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/ 16 February 2007
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Friday rejected a United Nations peace force for Darfur and said he would not grant visas to UN rights monitors who want to visit the strife-torn region. Bashir said an international force in Darfur would remain under the aegis of the African Union and that the UN would be confined to a ”technical and logistics role”.
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/ 16 February 2007
The leaders of Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic met on Thursday and declared they would not back rebels attacking each other’s territory — repeating a pledge that has failed to stop fighting in the past. Violence in Sudan’s Darfur province has spilled over into the neighbouring states, which accuse Sudan of supporting rebels launching cross-border attacks.
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/ 15 February 2007
Chad’s foreign minister accused Sudan of attacking his country and said talks expected on Thursday between the two neighbours and the Central African Republic (CAR) would be ”useless”. Violence in Sudan’s western region of Darfur has spilled over into neighbouring Chad and the CAR, both of which blame Khartoum for the attacks.
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/ 15 February 2007
A summit intended to strengthen ties between Africa and former colonial power France opened on Thursday but all eyes will be on a subject not on the agenda — Sudan’s battered Darfur province. The United Nations Security Council has proposed sending peacekeepers to secure Darfur’s border area, but UN officials say there must first be peace.
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/ 15 February 2007
An era draws to a close this week when French President Jacques Chirac hosts his last summit of leaders from Africa, a continent where France’s traditional influence is being threatened by resource-hungry China. Chirac’s office said there would likely be a meeting on Thursday between the heads of Sudan, Central Afrian Republic and Chad about Darfur.
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/ 14 February 2007
France has not found a way to bring Zimbabwe to its summit of African leaders this week, the government said on Tuesday. France was criticised for hosting Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe at a similar summit in Paris in 2003 and appears keen not to repeat the experience.
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/ 9 February 2007
France flyhalf Frederic Michalak has signed a one-year contract to play for the Natal Sharks in South Africa after this year’s World Cup, Sud Radio reported on Friday. The 24-year-old Toulouse playmaker will make an official announcement on his transfer at a press conference in Paris later on Friday.
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/ 8 February 2007
Tour de France winner Floyd Landis has said he will not take part in this year’s race, the French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) announced on Thursday. AFLD said they had postponed their disciplinary hearing into Landis scheduled for Thursday after the American promised not to participate in any race in France until the end of 2007.
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/ 6 February 2007
Fifty-eight countries agreed on Tuesday to take action to protect children from being recruited as soldiers in wars, joining for the first time an effort that has been largely confined to NGOs. The 58 countries that signed up to the so-called Paris commitments at the end of a two-day conference include 10 of the 12 nations where an estimated 250 000 children bear arms.
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/ 6 February 2007
France will be looking for more than just a high-profile exhibition match during Wednesday night’s international friendly against Argentina, striker Djibril Cisse warned. Cisse said that all eyes would be firmly focused on next month’s Euro 2008 qualifier against Lithuania rather than the South Americans.
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/ 5 February 2007
Pope Benedict was baptised at birth and will most likely be baptised again one year after his death, not by his Roman Catholic Church but by a Mormon he never met. The Mormons, a United States-based denomination officially named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, encourage members to baptise the dead by proxy.
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/ 4 February 2007
Forty-five nations joined France in calling for a new environmental body to slow global warming and protect the planet, a body that potentially could have policing powers to punish violators. Absent were the world’s heavyweight polluter, the United States, and booming nations on the same path as the US, China and India.
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/ 2 February 2007
The United Nations climate panel issued its strongest warning yet on Friday that human activities are heating the planet, adding pressure on governments to do more to combat accelerating global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted more severe rains, melting glaciers, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.
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/ 1 February 2007
An Air France flight from Paris to Rome was diverted to the eastern French city of Lyon on Thursday after an anonymous phone call warned of a bomb, a spokesperson for the civil aviation authorities said. The spokesperson said the plane landed safely and all the passengers had disembarked.
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/ 25 January 2007
Lebanon won more than ,6-billion on Thursday to help it cope with a debt mountain and recover from war — and, some donors hope, to help its United States-backed government weather a growing threat from Hezbollah-led opponents. Saudi Arabia headed the list of donors with a promise of ,1-billion of development aid and grants.
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/ 25 January 2007
Live music and internet-based social networking sites YouTube and MySpace are helping break new music acts — but video games are the latest new cool music space. ”It’s a great way of breaking new artists,” Joseph Stopps of independent, United Kingdom-based dance-music company MofoHifi said.
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/ 25 January 2007
Lebanon’s political and economic crisis takes centre stage at an international aid conference on Thursday, with the country’s Western-backed leaders hoping anti-government protests don’t scare away the donors. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has said Lebanon needs billions of dollars to help shore up its debt-riddled finances and to recover from last year’s war.
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/ 25 January 2007
Asia’s passion for singing and karaoke may be legendary, but now Asians are so enamoured of Western opera that Europe’s music academies are bursting at the seams with young Korean and Chinese opera students with stars in their eyes. ”The Koreans are mad about opera,” Christophe Capacci, the new artistic director for classical music and jazz at Midem.
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/ 23 January 2007
The head of the Israeli Defence Ministry Mission to Europe has disappeared from his Paris house, leaving behind notes that indicate he might have been considering suicide, a police source said on Tuesday. The man, named as David Dahan, has not been seen since the weekend, the source said. His car was missing but his cellphone was still at his home.
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/ 15 January 2007
A French court lifted on Monday a threat of bankruptcy over Eurotunnel, which operates the undersea rail tunnel linking France to Britain, but said a rescue plan must be applied within three years. A Paris commercial court approved a financial restructuring package to halve Eurotunnel’s debt mountain, meaning the group will avoid a cash crisis predicted for early this year.
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/ 15 January 2007
Of more than 30 000 African refugees who landed on the Spanish Canary Islands last year, few had time to see the statue towering above the small port Garachico. And if they did, few could have understood what it meant. It is the statue of a man dragging suitcases in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean.
The earthquake off Taiwan at the end of December that shattered internet connections for millions in Asia demonstrated starkly how vulnerable the vital network is to interruptions. Only a comprehensive back-up system in the infrastructure could prevent total paralysis, specialists warn.
In 2003, officials overseeing an election in Schaerbeek, a suburb of Brussels, got a shock. An electronic vote-counting machine declared that 4 096 more people had cast their vote than the ballot slips testified. The machine had been thoroughly tested. So what went wrong? The answer was, literally, a strike from the heavens.
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/ 29 December 2006
Tennis embraces major changes in 2007 but Roger Federer’s paramount New Year resolution remains the same — to win the French Open. The Swiss superstar racked up another record-smashing year in 2006 with 12 titles, a 92-5 match record in which he won back his Australian Open title and defended his Wimbledon and US Open crowns.
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/ 22 December 2006
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Friday he had been the victim of ”calumny and lies”, as he emerged from 17 hours of questioning by magistrates over an apparent smear campaign against a political rival. Villepin was heard as a witness, not a suspect, in the so-called Clearstream affair.
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/ 22 December 2006
Along a stretch of the Atlantic coastline in France’s Basque country that is a magnet for surfers, the expression of regional identity has become a sartorial matter of choice. With its own language and culture, the Basque country, comprising northern Spain and south-west France, is often associated, especially on the Spanish side, with its struggle for territorial independence.
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/ 21 December 2006
Raw fish and rice is not exactly the cuisine you would expect to find on every street corner in Paris, but sushi is becoming almost as commonplace in the city as France’s beloved steak and chips. The number of Japanese restaurants in Paris has jumped by about 30% in the last two years as the French turn away from cholesterol-laden fare in favour of healthier food and living.
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/ 21 December 2006
The unmistakable red-and-white checked moon rocket spanning the height of the French capital’s huge Pompidou centre leaves little doubt of the enduring popularity of the intrepid comic boy hero, Tintin. With his ceaseless taste for adventure, often in international hot-spots, the ageless and iconic blond-haired boy reporter was the brainchild and creation of Belgian author Herge in 1929.
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/ 20 December 2006
Football legend Ferenc Puskas, one of the greatest soccer players of all time, was one of several big names in football who died during the year. Puskas, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and had been confined to a hospital bed for the past six years, died of respiratory and circulatory failure in November aged 79.
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/ 13 December 2006
French animal lovers said on Wednesday they had filed a lawsuit after a publishing company issued a hunter’s year book extolling the virtues of "hedgehog stew". The recipe appears in the <i>Almanach du Chasseur</i> (<i>The Hunter’s Almanach</i>), published by a company called CPE in Romorantin, central France.
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/ 8 December 2006
Barcelona and AS Roma made their own entries into the history books of the Champions League on Tuesday, although it was the defending champions who penned the most interesting reading. Frank Rijkaard’s Spanish giants calmed the nerves of their anxious fans with a 2-0 victory over Werder Bremen at the Nou Camp which secured entry to the last 16.
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/ 6 December 2006
A dip in arrivals from Britain, its biggest tourist market, has pushed Paris to re-think the way it packages itself and throw off some of the sniffy stereotypes it has been saddled with. This week, the tourist board for the Paris region launched a new ad campaign aimed at Britons that, far from flaunting its well-known monuments and museums, seeks to portray the French capital as an energetic, youthful and trendy city.