Two a penny

.At least 50 people have been killed in violent storms that have caused chaos in Europe.
Most were killed in France, but Spain, Germany and Portugal have all recorded fatalities.
Packing winds just under 150 kilometres an hour, the intense low caused havoc in many countries.
In the French Vendee region, houses were inundated and people had to be rescued by helicopter from their roofs.
Flooding was most serious in France and Spain and a 10-year-old boy was one of a number of people killed by falling trees.
Up to a million people were without power.
At least a dozen people in France remain unaccounted for and there have been at least 60 injuries.
The UK is on flood alert and authorities in Denmark are on standby as the storm continues to track north.

.A rare manuscript by the 18th-century libertine Casanova, recalling his sexual conquests and many adventures, has entered the collection of France’s National Library.
The French manuscript of The Story Of My Life forms the core of 3,700 precious pages acquired by the state library, an official said.
The official called the manuscript the collection’s “biggest heritage acquisition” ever. .
Specialists say it is the only surviving manuscript by Casanova, a Venetian adventurer and womaniser whose name has become synonymous with seduction due to his own accounts of his affairs, written in French from the 1780s.
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.5 million) to help the library acquire the manuscripts from the heirs of a German publisher who acquired them in the 19th century

.A foreign national who forced his French wife to wear the full Islamic veil will be denied French citizenship, the immigration minister said.
Eric Besson says he signed a decree rejecting the man’s citizenship application after it emerged he had ordered his wife to cover herself with the head-to-toe veil.
The man’s name and nationality were not made public.
“It emerged during the inquiry and the interview process that this person forced his wife to wear the full veil, deprived her of freedom of movement with her face exposed, and rejected the principles of secularism and equality between men and women,” Mr Besson said in a statement.
The French Government is seeking legal advice before drafting legislation that would outlaw the burqa or niqab in as many areas as possible, Prime Minister Francois Fillon has said.
The decision came after a parliament report last week called for a ban on the full Islamic veil in all schools, hospitals, government offices and public transport.
Home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, France has been debating whether to ban the burqa that is worn by only about 1,900 women nationwide, according to interior ministry figures.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has proclaimed the burqa “not welcome” in secular France and come out in favour of legislation to outlaw the veil, but has warned against stigmatising Muslims.
A French court denied citizenship to a veiled Moroccan woman on the grounds that her “radical” practice of Islam was incompatible with French values. .
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.US airline Continental and five individuals have gone on trial in Paris accused of manslaughter over the crash of an Air France Concorde 10 years ago.
The French criminal court is examining conflicting explanations of why the supersonic jet smashed into a hotel in a ball of fire just after take-off from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on July 25, 2000.
A former French civil aviation official and two former Concorde engineers face the same charge in the trial that is expected to last four months. .
The court will decide whether to side with investigators and technical experts who say the crash was caused by a strip of metal that fell off a Continental jet which took off shortly before the Concorde.
Witnesses saw flames coming from the jet as it was taking off from the airport.
But lawyers for Continental say they will prove the ill-fated jet was already on fire before it hit the metal debris.
Investigators say the strip shredded one tyre on Concorde’s landing gear, resulting in a blow-out and sending debris flying into an engine and a fuel tank to spark the fire.
Continental faces a maximum fine of 375,000 euros ($592,800) if found guilty.
Some of the relatives of the victims are represented at the trial, but most have already accepted compensation from Air France. The individuals face up to five years in jail and a fine of up to 75,000 euros ($118,575).

.The first of 250 unknown British and Australian soldiers who died in World War I have been reburied in France amid chilly conditions.
The soldiers, who were killed in the 1916 Battle of Fromelles, are being buried at a cemetery near where their remains were discovered in 2008.
Australian, British and French flags flew at half mast as the coffin was lowered into a grave in the new military cemetery.
A volley of gunshots marked the official burial of the fallen.
DNA tests have been carried out on the remains and the results are expected in March.
The cemetery was built close to a muddy field where the mass grave was discovered.
“I think, in a way, that’s a little bit of a bonus,” he said.
The organiser of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, David Richardson, says he hopes they will then be able to put names on some of the headstones.
“I think any individual identities afterwards will be really the icing on the cake.
“There are so many cemeteries here in France and Belgium and all over the world where we work, where there are unknown soldiers, so I think individual burials for us are just fantastic.
“I’ll be more relieved at the end of February when we’ve buried the full 250, but it’s great to see the cemetery fit for burial,” he said.”
He says it is a relief to see the soldiers reburied.”
DNA consultant Dr Peter Jones agrees.
“It’s the first new cemetery since World War II, but to build something from scratch on a brand new site in a limited time scale in a wet field in northern France has posed some challenges.
“At the very, very best, with everything working completely perfectly, the most we’re likely to match up is about 100,” he said. He says with 1,600 soldiers missing after the Battle of Fromelle and only 800 families having come forward to give forensic samples, it is a difficult task.
“The bloodiest 24 hours in our military history, before, or since,” he said.
Australia’s Veteran’s Affairs Minister, Alan Griffin, described the Battle of Fromelles as one of the most tragic chapters in Australia’s history. .
The obsession of a Melbourne amateur historian led to the discovery of the mass graves two years ago.

.The first of 250 unknown British and Australian soldiers who died during World War I will be reburied later this evening in France with full military honours.
A special ceremony will take place in the village of Fromelles close to the battlefield where more than 7,000 allied soldiers, most of them Australian, were killed in July 1916. .
“These men have laid at rest since that time in an unmarked grave.
Federal Veterans Affairs Minister Alan Griffin says the battle was the first major engagement involving Australian troops on the Western Front in WWI
“The circumstances were it was also the bloodiest 24 hours in Australia’s military history before or since,” he said.”
He says there will also be a ceremony marking the anniversary of the battle later this year. Their remains have recently been discovered and are now in a process of receiving a dignified burial that they so richly deserve.
“There will be a full ceremony today to inter the first of those soldiers,” he said.”

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“Over the next month most of the remaining remains will be interred, and then there will be a final ceremony at the anniversary of the battle in July of this year, where the last of those men will be interred with full military honours

.A work by French impressionist artist Edgar Degas was stolen from a museum on Wednesday night in Marseille in southern France, the city’s prosecutor said.
The pastel, named Les Choristes (The Chorus), was worth an estimated 800,000 euros ($1. .2 million), the prosecutor said.
“The disappearance of this very expensive painting was discovered when the museum opened on Thursday morning.
The work belonged to the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and had been loaned to Marseille’s Cantini museum for an exhibition that was due to close on January 3.
The Musee d’Orsay, which has been loaning out many works in recent months to raise funds, declined to comment on the theft. There do not seem to be any signs of breaking and entering,” Marseille public prosecutor Jacques Dallest said.
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.Two women have died and 47 others were hurt in a bus crash in the south of England as ice and snow continues to throw the UK’s transport systems into chaos.
Snow and ice on the runways caused many flights to be cancelled.
All 129 passengers were taken off the plane and no injuries were reported.
A Ryanair plane overshot the runway as it landed at Prestwick Airport in the west of Scotland.
Thousands of people left stranded by a three-day Eurostar service cancellation formed long queues at London’s Saint Pancras International Station in the hope of finally getting to the continent.
As snow turns to ice, traffic conditions have become treacherous.
All Eurostar’s trains for Wednesday filled up by lunchtime.
Tempers frayed amid confusion over who would get priority on the reduced number of trains that began running on Tuesday.
Passengers were urged to turn up an hour early. The operator said it would continue to run a modified timetable on Thursday.
Meanwhile, floodwaters drenched most of Venice, as a combination of wind, rain and the lagoon city’s periodic tidal phenomenon saw water levels rise by 143 centimetres, a record for the year, officials said.
Many online shoppers shoppers in the UK have been told not to expect their goods by Christmas after snow stalled deliveries.
Heavy rains closed motorways in southern Spain and Portugal, where power lines were also cut by heavy winds overnight. .
In northern Germany, a seven-year-old boy was stopped by police, driving back to a parking lot having ploughed the snow off the street with his parents’ front loader.
Snowfall also forced school closures in northern Spain.
- ABC/AFP

.Services have returned almost to normal after three days of chaos on the Eurostar rail link between the UK and France.
But many parts of Europe continue to face severe transport disruptions and there have been more deaths as a severe cold snap sweeps the continent.
More than 80 people have died across Europe, including 42 in Poland and another 27 in Ukraine who have frozen to death.
Air, rail and road transport has been severely disrupted across northern Europe where as much as 50 centimetres of snow has fallen with more expected in the coming days.
Another 13 people died in car accidents in Austria, Finland and Germany, where temperatures dropped well below zero.
More freezing fog was expected at Stansted, north of London, and forecasters from Britain’s Met Office also issued severe weather warnings across the country, warning of icy roads and thick snow in eastern Scotland.
But after three days of cancelled services, Eurostar trains began running again between Brussels, Paris and London: an investigation has been launched into the disruption of services.
Britain’s Automobile Association said Monday was their busiest night for 25 years, with about 700 calls received every hour.
“There was no way that I was going to throw customers out into that,” said store managing director Deborah Strazza.
In Buckinghamshire, west of London, about 100 people, including 20 children, spent the night in the John Lewis department store after being snowed in.”

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.Tens of thousands of European travellers have been stranded in rail stations, traffic jams and airports as heavy snow and ice continues to cause massive disruptions at the start of the Christmas holiday season.
A deadly blizzard has also blanketed much of the eastern United States, cutting power to tens of thousands of homes, paralysing air traffic and stranding many motorists amid the worst storms to hit the region in decades.
Another homeless Pole froze to death while sheltering in a doorway in the French Mediterranean port of Marseille, and a Frenchman was found dead in his ice-cold caravan close to the northern town of Arras.
In Poland, at least 15 people have died of exposure, mainly the homeless or careless drunks caught outside in temperatures that plunged to minus 20 degrees Celsius, according to police.6C. .
Forecasters across the continent are expecting more snow and freezing rain over the next couple of days, but with temperatures rising slightly and the outlook gradually improving.
Two more Germans died in road accidents caused by the icy conditions.
The most crippling problems hit cross-Channel transport between Britain and France, amid chaotic scenes after the Eurostar passenger service from London to Paris was shut down for a second day after at least five breakdowns.
Roads and railways have been closed or disrupted by snow drifts, black ice or floods across northern and western Europe, from Portugal to the Netherlands, and flights from London, Brussels and Paris airports were delayed.
The company said it would send test trains along the route to see if they could withstand the sub-zero temperatures in northern France which are believed to have caused trains to break down in the tunnel on Friday (local time).
Eurostar, the operator of the Channel Tunnel passenger trains, admitted it could not say when services would resume, with more than 24,000 passengers attempting to travel ahead of Christmas already affected. They all got through the tunnel OK, but one or two of them showed symptoms of the problem that happened on Friday night,” Eurostar director Richard Brown said.
“We did run two or three trains yesterday.”
More than 2,000 passengers spent Friday night trapped in the undersea tunnel, some without anything to eat or drink.
“We will not start services again until we’re sure that we can get them through safely.
Approach roads to the ports of Dover and Calais were snarled by tail-backs as a result of heavy snow and queues of trucks waiting for delayed shuttle trains through the Channel Tunnel. There were reports of heated rows and some passengers bitterly criticised the company.
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In the United States, the governors of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and Delaware have declared states of emergency following the snowstorms.
At Paris Charles de Gaulle, 40 per cent of flights have been cancelled and the remaining services were leaving an average of one hour late, while the city’s second airport, Orly, was the scene of a strike by security staff.
Officials reported many drivers and passengers had been stranded in their vehicles, some for more than 12 hours.
Three people have died on Virginia roads, with around 3,000 accidents forcing the closure of Virginia interstates for several hours.
In the bull’s eye of the weather, Washington shattered a 1932 December snowfall record, with 40 centimetres covering streets and homes.
Emergency services delivered heated meals and 400 bottles of water for stranded motorists, while others were moved to shelters.
The massive storm at one point stretched 800 kilometres across a dozen states, affecting around a quarter of the US population.
The massive storm at one point stretched 800 kilometres across a dozen states, affecting around a quarter of the US population.
President Barack Obama, after attending the climate change summit in Copenhagen, raced home to avoid the worst of the storm that hammered the East Coast with more than 61cm of snow in some places.
He got back before dawn on Saturday, two days before winter’s official arrival. By Saturday afternoon, the capital region’s three main airports - Reagan National, Washington Dulles International and Baltimore Washington International - had cancelled all incoming and outgoing flights, stranding thousands of passengers.
It was bleak news for millions hoping to drive or fly ahead of Christmas on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.
With close to white-out conditions forcing many residents to stay home and shopping malls shuttered or closing early, the extreme conditions also looked likely to take a bite out of retail sales.
The major shopping day usually accounts for some $US15 billion of all nationwide sales on the last weekend before Christmas.
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