seventeen people have been injured, including a child left in a critical condition, after French soldiers fired live bullets instead of blanks during an open day display. Troops stand outside the barracks near Carcassone Fifteen civilians and two soldiers were injured in the incident which involved a demonstration by members of a marines parachute regiment of hostage liberation exercises. Four of the 17 were seriously injured, with two described as critical, following "incomprehensible" scenes at the barracks near Carcassone, in the country's south-west....

A 17 year old young man was attacked Saturday evening near the Buttes-Chaumont, in Paris, in what has been denounced as an anti-Semitic attack. The group said that the 17-year-old was wearing a kippa, and walking through a neighborhood where many Jewish families live, when he was beaten Saturday night in eastern Paris. Police said they detained five people for questioning, but were still investigating the reasons for the assault. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, leaving for a visit to Israel later Sunday, as well as the Minister of Interior, Michèle Alliot-Marie, expressed their indignation as well their support towards the...

French army falling apart, documents show By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 10:50PM BST 06/06/2008 Most of France's tanks, helicopters and jet fighters are unusable and its defence apparatus is on the verge of "falling apart", it has emerged. France's military has been given a bleak prognosis According to confidential defence documents leaked to the French press, less than half of France's Leclerc tanks – 142 out of 346 – are operational and even these regularly break down. Less than half of its Puma helicopters, 37 per cent of its Lynx choppers and 33 per cent of its Super...

Not having Barack Obama's free pass when it comes to plagiarism, I confess at the outset that the following is not entirely original. Although I have exercised my own poetic license with the material, variations of the "You could have heard a pin drop" series are popping up on the Internet with the frequency of embarrassing remarks by the presidential contenders' ministers. I get a kick out of these vignettes on two levels. First, they smack of a belligerent patriotism that gladdens my conservative soul. Second, they mock the French, and who doesn't enjoy that? * * * At an...

France brings line dancing craze under state control They turn out in their hundreds in Stetsons and boots as hits such as the Crazy Foot Mambo and the Cowboy Strut echo around their village halls. They are drawn by a love of American culture - although definitely not American politics - and a passion for line dancing, which enables them to swing but avoid all human contact. Now country and western has become so big in France that the country's bureaucrats have decided to bring the craze under state control. The French administration has moved to create an official country...

A court in French-Flanders annulled a marriage since the bride turned out not to be a virgin... The judges came to the conclusion that the bridegroom was deceived concerning an 'essential characteristic' of the bride, who had assured him before the wedding that she was still virgin. Both bride and groom are young French Muslims... The fraud was revealed when on the wedding night the groom could not show blood spots on the sheets to the feasting family. The groom's father brought the bride back to her parents.

Eight years ago, a French couple founded an organization that adopts graves of American servicemen who died during the Normandy invasion of World War II. The volunteer group encourages French families to lay flowers on the graves when the Americans' own families can't do it. High on a bluff above Omaha Beach, the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer is a place of stunning beauty and tranquility. Rising from thick, manicured grass, rows of white crosses and stars of David face westward, towards America. It's hard to imagine that 64 years ago, war raged here. But there are the 10,000 graves to...

French skydiver Michel Fournier takes his life in his hands when, weather permitting, he leaps from a balloon 40 kilometres (25 miles) above Canada's western plains. The 64-year-old parachutist said it was his life's dream to make the record jump, which will begin at the outer reaches of the stratosphere -- about four times higher than the cruising altitude of a commercial jet. Fournier spent Sunday resting and making the final arrangements in the small city of North Battleford, Saskatchewan, from where he will head up into the heavens in a stratospheric balloon and then throw himself off. He...

French drinkers could be forced to take a breath test whenever they leave a bar at night in a bid to reduce soaring road deaths. The plan, which will be put before President Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet today, would require anywhere that serves alochol to install an electronic breathalyser. The move follows a particularly deadly holiday weekend on French roads, in which drink-driving was blamed for many of the 17 deaths in seven accidents. New law: Drinkers at this bar in Aix-en-Provence will face obligatory breathalyser tests Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said: "Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot and I will present a...

'French take most holidays in the world' By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 3:25am BST 18/04/2008 The scale of President Nicolas Sarkozy's challenge to "get France back to work" was underlined yesterday by a poll crowning the French world champions for the amount of annual holiday they take. The average working Frenchman spends 37 days en vacances, with Italy in second place on 33 days, according to Harris Interactive, the American polling institute. Britain trails with 26 days holiday per year - a rise of two days in two years. America comes last (or first depending on one's view)...

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...

Submarine 'caused' sinking of French trawler By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 2:55am BST 15/04/2008 French judges investigating the sinking of a French trawler off the English coast have officially declared it was most likely caused by a submarine - perhaps a British one. Five French trawler men drowned when the Bugaled Breizh from Brittany went down off Cornwall in January 2004. After four years of investigations, the theory that the boat was dragged down by a submarine was "the most serious", the two judges found, after ruling out the results of an earlier probe by France's Sea Accident...

It is the internet site that contains dark family secrets, unspeakable truths and appalling injustice. The French log on to it in trepidation and in private. Les Guillotinés offers the most complete online list yet established of the French Revolution’s victims and invites users to discover the answer to a terrible question: “Do you have an ancestor who was decapitated?” Hundreds of thousands of people have consulted the death base, created by Raymond Combes, a computer programmer and amateur genealogist. Many more are likely to follow suit. According to one estimate, up to five million French people are descended from...

PARIS - France's last remaining veteran of World War I died Wednesday at age 110 after outliving 8.4 million Frenchmen who fought in what they called "la Grande Guerre." Lazare Ponticelli, who was born in Italy but chose to fight for France and was a French citizen for most of the past century, died at his home in the Paris suburb of Kremlin-Bicetre, the national veterans' office said. "It is to him and his generation that we owe in large part the peaceful and pacified Europe of today. It is up to us to be worthy of that," President Nicolas...

French women are becoming increasingly assertive in their sexual habits, while one-in-five younger French men "has no interest in sex", according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of the nation's love lives.   Carla Bruni, wife of the French president, has talked publicly about her conquests Women now have more than twice as many partners as they did in the 1970s, according to the study by the French Aids research agency, which is backed by the government."Are women just like men?" asked Le Nouvel Observateur yesterday, which released extracts of the Study on Sexuality in France, a 600-page tome...

French women 'are the sexual predators now' By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 2:50am GMT 07/03/2008 French women are becoming increasingly assertive in their sexual habits, while one-in-five younger French men "has no interest in sex", according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of the nation's love lives. Carla Bruni, wife of the French president, has talked publicly about her conquests Women now have more than twice as many partners as they did in the 1970s, according to the study by the French Aids research agency, which is backed by the government. "Are women just like men?" asked...

BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) - The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them. In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that "all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish". It added: "Offenders will be severely punished".

(IsraelNN.com) The French Jewish community and local government officials are outraged after it was disclosed that anti-Semitic thugs locked up, brutally attacked and tormented a Jewish youth in the same Paris suburb where Ilan Hamili was tortured to death two years ago. The gang members are aged 17-25 and have been charged with locking up a 19-year-old boy, beating and sexually tormenting him. The gang had falsely accused the youth of stealing from them and lured him into an apartment of one of the attackers. They scrawled "dirty Jew" on the face of the victim, who was subjected to a...

Actress Marion Cotillard sparked a political row yesterday after accusing America of fabricating the 9/11 attacks. The 32-year-old French actress, who received an Oscar last month for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, openly questioned the truth behind the terrorist atrocity in an interview broadcast on a French website. "I think we're lied to about a number of things," Cotillard said, singling out the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center as an example of the US making up horror stories for political ends. Referring to the two passenger jets being flown into the Twin...

It's un-American to like the French, excepting only Brigitte Bardot and the Marquis de Lafayette. That's an absolute rule. John Kerry, for instance, was denied the presidency not because he was Swift-Boated by Boone Pickens or photographed windsurfing but because he speaks fluent French, and has French cousins, and is in fact a French dude. Just as New York City and New Orleans are near America, but not of it. Being French, he lost. So, call me irresponsible, but I like the French.

France given green light to intervene in Chad By Sebastien Berger in Addis Ababa Last Updated: 2:04am GMT 05/02/2008 The United Nations appeared to give the green light to France last night to intervene militarily to defend the president of Chad from rebels attempting to oust him. France, the former colonial power, has around 1,500 troops in Chad. French soldiers helps foreign residents to evacuate in the Chadian capital of N'Djamena In a carefully worded statement, the UN Security Council called upon member states "to provide support in conformity with the United Nations charter as requested by the government of...

French morale hits a new low By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 3:36am GMT 31/01/2008 French morale is at its lowest ebb in two decades, according to new research. Quality of life in France is envied the world over but government figures show the "morale of French households" is at its gloomiest - minus 34 points - since the study began in 1987. Mr Sarkozy has asked two Nobel Prize winning economists to draw up new ways of measuring success and well-being French people's belief that their living standards will improve has declined steadily since President Nicolas Sarkozy took...

Vimy's new enemy: no uniform, no clothes, no respect Exhibitionism Veterans minister deterring public sex at memorial Rob Linke TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL Published Wednesday January 30th, 2008 Appeared on page A1 OTTAWA - More than 90 years after Canadian soldiers seized Vimy Ridge, Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson is still part of a battle - this one to protect Canada's iconic memorial from kinky French couples. Vimy's new enemy are exhibitionists who pose nude or have sex at the First World War memorial, then post pictures of their activities online. Some images have the names of thousands of Canadian war dead, carved...

PARIS: His subjects were mostly children and teenagers at the time, terrified witnesses to mass slaughter. Some were forced to work at the bottom rung of the Nazi Germany killing machine - as the diggers of mass graves, as cooks who fed Nazi soldiers, as seamstresses who mended clothes stripped from the Jews before execution. The witnesses live today in rural poverty, many without running water or heat, nearing the end of their lives. So Patrick Desbois has been quietly seeking them out, roaming the back roads and forgotten fields of Ukraine, hearing their stories and searching for the unmarked...

PARIS - From next week, one of France's most iconic institutions — the smoky cafe — will be but a hazy memory. The extension of France's smoking ban to bars, discotheques, restaurants, hotels, casinos and cafes on Jan. 1 marks a momentous cultural shift in a country where thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir once held court while clutching cigarettes in Left Bank cafes. For smokers, this is the most distressing part of a phased smoking ban that began last February in workplaces, schools, airports, hospitals and other "closed and covered" public places like train stations. But many...

France fears arrival of cigarette-smoking ban By William Langley in Paris  Last Updated: 12:35am GMT 23/12/2007     The authentic French bistro-dweller's look of perpetual anguish requires that the eyes be directed upwards, the corners of the mouth drawn downwards, and a crumpled cigarette balanced vaguely on the horizontal. A guide to Western cigarette-smoking bansFrom next month, the expression will feature more despair and fewer cigarettes.   Brigitte Bardot avec cigarette   The day of reckoning has arrived for Europe's most incorrigible smokers. On January 1, it will become illegal to light up in bars, restaurants or nightclubs, and as...

POITIERS, France (AFP) - It was no bull in a china shop, but a wild boar rampaged through a clothes shop in western France on Saturday before being felled by bullets, police said. Christmas shoppers and employees were evacuated from the store and the 90-kilo (198-pound) boar began charging at police, before falling in a hail of bullets early in the afternoon. Just how the animal entered the shop, located in a commercial area near the city of Poitiers, remains a mystery. But three boars were spotted during the day in the region bordering the countryside, a police statement said....

PARIS - A court convicted five former inmates of Guantanamo on terrorism-related charges on Wednesday, but did not send any of them back to prison in France. A sixth man was acquitted, and his lawyer said he would try to win reparations from Washington for his time at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Also on Wednesday, three longtime British residents were released from Guantanamo and flown to Britain. London police arrested two on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts, while the third was detained for questioning. The ruling in France capped proceedings that seemed at times like a...

French seeking emperor's corpse Last Updated: 1:23am GMT 09/12/2007 He was the last emperor and the first president of France but for 120 years the Emperor Napoleon III's remains have lain in England. Exiled: Napoleon III of France and the Empress Eugénie Now the French want them back. Tomorrow Christian Estrosi, the secretary of state for overseas territories, will arrive in Britain to request the return of the remains of the exiled emperor and his wife, Empress Eugénie, which lie in a crypt in St Michael's Abbey in Farnborough, Hampshire. Mr Estrosi said: "This trip will be for me an...

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France (Reuters) - Six teenagers went on trial in southern France on Monday over the torching of a bus in 2006, hearing the testimony of a young woman who was severely burned in the incident. The trial again highlights the problem of urban violence in France, a week after youths in a suburb north of Paris clashed with police and set fire to shops, cars and public buildings in two consecutive nights of unrest. The six youths facing trial are suspected of being part of a gang of eight who attacked a bus in the southern port city of...

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The head of Belgium's Flemish Christian Democrats on Saturday abandoned efforts to form a coalition government, after more than five months of fruitless talks, plunging the country further into crisis. Yves Leterme announced his decision to Belgian King Albert II after the two Dutch-speaking Flemish and two francophone parties involved in talks failed to bridge their differences over devolving more power to the regions. His move, swiftly accepted by the king, deepens the political crisis in the country where some are even talking of a possible split between the richer Flemish majority to the north and the...

PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won surprise backing from the wife of former French President Jacques Chirac on Thursday, together with a pledge to join her on the campaign trail. The Chiracs' political affiliations are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Clintons', but the former French first lady said she had always thought Democratic candidate Clinton had the makings of a U.S. president. "She's a woman who is not liked by everybody. But she's strong and she has convictions," Bernadette Chirac, well-known for a forceful character of her own, told the weekly Le Figaro...

PARIS (Reuters) - Striking French transport and energy workers caused chaos for the second time in a month on Wednesday in a protest over pensions that is the biggest test yet of President Nicolas Sarkozy's ability to reform. Train services were severely disrupted and energy production capacity reduced in an open-ended strike begun on Tuesday evening by workers angry over a plan to cut back on generous pensions enjoyed by 500,000 public sector workers. Sarkozy has broad public support for the reform which aims to bring the pensions in line with those of all other workers ahead of a broader...