France

Ireland were the only side to turn up for the Six Nations match with France, coach Eddie O’Sullivan claimed after his men in green had gone down 43-31 to France at the Stade de France on Saturday. The Irish gifted France three of their six tries and at one point trailed their opponents 43-3 before staging an extraordinary comeback which at one stage threatened to see them overhaul the French.

This year’s Belgian formula-one grand prix has been called off because of track-improvement works, the sport’s governing body, the FIA, announced on Wednesday. One of the favourite races for drivers, the Spa Francorchamps circuit will be back on the formula-one calendar in 2007.

Outrage in the Muslim world over the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad stems both from resentment over perceived double standards and from political exploitation by some regimes, experts say. Muslims worldwide have been angered by the publication of the caricatures of Muhammad.

About 50 000 people on France’s Indian Ocean island of Reunion have been hit by an epidemic of a crippling mosquito-borne disease that has no known cure. Doctors have recorded 45 000 new cases of ”chikungunya” since mid-December, when the epidemic started to gather pace.

World motorcycling champion Valentino Rossi has received backing in his pursuit of switching to Formula One from Michael Schumacher. Schumacher, like Rossi a seven-time world champion, believes the Italian who has been testing for Ferrari in Spain this week has what it takes to make it on the Grand Prix circuit.

People who are nervous about public speaking should first have penetrative sex to ease the stress, although masturbation is unlikely to have the same effect, an unusual study says. A British psychologist compared the effect of different sexual activities on blood pressure when a person later undergoes a stressful experience.

Norway is to build a ”doomsday vault” in a mountain close to the North Pole that will house a vast seed bank to ensure food supplies in the event of catastrophic climate change, nuclear war or rising sea levels. Built with Fort Knox-type security, the -million vault will be designed to hold around two-million seeds representing all known varieties of the world’s crops.

A 77-year-old Frenchman was in police custody in Paris on Thursday after he attacked the famous urinal that Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp presented as an art work, police said. The man, who was not identified, went at what is arguably the world’s most famous bit of porcelain plumbing on Wednesday with a small hammer.

In a world first, German scientists say they have reconstructed a key sequence in the genome of the woolly mammoth, enabling them to show that the extinct beast’s closest modern relative is the Asian elephant. The researchers say they devised a new technique for the feat, teasing out DNA from just 200mg of bone found at a mammoths’ graveyard in the Siberian permafrost.