.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
.A major earthquake has hit impoverished Haiti, killing possibly thousands of people as it toppled the presidential palace and hillside shanties alike and left the Caribbean nation appealing for international help.
Following are some of the efforts by foreign governments and aid agencies to help:
- United States - The US military is sending a ground assessment team and one of its P3 aircraft has been doing aerial reconnaissance, a Pentagon spokesperson said. US Navy ships at bases along the East Coast have been told to be prepared to leave for Haiti and the US could also begin using C-130 aircraft to fly supplies to Haiti later on Wednesday.75 million) from its central emergency response fund and mobilising an emergency response team, expected to be on the ground shortly, to help coordinate aid efforts.
- United Nations - is immediately releasing $US10 million ($10.
UN World Food Program head Josette Sheeran said the agency was already flying in additional food that would provide more than 500,000 emergency meals. UN aid officials expect to issue an international appeal for funds and other assistance in the next few days, once needs have been assessed. The children’s agency UNICEF is dispatching two planes and a ship laden with tents, as well as food and other supplies designed for women and children.7 million) of fast-track funding for the international effort and could pledge more in coming days, a spokeswoman said.
- European Union - The EU’s executive European Commission approved three million euros ($4.
- Japan - has pledged $US5 million in aid a foreign ministry spokeswoman said.
Countries including Belgium, Sweden and Luxembourg had offered assistance via an EU emergency assistance coordination mechanism, with offers ranging from a water purification unit to tents.
- Netherlands - The Foreign Ministry said it would send an urban search and rescue team to Haiti, consisting of 60 people as well as sniffer dogs, to help find people hidden under the rubble.
- France - is sending two planes and a field hospital as well as rescue services, said Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. It said the team is part of a coordinated international rescue action led by the UN. It said the team is part of a coordinated international rescue action led by the UN. A 20-person reconnaissance team is going to see what aid is needed, and two rescue helicopters could be sent.2 million) to help provide emergency shelter, medical services, food, relief items, water and sanitation services.
- Iceland - sent a search and rescue team of 37 specialists.
- Germany - is sending one million euros in immediate aid, said Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
- Inter-American Development Bank - The Inter-American Development Bank said it would provide $US200,000 in immediate aid.
- Britain - a four-person field assessment team is en route to Port-au-Prince to determine priorities for urgent assistance and Britain also sending a search and rescue team of 64 people with dogs and heavy rescue equipment.
- Aid agencies -
Many aid agencies were scrambling to provide help. The World Bank planned to send a team to help assess damage and plan a recovery.
- Telecoms Sans Frontieres, a humanitarian group that helps set up communications during disasters, deployed an emergency team from Managua to provide vital support in emergency telecommunications. .
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.Eric Rohmer, a pioneer of French New Wave cinema, has died aged 89.
In a career spanning half a century, Rohmer made some 50 films, first gaining international acclaim for Ma Nuit Chez Maud (My Night At Maud’s) which was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay in 1969.
Le Genou De Claire (Claire’s Knee) of 1970 won the San Sebastian Film Festival top honour, while L’Amour l’Apres-Midi (Love In The Afternoon) two years later secured Rohmer’s position as a master of the intense portrayal of the cerebral and the sensual.
Rohmer was born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer in Nancy, eastern France, in 1920.
His work divided the film world - critics were quick to denounce his movies as desperately tedious, while his fans hailed him as an aesthete who laid bare the human soul.
He was later editor-in-chief of Cahiers Du Cinema - the bible of the New Wave movement, which shunned the constraints of classical cinema to create a more edgy, improvised style. .
Regarded by many as a conservative, Rohmer did not follow fashion.
“[He makes] films that deal with foibles and relationships of realistic if self-absorbed people.
“Rohmer’s films never contain any obvious attention-getting devices such as violence, unusual camera angles or even musical scores,” wrote biographer Terry Ballard.
Gene Hackman as a character in the 1975 film Night Moves says of Rohmer: “I saw one of his films once.”
His movies were not to all tastes.”
Rohmer made his first feature film, Le Signe Du Lion (The Sign Of Leo), in 1959. It was like watching paint dry.
He did not become famous for a further 10 years, but worked tirelessly during this period.
He did not become famous for a further 10 years, but worked tirelessly during this period.
“You can say that my work is closer to the novel - to a certain classic style of novel which the cinema is now taking over - than to other forms of entertainment, like the theatre.
“What I call a ‘conte moral’ is not a tale with a moral, but a story which deals less with what people do than with what is going on in their minds while they are doing it,” Rohmer wrote in 1971.
A man with a reputation for zealously guarding his privacy, Rohmer started his third series of films at the age of 70, naming them after the four seasons and beginning with Conte De Printemps (A Tale Of Springtime).”
In the 1980s, Rohmer began his second series of films under the banner Comedies And Proverbs which were supposed to be lighter in tone to the earlier “literary” movies.
Rohmer received a coveted Golden Lion for his life achievements at the Venice Film Festival in 2001.
In 1999, his Conte D’Automne (Autumn Tale) won him strong critical success at the age of 79.
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His last movie as director, Les Amours D’Astree Et De Celadon (Romance Of Astree And Celadon), came out in 2007
.Eric Rohmer, a pioneer of French New Wave cinema, has died aged 89.
In a career spanning half a century, Rohmer made some 50 films, first gaining international acclaim for Ma Nuit Chez Maud (My Night At Maud’s) which was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay in 1969.
Le Genou De Claire (Claire’s Knee) of 1970 won the San Sebastian Film Festival top honour, while L’Amour l’Apres-Midi (Love In The Afternoon) two years later secured Rohmer’s position as a master of the intense portrayal of the cerebral and the sensual.
Rohmer was born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer in Nancy, eastern France, in 1920.
His work divided the film world - critics were quick to denounce his movies as desperately tedious, while his fans hailed him as an aesthete who laid bare the human soul.
He was later editor-in-chief of Cahiers Du Cinema - the bible of the New Wave movement, which shunned the constraints of classical cinema to create a more edgy, improvised style. .
Regarded by many as a conservative, Rohmer did not follow fashion.
“[He makes] films that deal with foibles and relationships of realistic if self-absorbed people.
“Rohmer’s films never contain any obvious attention-getting devices such as violence, unusual camera angles or even musical scores,” wrote biographer Terry Ballard.
Gene Hackman as a character in the 1975 film Night Moves says of Rohmer: “I saw one of his films once.”
His movies were not to all tastes.”
Rohmer made his first feature film, Le Signe Du Lion (The Sign Of Leo), in 1959. It was like watching paint dry.
He did not become famous for a further 10 years, but worked tirelessly during this period.
He did not become famous for a further 10 years, but worked tirelessly during this period.
“You can say that my work is closer to the novel - to a certain classic style of novel which the cinema is now taking over - than to other forms of entertainment, like the theatre.
“What I call a ‘conte moral’ is not a tale with a moral, but a story which deals less with what people do than with what is going on in their minds while they are doing it,” Rohmer wrote in 1971.
A man with a reputation for zealously guarding his privacy, Rohmer started his third series of films at the age of 70, naming them after the four seasons and beginning with Conte De Printemps (A Tale Of Springtime).”
In the 1980s, Rohmer began his second series of films under the banner Comedies And Proverbs which were supposed to be lighter in tone to the earlier “literary” movies.
Rohmer received a coveted Golden Lion for his life achievements at the Venice Film Festival in 2001.
In 1999, his Conte D’Automne (Autumn Tale) won him strong critical success at the age of 79.
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His last movie as director, Les Amours D’Astree Et De Celadon (Romance Of Astree And Celadon), came out in 2007
.Northern Europe is bracing for what is expected to be the coldest day yet of the big freeze affecting the region.
Conditions have left many people dead and another Eurostar train has been stranded in the Channel Tunnel. .
The Arctic freeze has seen temperatures in central Sweden plunge to between minus 30 and minus 40 degrees Celsius, the coldest weather in more than 25 years.
In Germany, at least nine homeless men have frozen to death.
Around 10,000 schools shut down in Britain and will not reopen until well into next week.
Gas supplies are running low in the UK where the national grid has had to start rationing supplies of energy.
One Eurostar train arrived in London two hours late after breaking down in the Channel Tunnel, while four others were cancelled after snow got into the engines.
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The average weather in Britain recently has been only 2 degrees warmer than the North Pole
.A cattle disease that has been a curse for millennia is likely to be declared eradicated next year thanks to a global vaccination campaign, the world’s paramount veterinary agency said on Thursday. .
“We are very close to wiping out rinderpest around the world,” the OIE’s director-general, Bernard Vallat, said, comparing the achievement in veterinary terms to the eradication of smallpox among humans.
But an arduous effort to vaccinate animals against the virus that causes the disease is bearing fruit, the head of the World Organisation for Animal Health, known by its French acronym of OIE, said in Paris. It has been around since the dawn of time,” Mr Vallat said.
“This disease has been a historic curse for humanity.
Assessments are underway for these remaining countries, of which Somalia is the most problematic, but hopes are high that the OIE will be able to declare the disease eradicated at a meeting in 2011, he said.
In 2000, close toly half of the OIE’s rollcall of 175 countries still had rinderpest, a tally that has fallen in 2010 to 17.
“Two or three” high-security reference laboratories are being considered, he said.
Vallat said a key question was where virus samples would be stored, to be used for research purposes and as a source for vaccines if the disease ever rebounded.
“Hopefully, it won’t be the same for rinderpest,” said Mr Vallat.
Samples of smallpox virus continue to be held in US and Russian labs, raising fears in some quarters that they could be stolen or used to make a bioterror weapon.
Sheep and goats are susceptible to the virus but are much less affected by it compared to cattle.
The pathogen that causes rinderpest is a member of the paramyxoviridae family of virus. There is no risk for humans.
The symptoms among animals are fever, diarrhoea and dehydration, often leading to death within 10 to 15 days.
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.Revellers have started ringing in the New Year across the globe with spectacular fireworks displays and massive parties hosted by world capitals against a backdrop of tightened security.
Party-goers in the South Pacific were the first to raise their glasses to 2010, leading the world into a new decade after one scarred by war, terrorist attacks, natural disaster and financial turmoil.5 million people crowded the Sydney Harbour foreshore to watch a vast array of fireworks burst into the night sky at midnight, launched from the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and four barges on the water.
In Australia, about 1.
Paris’s Eiffel Tower was ready to be transformed into a multicoloured light show for its party while in Berlin more than 1 million revellers were expected on the boulevard leading to the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of German unity, with live bands and DJs to crank up the party.
Thousands of people crammed into Hong Kong’s harbour, where 9,000 fireworks were unleashed in a display that lasted close toly five minutes, shot off from the city’s tallest skyscraper as well as other buildings
But in Thailand, police banned fireworks after a New Year’s Eve blaze at a Bangkok nightclub a year ago killed 65 people.
In New York, a downpour of confetti was to mark midnight at a traditional mass celebration in Times Square in the heart of Manhattan.
Celebrations in Britain centred on the London Eye, the giant wheel across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, the world’s most famous clock.
“It will be a full fledged deployment of resources,” city police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
But after security jitters rekindled by a Christmas Day bomb plot against a passenger jet claimed by Al Qaeda, undercover police, surveillance cameras and radiation and biological detection equipment were to monitor the crowds.”
In Finland, a lone gunman chose the last day of the year to kill four people in a rampage in a shopping mall. “We assume here that New York is the number one terrorist target in America.
The US embassy in Indonesia said meanwhile it had received a warning of a possible attack on the resort island of Bali, the scene of multiple bombings targeting Westerners, but local authorities denied knowledge of any alert. He also murdered a former girlfriend and was later found dead himself. .
In Pakistan, where the Taliban’s bloody campaign rebounded in 2009, spirits were dampened in the city of Karachi by a deadly suicide attack during a holy Shiite Muslim ceremony on Monday that killed 43 people.
For Cyprus, New Year’s Eve was the last chance to smoke in pubs, clubs and cafes, with new anti-smoking law in force from January 1.
In neighbouring Afghanistan, soldiers maintained their alert after two deadly militant attacks claimed the lives of eight Americans and five Canadians, while two French journalists were reported kidnapped by Taliban.
“New Year’s Day, the 1st of January 2010, marks the beginning of the most important year in our country since 1994,” Zuma said.
And in South Africa, President Jacob Zuma used his New Year message to call for unity for the 2010 football World Cup - the first ever to be held in Africa. “We have to put the culture of negativity behind us.
“It must be the year in which we work together to make the Soccer World Cup the biggest turning point in the marketing of our country,” he said.
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New Year’s Eve also presented much of the world with a blue moon - the second full moon appearing in a calendar month - for only the second time in close toly two decades
.Veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday has been released from a Los Angeles hospital where he underwent a back operation earlier this month, his publicists said.
“The doctors judged that Johnny Hallyday’s current state of health has improved and justifies a return home to his family while he continues to receive the medical treatment he needs,” they said.
He will spend Christmas at his home in Los Angeles with his wife Laeticia and two daughters.
He has begun legal action to determine whether the surgeon who performed the operation in Paris was at fault and earlier this week submitted a letter to French judges declaring that he had “come close to death”.
Hallyday, 66, who had been due to resume a concert tour in January, was admitted to the Cedars-Sinai hospital on December 7 suffering complications after an earlier operation in Paris.
His health problems have forced the cancellation of the remainder of his concert tour, prompting widespread speculation about the likely financial impact for insurers and promoters.
Hallyday, one of France’s most popular entertainers in a career spanning almost 50 years, is particularly famous for his energetic live performances.
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.Eurostar is suspending train services for a third day to look into a weekend break-down of trains that trapped about 2,500 passengers in the Anglo-French Channel Tunnel, while France will order a public investigation.
Eurostar, owned by the French and Belgian state railway firms and the UK, blamed bad weather for the problem that disrupted Christmas travel for thousands more passengers. .
Eurostar announced in a statement that it was launching “an independent review into the problems it has experienced over recent days”.
“We can’t believe that Eurostar trains can’t run for three days because of snow, so there must be a technical problem,” French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said during a visit to China with Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
Christopher Garnett, who has served as chief executive of GNER railways and commercial director of Channel Tunnel operator Eurotunnel, will lead the review.
It has said that moving from the cold into the warmer tunnel caused condensation that affected electrical systems.
Shares in Eurotunnel at one stage dropped 3 per cent early on Monday, making the stock among the top losers on France’s SBF120 index.
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“These events might bring one-time charges, but more importantly, the real problem here is Eurotunnel’s image,” one Paris-based trader said
.More than 2,000 passengers have been rescued after spending hours trapped in the undersea Channel Tunnel linking France and Britain after four trains broke down due to poor weather conditions.
Angry travellers said they had been left with no power, air conditioning, food or water.
Rail operator Eurostar said the breakdowns had resulted from technical problems caused by the temperature difference inside the tunnel and freezing conditions outside.
“Everyone is suffering from the bad weather.
“It is snowing in northern France, it’s very cold, conditions are very bad,” a spokesperson for Eurostar, operated by French rail operator SNCF, its Belgian counterpart SNCB and British government-owned LCR, said.”
He said a rescue locomotive and a shuttle train were used to move passengers out of the 51-kilometre tunnel, the longest undersea subway in the world which conveys about 40,000 people a day between Britain and continental Europe. The airports are suffering, people on the roads are suffering, and so are our Eurostar trains.
Passengers accused Eurostar of doing little to help them, with some finally reaching their destination more than 12 hours after leaving Paris.
He said passengers had been forced to get off the broken-down train themselves, had moved through the service tunnel in the dark, and then got onto a “filthy” car transport train.
“There was very, very poor communication from the staff,” said Lee Godfree, who was returning to Britain with his family from Disneyland Paris. They’ve been sick.
“We’ve had children asleep on the floor. . We had one loo (toilet). “We had people fainting on the train. “We had people fainting on the train.
Last year, the tunnel, which opened in 1994, was shut for two days after a large fire broke out on a freight train, while a blaze in 1996 fire halted freight traffic for seven months.”
Eurostar said it had cancelled all its trains on Saturday before noon (local time) because of the severe weather and said services over the weekend would be severely disrupted.
London’s Gatwick and Luton Airports were closed for many hours, while flights were cancelled at Heathrow and Stansted, the capital’s two other major airports.
Heavy snowfalls across southeastern England in recent days had already brought chaos to road, rail and air passengers.
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Budget airline EasyJet said it had cancelled more flights on Saturday because of the bad weather, with forecasters at Britain’s Met Office predicting further snow showers on Saturday with temperatures falling as low as minus 10 degrees Celsius