Two a penny

.Leonardo Da Vinci’s remains are to be exhumed to allow scientists to establish whether the Mona Lisa is a disguised self-portrait.
Scientists and historians from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage have sought permission to open the artist’s tomb in France’s Loire Valley.
They hope to find his skull which they can use to reconstruct his face to discover whether his famed masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is in fact a self-portrait in disguise.
Scholars have suggested Da Vinci’s presumed homosexuality and love of riddles led him to paint himself as a woman.
Mystery has surrounded the identity of the Mona Lisa for centuries.

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Speculation on the sitter has also ranged from Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant, to Da Vinci’s mother

.The US Supreme Court has refused to stop the extradition of Panama’s former leader Manuel Noriega to France.
Manuel Noriega has served a 17-year sentence in a US prison for drug charges.
The former Panamanian dictator appealed to the US Supreme Court to block that extradition, but the court has today decided not to hear the appeal.
The United States now wants to extradite him to France to face money laundering charges.
But he says he has no doubt she will send Noriega to France.
Noriega’s lawyer Frank Rubino says the final decision on France’s extradition request rests with US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

.New Manchester City recruit Patrick Vieira says he has a “100 per cent chance” of playing for France at next summer’s World Cup finals, despite having not represented his country since June 2009.
“As I’m an optimist, I’m going to say 100 per cent,” he said in response to a question about his chances of playing in South Africa on the Canal Football Club television show overnight.
“The desire is there, it’s my goal.”
Vieira, who has yet to play for his new club, admitted that he had received “no guarantees” from France coach Raymond Domenech, who he met shortly before Christmas, and conceded that the situation “is not as simple as that”. In my head, I don’t see myself missing the World Cup.
“You have to play, which is the important thing for me.
“But he said that as soon as I’m playing, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be selected,” said Vieira, whose last France appearance saw him captain Les Bleus to a 1-0 defeat against Nigeria in Saint-Etienne last June. I have five months.
He joined City from reigning Italian champion Inter Milan on January 8.”
Vieira, 33, was a member of the France team that won the 1998 World Cup and the 2000 European Championship and has 107 caps.
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.The French government has passed a radical affirmative action plan that will force publicly-listed companies to hire more women in their boardrooms.
At the moment women hold fewer than 10 per cent of boardroom seats in publicly-listed companies, but the new laws will see that figure rise to 40 per cent.
Women hold a certain place in French society - they are famed writers, musicians and supermodels.
Avivah Wittenberg Cox, the CEO of 20-first, one of Europe’s leading gender consultancies, has welcomed the new legislation.
Men adore them in the bedroom, but not, it seems, in the boardroom.
“What we’ve had until now, I would suggest, is actually a pretty established millennium of affirmative action in favour of masculine leadership styles, networks and norms.
“I think this is the beginning of what we might actually consider true meritocracy,” she said. . It too recently introduced a similar, though voluntary, scheme.”
In Spain, women fill just 4 per cent of board seats.
According to the Norwegian government, the quota is not simply a strike for equality - it makes sound economic sense in a country that has weathered the economic storm better than most.
In 2003 Norway became the first country to pass a law requiring boards to have at least 40 per cent of seats occupied by women.
“From my perspective, in a country where 50 per cent of the population is women, where they have had 50 per cent of the students in higher education for decades, there was no reason to keep them out of the boards,” he said.
The minister of trade and industry in the Norwegian government at the time, Ansgar Gabrielsen, says the quota system ensures women are no longer disadvantaged.
“What is the reason that only 6 per cent of the members of the board are women? I have been in the business world, so I know how it works, how they elect people to the boards and how they elect friends, how they elect people from the same schools, from the same hunting or fishing club or golf club or whatever, there was no reason to go on with that.
“What is the reason that only 6 per cent of the members of the board are women? I have been in the business world, so I know how it works, how they elect people to the boards and how they elect friends, how they elect people from the same schools, from the same hunting or fishing club or golf club or whatever, there was no reason to go on with that.”

. It will change all over the world, I’m sure

.France coach Marc Lievremont has forgiven Mathieu Bastareaud for lying about being attacked after a loss to New Zealand last year and named him in a 30-man squad for the Six Nations championship.
The 21-year-old centre had said he was attacked by up to five people as he returned to the team hotel following a 14-10 defeat by the All Blacks in Wellington last June. .
Back in France, after being told CCTV footage showed him entering the hotel uninjured, he admitted lying and said he had fallen in his bedroom because he was drunk.
“Bastareaud deserves to be back because he is performing well with his Stade Francais club and because he has started to do the community service he has been sentenced to.
“The unhappy episode of this summer is forgotten,” Lievremont said.
Half-back Frederic Michalak, winger Cedric Heymans, centre Florian Fritz and full-back Maxime Medard were left out of a squad already without suspended scrum-half Julien Dupuy plus prop Fabien Barcella and centre Damien Traille, who are both injured.”
The France coach also recalled 32-year-old scrum-half Jean-Baptiste Elissalde, fly half Benjamin Boyet, wings Aurelien Rougerie and Julien Malzieu and full-back Clement Poitrenaud. It doesn’t mean they are too old or forgotten or rejected,” Lievremont said.
“There are some players we rely on, we appreciate but who have not performed as well in recent weeks.
France will start its Six Nations campaign against Scotland at Murrayfield on February 7.
Another surprise was the call-up of newcomer Fabrice Estebanez, a 29-year-old former rugby league international, who plays either at centre or fly half with Brive.
Backs: Jean-Baptiste Elissalde, Morgan Parra, Benjamin Boyet, Francois Trinh-Duc, Mathieu Bastareaud, Fabrice Estebanez, David Marty, Yannick Jauzion, Vincent Clerc, Benjamin Fall, Julien Malzieu, Aurelien Rougerie, Alexis Palisson, Clement Poitrenaud.
Forwards: Thomas Domingo, Luc Ducalcon, Sylvain Marconnet, Nicolas Mas, William Servat, Dimitri Szarzewski, Sebastien Chabal, Romain Millo-Chluski, Lionel Nallet, Pascal Pape, Julien Bonnaire, Thierry Dusautoir (c), Imanol Harinordoquy, Alexandre Lapandry, Fulgence Ouedraogo, Louis Picamoles.
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.Filmmaker Roman Polanski won more damages on Tuesday (local time) from French publications that printed photographs of him at his Swiss home where he is confined pending extradition proceedings in a child sex case.
A Paris court convicted the magazines VSD and Voici and the weekly newspaper Journal de Dimanche of breaching Polanski’s privacy by publishing zoom-lens pictures of him and his children without permission.
Polanski is under house arrest while Swiss authorities consider a demand by the United States to deport him to face charges of having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in California in 1977.
It ordered them to pay a total of 16,000 euros ($24,700) in fines, costs and compensation to him and his wife, French actress Emmanuelle Seigner.

.French captain Thierry Henry has escaped being punished for his infamous handball in the 2010 World Cup finals play-off against Ireland, FIFA announced.
France was losing 1-0 to Ireland at the Stade de France on November 18, having won the first leg 1-0, when Henry teed up William Gallas in extra-time for what proved to be the decisive goal after illegally controlling the ball with his hand.
“On December 2, 2009, the FIFA executive committee asked the FIFA disciplinary committee to analyse the handling offence committed by Thierry Henry during the France v Republic of Ireland match on November 18, 2009, and to consider the possible disciplinary consequences,” read the statement from the committee.
FIFA’s disciplinary committee said, however, that they were powerless to punish the 1998 World Cup-winning striker because their rules forbade them to do so if the original misdemeanour had not been seen by the match officials.
“There is no other legal text that would allow the committee to impose sanctions for any incidents missed by match officials.
“At its meeting on January 18, 2010 , the disciplinary committee reached the conclusion that there was no legal foundation for the committee to consider the case because handling the ball cannot be regarded as a serious infringement as stipulated in article 77(a) of the FIFA disciplinary code.
“Thierry Henry not being punished is not astonishing, it is logical,” he said.”
Bernard Escalettes, president of the French Football Federation (FFF), said he hoped this finally drew a line under the episode.
“I hope that this is the end of the story, I hope so with all my heart.
“There is nothing in the FIFA rules permitting a punishment, and FIFA are bound by their rules.
“I had a phone conversation with Thierry Henry,” said Blatter at the time.”
The meeting of the 21-man disciplinary panel, an independent body chaired by the Swiss Marcel Mathier, was announced by FIFA president Sepp Blatter in Cape Town on December 2 following an extraordinary executive committee meeting. It was a conversation between sportsmen.
“We didn’t talk about guilty or not guilty.”
Blatter’s diplomacy can be explained by the lack of precedent regarding retrospective punishments meted out to players. I didn’t say that he would be punished, I said he’d be the subject of an investigation.
Blatter, meanwhile, has raised the possibility of awarding “moral compensation” to the Irish team.
Any punishment meted out would have been purely a symbolic one as FIFA’s rules do not explicitly address incidents of such a nature and a heavy punishment would have created an unwelcome precedent for world football’s governing body. .
“That could be a special trophy or a prize, we’ll have to see,” he said

.The International Automobile Federation (FIA) is to appeal a French court’s decision to overturn the lifetime ban on former Renault boss Flavio Briatore.
Briatore was let off the hook last week by the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris which found that the FIA sanction, imposed in September for allegedly ordering Nelson Piquet junior to crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, was illegal.
New FIA president Jean Todt, however, believes the world governing body has a case against the 59-year-old Italian and that an appeal is in order.
The scandal centred on driver Piquet junior’s claims that the team had ordered him to crash deliberately at Singapore to enable team-mate Fernando Alonso to go on and win.
The decision to appeal means the suspension against Briatore, and the five-year ban handed to the team’s former director of engineering Pat Symonds, remain in force.
He said that the French court’s decision “gives me back my dignity and the freedom which they arbitrarily tried to take away from me.
Briatore has denied all the accusations levelled against him and vowed to fight to clear his name.”
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.Snow and icy weather has disrupted travel across Europe, closing Geneva airport on one of its busiest tourist weekends of the year and prompting a state of emergency on part of Germany’s Baltic coast.
Thousands of passengers were stranded at Geneva’s Cointrin airport after heavy overnight snow kept it closed until noon.
“It was the first time we had so much snow on the runway since 1985,” said airport spokesman Bertrand Staempfli as departures began at midday.
Many British, German and other European skiers use Geneva airport to reach popular Swiss and French ski resorts in the close toby Alpine region, including Verbier.
Delays were expected as frustrated passengers queued to re-book flights at the airport, where 100,000 people had been due to transit over the weekend.
Schools across the state will stay closed on Monday.
Hundreds of motorists had to abandon their cars in the north-eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where 25 centimetres of snow fell and the district of Ostvorpommern declared a state of emergency, local authorities said.
Levees in parts of the neighbouring state of Schleswig-Holstein showed cracks on Sunday, threatening low-lying areas with floods, police said.
In Poland, at least 200,000 households suffered a power outage and shoppers and workers were evacuated from a shopping centre in the western city of Leszno when its roof began to give way under 1. Coastal towns like Flensburg and Travemuende had suffered flooding by afternoon.
A police spokesman said that since the onset of cold weather in October, 152 people had been found frozen to death in Poland.5 metres of snow, rescue services said. .
- Cars trapped -
On Germany’s Baltic island of Fehmarn, some 5,000 residents were shut in by the blizzards, while scores were trapped in their cars for hours on the A20 autobahn because normal snow ploughs could not reach them, authorities said.
The weather had caused over 1,100 road accidents between Saturday and Sunday morning in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, according to the regional government.
The weather had caused over 1,100 road accidents between Saturday and Sunday morning in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, according to the regional government.
In the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, snow caused more than 900 road accidents between Friday and midday on Sunday, seriously injuring 15 people and causing 4 million euros of damage, the regional interior ministry said. At least 16 people have been badly injured in the state due to the snow since Saturday.
In Britain, chemical firm Ineos said it had diverted 12,000 tonnes of salt for use on British roads that had originally been destined for Germany.
Ninety-one flights were cancelled on Sunday at Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest, compared to 225 the day before.
The government told local authorities to reduce the amount of salt they put on roads by a quarter at the end of last week in a bid to conserve supplies.
“Because we’ve been inundated with calls from local authorities, we’ve decided to retain the supplies in the UK,” a spokesman said.
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.A French software engineer said on Friday he was claiming a world record for calculating Pi, the constant that has fascinated mathematicians for millennia.
Fabrice Bellard said he used an inexpensive desktop computer - and not a supercomputer used in past records - to calculate Pi to close toly 2.
That is around 123 billion digits more than the previous record set last August by Japanese professor Daisuke Takahashi, he said.7 trillion decimal places.577 billion digits.
Professor Takahashi, using a T2K Open Supercomputer, took 29 hours to crunch Pi to 2.
The gear cost “a bit less than 2,000 euros” ($3,123), Mr Bellard, who earns a living as a software consultant in digital television in Paris, said in an email exchange.
Mr Bellard took 131 days, comprising 103 for the computation in binary digits, 13 days for verification, 12 days to convert the binary digits to a base of 10 and three final days to check the conversion. The only unusual thing is that it has five 1.
“It is a completely standard PC. Mainstream PCs generally have only one 1-teraoctet disk.5-teraoctet hard disks.
Extracts of the 2,699,999,990,000-digit outcome have been published so that they can be compared to preceding records in order to gain independent verification, Mr Bellard said.”
Bellard has placed on his website details of the achievement, including the use of a high-powered mathematical engine called the Chudnovsky algorithm that chewed through the computation. .
Files containing the digits are also being offered to any outside organisation keen on hosting the record, he said..14159. in a string whose digits are believed never to repeat or end..
“Optimising these algorithms to get good performance is a difficult programming challenge,” he said.
Bellard said he was “not especially interested” in Pi’s digits but more in taking up the gauntlet of writing the software to carry out the arithmetic.
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