”This is a machine for walking like an Egyptian. This one crunches apples like Catherine Deneuve. And that’s a spit for roasting Joan of Arc.” In its 100-year existence, Paris’s majestic Grand Palais museum has never hosted anything like it — a battery of barmy Heath Robinson contraptions that clang, creak, explode and generally make people laugh.
A song mocking the headbutt by France football star Zinedine Zidane during the final of the World Cup in Germany has become a massive hit in France and propelled the three members of pop group La Plage to overnight stardom. The extraordinary attack on Italy’s Marco Materazzi in the July 9 final in Berlin has proved a goldmine for the group.
A French court was due to give a ruling on Wednesday likely to determine the fate of Eurotunnel which is set for liquidation if its request for protection from a debt mountain is rejected. Eurotunnel, which operates twin under-sea rail tunnels between France and England, took the precautionary move of asking the court for protection three weeks ago.
European aircraft manufacturer EADS issued a profits warning on Thursday following a crisis over Airbus production problems, but said that net profit in the first half had risen by 5%. The group also said that the results of a study into the overall implications of problems in A380 production might reveal further extra costs.
Europeans struggled through another day of blazing sunshine and rising temperatures on Tuesday as a heatwave that has killed about 40 people in the past two weeks intensified. Temperatures were again on the march towards their forecast apogee on Wednesday or Thursday.
Former France captain Michel Platini has confirmed his candidacy for the presidency of European soccer’s governing body. French soccer federation chief Jean-Pierre Escalettes officially announced Platini’s candidacy in a letter on Monday to Uefa secretary general Lars-Christer Olsson. The elections will be held in January 2007.
Floyd Landis’s thrilling Tour de France victory did much to dispel the air of gloom hanging over cycling’s showpiece event after it began engulfed by another doping controversy. ”Our only favourite is named suspense,” said outgoing Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc, dreaming of a wide-open race after the retirement of Lance Armstrong.
Researchers believe they have found a key insight into déjà vu, the eerie sensation of seeing something that has already been experienced, the <i>New Scientist</i> magazine reports. Experiments suggest that déjà vu can be triggered independently, without a real memory to prompt it.
The fairy tale of Zinedine Zidane vanished in an instant of visceral rage at the World Cup final. But what followed has proved strangely more compelling — more human, more profound, more universal. His now-legendary headbutt fascinated viewers around the world, competed with war zones for global headlines, and obsessed philosophers and sports fans alike.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s future with Manchester United was still up in the air on Thursday, despite the club insisting he was not for sale. The Portuguese winger has retracted slightly from his claim that he would be moving away from Old Trafford after the rumpus surrounding his role in the World Cup sending off of Wayne Rooney.
Retired France captain Zinedine Zidane can do no wrong, according to his peers in the football world following his public apology on television for headbutting Italy’s Marco Materazzi. The 34-year-old great went on Canal+ and then TF1 TV stations in France to apologise to the world for losing his temper over jibes from the Italian centre-back in the World Cup final on Sunday.
Eurotunnel was to "place itself under the protection of the Paris tribunal of commerce" after the failure of negotiations on its debt with its creditors. Subordinate creditors headed by Deutsche Bank "rejected the last effort to reach a consensual agreement with all the Eurotunnel creditors," said a spokesperson.
French football icon Zinedine Zidane on Wednesday said he was sorry for headbutting an Italian opponent during the World Cup final against Italy. But he said in a French television interview that defender Marco Materazzi had deserved it for insulting him with some ”very hard words” aimed at sullying his mother and sister.
Pedro De la Rosa will replace Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya for the McLaren-Mercedes Formula One team, it was announced on Tuesday. The Spaniard will compete for McLaren for the first time as a first-choice driver at this Sunday’s French Grand Prix, the team said.
European aircraft maker Airbus announced a sharp fall in its orders on Monday, a setback for the company in its battle with Chicago-based Boeing and a sign that the United States group is in the ascendancy. Airbus said it had booked 117 firm orders for passenger jets in the first half of 2006, fewer than half the number in the same period of 2005 and far behind Boeing.
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Two French revellers died and a third was feared drowned after more than half-a-million football fans took to the streets early on Thursday to celebrate their side’s qualification for the World Cup final. Across France the night’s celebrations were mostly peaceful — if noisy — with firecrackers and fireworks competing with drums and car horns.
Japanese company Bridgestone will exclusively supply tyres for the Formula One world championship from 2008 to 2010, world motor sport’s governing body the FIA said on Wednesday. Bridgestone had been the favourites to win the deal since French tyre manufacturer Michelin refused to participate after FIA asked for offers.
The co-chief executive of the European aerospace group EADS and the head of its Airbus subsidiary paid with their jobs on Sunday for the crisis that has wiped billions of euros off the value of the company. The two companies issued terse statements announcing EADS’s French co-boss Noel Forgeard and Airbus’s head Gustav Humbert, a German, were stepping down.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused Iraqi Shi’ites of waging ”genocide” against Sunnis and warned of retaliation, according to a new audiotape posted on the internet on Saturday. The message, the second in as many days purportedly from the Western world’s most-wanted man, came as yet another sectarian car bombing shook Baghdad.
From bras and baby suits equipped with monitors to tough suits to protect sportspeople and adventurers from the hazards of life on earth, space technology is boldly pushing back fashion frontiers. ”The space programme has over the years provided a catalyst for a lot of the progress we are seeing today in textiles,” says David Raitt, promotions officer with the European Space Agency.
EADS co-chief executive Noel Forgeard was being questioned on Wednesday by France’s parliamentary finance committee on why he sold millions of euros’ worth of shares in the European aerospace group just before it announced delays in deliveries of its Airbus A380 superjumbo.
France is set to unveil a reorganisation of European aerospace giant EADS in the next few days amid sustained efforts by the government to clear the air of controversy over production problems, communication breakdowns and share dealings.
Fatty hamburgers, sugar-laden sodas and a couch-potato lifestyle: these are the familiar villains in the crisis of obesity sweeping developed countries. But what if they had been convicted without fair trial? What if the global fat explosion had other causes?
Gay and lesbian people took to the streets of European cities on Saturday in a mass demonstration of pride, in numbers varying from a couple of hundred in Zagreb to hundreds of thousands in Paris. Demonstrations and marches also took place or were planned in Lisbon, Rome, Valencia and Zwolle in The Netherlands.
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Long before the first football was kicked at the World Cup earlier this month in Germany, hard-line Islamists were busily denouncing the massive competition as a corrupt show of Western influence. But as the daily matches have gone on, Islamists using the internet have shown they are not immune to World Cup fever.
Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong allegedly admitted taking banned doping products before suffering from cancer, according to evidence given under oath to a court in Dallas earlier this year and published in Saturday’s edition of French daily Le Monde.
French researchers have given scientific backing to what shepherds have intuitively known for thousands of years: that the lamb that bleats most and loudest has the best chance of survival. A research team used digital recorders to record lambs’ bleats and matched this with the mother’s response.
The joint head of European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS) rejected on Friday suggestions he had indulged in insider trading knowing the group would announce delivery delays for the Airbus superjumbo which have slashed the value of the business.
Of all the forms of doping in sports, perhaps none is more vampirish than athletes siphoning, storing and transfusing their own blood. A pint here, a pint there. Packed with red blood cells that carry oxygen to tired muscles, a back-alley transfusion can add a spring to the step of a World Cup soccer player or help a Tour de France cyclist ascend steep mountain passes.
Want to save the planet? Wear your jeans two days a week, wash them every fifth day, and let them dry by themselves. Or better still, don’t wash them at all. And don’t even think of ironing them. This is the conclusion of a report commissioned by France’s environment agency on the ecological impact of a pair of denims.
Washington has been playing with fire in Somalia, where its support for a warlord alliance has ended up boosting Islamic militias, which now hold the capital Mogadishu, analysts say. Somalia has been torn by four months of fighting between the Islamists and an alliance of warlords, who largely controlled the lawless state for 15 years.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned on Wednesday that his contested plan to set Israel’s borders on the West Bank with or without agreement from the Palestinians was unstoppable. "My plan cannot be stopped and is the most that Israel is prepared to agree to," he told reporters accompanying him on a state visit to Paris.