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/ 14 December 2007
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s own minister for human rights objected, in the most colourful language, accusing her boss of allowing Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi to use France as a doormat on which he could wipe his shoes of the blood of his crimes. Was Rama Yade sacked for this eloquent outburst against the man who had made her the youngest member of his government? Not a bit of it, writes Marcel Berlins.
Writers will get the name of a restaurant right, but will they have smelled the smells? <b>Marcel Berlins</b> wonders.
For a moment, it was like old times. I was in Paris recently when hundreds of students occupied the Sorbonne and the riot police were called out in excessive numbers to turf them out. There have been sit-ins and strikes at many other French universities, a succession of angry street demonstrations and lots of eye-balling and scuffling between students and police.
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/ 5 December 2003
How did a Scottish professor of medical law come to write novels about a Botswanan private eye? After seeing a chicken being killed in a far-off African state, that is. Alexander McCall Smith talks to Marcel Berlins.