French President Jacques Chirac, whose recent comments on British and Finnish cooking provoked a minor diplomatic incident, claimed on Thursday that French cuisine is part of the reason for the longevity of his compatriots. Listing in a television interview France’s strengths, Chirac lauded the merits of the national cuisine.
While Harry Potter has cast a spell over children worldwide, to the delight of local English teachers many young readers in France seem willing to cross the language barrier on their magical journey with the young wizard.
Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe, still to come to terms with last week’s stunning defeat to London for the right to stage the 2012 Olympic Games, has accused British Prime Minister Tony Blair and London bid leader Sebastian Coe of breaking the rules. ”I don’t say they flirted [with the yellow line], they crossed right over,” he told his first Paris council meeting on Monday.
During the running of Saturday’s eighth stage of the 2005 Tour de France, six-time champion Lance Armstrong smiled warmly at a France 2 television camera and said, ”Bonjour, France.” It was a telling moment, for the camera lingered on Armstrong and Armstrong continued to smile, a mutual declaration of love between the rider and his French spectators.
Twenty years after two of its secret agents blew up the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand, France is still haunted by the bombing of the Greenpeace vessel. The sinking of the vessel in Auckland harbour on the night of July 10, 1985 still ranks as one of the biggest political and diplomatic scandals of the reign of the late president Francois Mitterrand.
Parisians gathered on artificial turf resembling an Olympic running track outside City Hall on on Wednesday, cheering ”Pa-ris! Par-is!” as the French capital and rival London emerged as finalists for the 2012 Summer Games. Cheers went up as the International Olympic Committee eliminated Moscow, Madrid, Spain and New York.
Aside from the pursuit of gold medals, competitors at the World Dwarf Games being held in France this week want to be treated as serious athletes, and not pitied because of their height. The fourth edition of the championships at Rambouillet, south of Paris, has drawn together 135 dwarves, with the largest delegation coming from Britain.
Take one unpopular president, a brace of struggling statesmen and a couple of global summits. Heat up a hoary national stereotype, leaven with wit, sit back and watch ”les rosbifs” simmer. Jacques Chirac stirred the pot at a meeting in Russia on Sunday when he joked to Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schröder that the British could not be trusted and worse food was only found in Finland.
The decision on the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games took a distinctly political turn when French President Jacques Chirac decided to travel to Singapore to defend Paris’s candidacy ahead of the International Olympic Committee vote. There, he will be going head to head against British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Africa will take centre stage at this week’s G8 summit in Scotland where debate is likely to reflect differing notions of who is primarily responsible for eradicating poverty — those who have or those who have not. The outcome of that debate could well determine the success or failure of the gathering and of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spirited campaign to prick the world’s conscience.
An extraordinary United States mission to whack a passing comet may indirectly provide a windfall for guardians monitoring any space rocks that could hit Earth. The Nasa probe Deep Impact is to eject a 372kg projectile that on Monday is scheduled to smack into Comet Tempel 1 as the heavenly wanderer flies past Earth at a great distance.
Thousands of 19th and 20th century books disappeared from France’s national library before it moved to a new location nine years ago, a library spokesperson said on Monday. National Library of France officials said they discovered about 30 000 books and documents were missing during an inventory in the mid-1990s.
Lance Armstrong has shaken off a crash in his preparation for this Saturday’s Tour de France first stage, a 19km time trial, and appears ready for his bid to win a seventh consecutive yellow jersey on what will be his retirement race. The 33-year-old American escaped with only a cut to his face after crashing on his time-trial bike in training on Sunday.
Is Papillon alive and well and living in retirement in the northern Paris suburbs? The extraordinary claim surfaced after a French newspaper recently reported the 104th birthday of Charles Brunier, a former inmate of the Devil’s Island penal colony, said to be seeing out his days at the Val-de-France old people’s home in Domont, about 20km outside the French capital.
It passed almost unnoticed when it was published in France last year, but L’amande or The Almond, a slim brown volume billed as the ”first erotic account written by an Arab woman”, has now sold rights in 17 countries, including Britain, where it is to be published next month.
Japan and France have agreed to develop the technology for a new supersonic commercial aircraft that could cut the flying time between Tokyo and New York by almost half to six hours. Japan’s trade and industry ministry said the countries would each invest about 100m yen ( 000) a year over three years on research for the plane.
One of the most celebrated department stores in Paris closes its doors on Wednesday for years, perhaps for ever, having fallen foul of health and safety regulations. Founded in 1870, La Samaritaine, a Paris landmark, had its golden age during the 1930s at the height of the Art Deco era, but has been in decline for 30 years.
A spam e-mail that claims Michael Jackson has made a suicide attempt masks a ”Trojan horse” virus that infects computers, a British-headquartered software security firm said on Friday. The e-mail says Jackson made a ”suicidal aattempt” (sic) and invites the recipient to click on a link to see a supposed suicide note.
A website that specialises in storm forecasts warned on Wednesday that the Atlantic may face a major hurricane season this year. Tropical Storm Risk predicted that, on the basis of current and projected climate data, the hurricane season would be 160% above average in terms of numbers.
Justine Henin-Hardenne beat a visibly nervous Mary Pierce 6-1, 6-1 on Saturday to win the French Open, capping a remarkable comeback from a blood virus with her fourth grand-slam title and her second at Roland Garros. It was the most lopsided major final since Steffi Graf beat Natasha Zvereva 6-0, 6-0 to win the French Open in 1988.
As a teen prodigy, Rafael Nadal’s achievements match or surpass those of Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Mats Wilander, suggesting that his first grand-slam title is unlikely to be his last. Few expect 19-year-old Nadal to become a one-slam wonder. He’s too big and strong, too cool and creative, too pugnacious and precocious.
And so, on the ninth day, the semi-final that everybody wanted to see became a reality. Roger Federer, the world number one, beat Romania’s Victor Hanescu 6-2, 7-6, 6-3, and Rafael Nadal, the second most successful player on the men’s circuit this year, defeated fellow Spaniard David Ferrer 7-5, 6-2, 6-0.
Roth, Grass, Updike, Lessing, McEwan, Spark, Garcia Marquez. It read like a rollcall of modern literature’s titans and anyone scanning the shortlist for the inaugural Man Booker International prize could have been forgiven for missing the giant of Albanian letters nestling among them.
Former champions Mary Pierce and Justine Henin-Hardenne will contest the first-ever Franco-Belgian French Open women’s singles final after both recorded easy victories in Thursday’s semifinals. The champion in 2000 and 21st seed, Pierce defeated 16th-seeded Russian Elena Likhovtseva 6-1, 6-1 in just 58 minutes.
Justine Henin-Hardenne’s impressive recovery from illness and injury continued on Thursday when a 6-2, 6-3 win over outclassed Russian Nadia Petrova put her within touching distance of a second French Open title. For the Belgian 10th seed, the 2003 champion, it was her 23rd successive win.
Nikolay Davydenko celebrated his 24th birthday a day early on Wednesday when he reached his first grand-slam semifinal with a dramatic 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 win over Spain’s Tommy Robredo in a marathon French Open last-eight clash. The 12th-seeded Russian will now face Argentina’s unseeded Mariano Puerta.
Built like a boxer rather than a tennis player, Rafael Nadal is listed at 74kg in the annual ATP Tour media guide but actually weighs nearly 86kg. Just a growing boy, the Mallorcan says his muscular physique isn’t the result of any secret Mediterranean diet.
Mariano Puerta advanced to a grand-slam semifinal for the first time in his nine-year career on Wednesday by beating fellow Argentine Guillermo Canas 6-2, 3-6, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 at the French Open. Three-time grand-slam champion Justine Henin-Hardenne is the heavy favourite in the women’s final four.
Mary Pierce took a moment to absorb what was happening on centre court, because she knew that one day it would make a beautiful memory. The crowd was chanting ”Ma-ry”. She was beating top-ranked Lindsay Davenport in the French Open quarterfinals. And all the while, she felt some magic was on her side.
French President Jacques Chirac appointed Dominique de Villepin, a loyalist who was France’s voice against the Iraq war, as Prime Minister on Tuesday to head a new government in response to a humiliating referendum defeat. Villepin (51) moves from the interior ministry to replace Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
Frustrated with his play, Marat Safin said he did what any normal person would do: He whacked his changeover chair with his racket, leaving a gaping hole in the wooden base. ”I destroyed the chair, I destroyed the racket because I couldn’t take it anymore,” said Safin, who lost his fourth-round match on Monday at the French Open — but not without putting on a show.
Argentinian duo Gaston Gaudio and Guillermo Coria saw their 2005 Roland Garros dreams come crashing down in the fourth round on Monday. Teen sensation Rafael Nadal swept past the challenge of French hope Sebastien Grosjean; Justine Henin-Hardenne beat Svetlana Kuznetsova; and Maria Sharapova beat Nuria Llagostera Vives.