Two a penny

.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.
– Deadly blizzards –
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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.Paris’s top museums shut on Wednesday (local time) as staff went on strike, protesting against cost cuts that they see as a threat to priceless art.
Museums such as The Louvre, which houses the Mona Lisa at the heart of an art collection spanning millennia, help make France the world’s top tourist destination.
But staff say job cuts and lower subsidies are endangering this status.
The Louvre opened more than an hour late after workers met under its famous glass pyramid to discuss strike options.
“The fewer staff there are, the greater the risk that the museum opens in conditions that are unacceptable in terms of security – be it for the artworks, visitors or building,” said Didier Alaime, spokesperson of the CGT union’s culture section.
Its employees will meet tomorrow morning to decide on further action after talks with culture minister Frederic Mitterrand.
The Musee d’Orsay – home to Edouard Manet’s Olympia, some of Vincent Van Gogh’s most striking landscapes and room after room of sun-dappled impressionist paintings – was closed for the day.
The Rodin museum, which has spearheaded the protest movement, has been closed since last week.
Union workers are particularly angered by a government plan to fill only half the vacancies left by retired officials.
France’s government is restructuring its culture sector as part of broader budget cuts, arguing it is improving quality while controlling costs through audits and other initiatives.
“Today you have to ask yourself whether you should only do commercially successful exhibitions rather than shows that are maybe more narrow, more complicated,” Alaime said. .
France’s museums play a crucial part in pulling in the crowds.
Tourism accounts for around 6 per cent of gross domestic product in France, though the outlook for this year is gloomy as crisis-hit Europeans, Americans and Japanese stay at home.
Last year, more than 80 million people visited France; the Louvre alone sees about 6 million visitors a year.
Last year, more than 80 million people visited France; the Louvre alone sees about 6 million visitors a year

.A French artist has struck an unusual deal to sell his latest work: Instead of paying up front, the buyer will hand over a regular fee until the artist dies.
Christian Boltanski said his deal with Australian professional gambler David Walsh was a “game” with the devil, but not a pact.
The work involves four video cameras filming Boltanski’s studio in suburban Paris, day and night, from January until his death, with images relayed live to a cave in Tasmania, Australia.
“Anyone who never loses or thinks he never loses must be the devil.
“This man (Walsh) thinks he can beat the odds and he says he never loses,” Boltanski, 65, said.
The longer Boltanski lives, the more Walsh has to pay.”
Rather than handing over the price of the work in one lump sum, Walsh will make regular payments – monthly or annual, the artist did not say – until Boltanski’s death.
Walsh, a professional gambler who made his fortune in casinos, worked out that he would make money from the deal if Boltanski dies within the next eight years. If I die in 10 years, he loses,” Boltanski said.
“If I die in three years, he wins. He’s probably right. .
“But I’m going to try to survive. I don’t look after myself very well. You can always fight against the devil. You can always fight against the devil.
The images will be stored on DVD, but as long as the artist is still alive, there are restrictions on what Walsh can do with them.
“It’s not my bedroom, it’s just my studio,” he said, and in any case the pictures are going to Tasmania, where “no one ever goes”.
“He wanted to buy my ashes, but I refused.
Walsh has a passion for the macabre, Boltanski said, and collects Egyptian mummies. There’s a little temple in Japan that will suit me just fine,” he said. I don’t want to end up in Tasmania.
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.Thousands of French internet users have flooded video sharing websites to enjoy a lampoon of their glamorous first couple, almost a week after they appeared on the US show, The Simpsons.
Cartoon caricatures of President Nicolas Sarkozy and first lady Carla Bruni starred in an episode of the animated show on November 15 in an episode entitled The Devil Wears Nada.
In the show, bungling paterfamilias Homer Simpson and his colleague Carl Carlson visit Paris and bump into Ms Bruni, a cigarette-smoking femme fatale in a stylish ballgown, at a high-society reception.
Their cameos passed largely unnoticed in France until Friday, when news websites started linking to pirated clips of the episode, creating a buzz which saw more than 117,000 fans linking to the DailyMotion site alone.”
Later, after Carl threatens to have Homer sacked, the hero declares: “You know that woman you’ve been playing hide the baguette with? That’s the first lady of France, Carla Bruni!
“If you fire me I’ll call President Sarkozy and he’ll be all over you like Truffaut on Hitchcock,” Homer warns, in a dig at French cinema’s supposed debt to American models.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the Bruni character throws herself into Carl’s arms and declares: “I want to make love, right now. .
When Carl doubts the threat, Homer calls Mr Sarkozy’s office and we see the French leader at his desk with a portion of camembert and his sultry wife.
But while Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair and Fox network owner Rupert Murdoch recorded their own voices for their appearances and escaped with a gentle ribbing, the harsher Sarkozy parody appeared without their consent.
This is not the first time The Simpsons has mocked the French – the show famously popularised the taunt “cheese-eating surrender monkey” – or leading world figures.
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.The 16 nations of the Eurozone have officially grown their economies by 0.4 of a per cent, meaning the zone is officially out of recession.
The new figure means that on average Eurozone countries have emerged from recession faster than earlier predicted, but the powerhouse nations of Germany and France have recorded a recovery below expectations.7 per cent and France just 0.
The German economy grew by 0.
The Spanish economy is trailing and is still in recession.2 per cent.
Though not in the Eurozone, Britain too is lagging behind other European countries and is still in recession after recording six consecutive quarters of negative growth. .
It is Britain’s worst result since quarterly figures were first gathered in 1955

.Former world number one Marat Safin, in his final tournament before retiring, has squeezed past French qualifier Thierry Ascione 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 in a Paris Masters first-round match.
The gifted but erratic Russian, who has been hampered by injuries in recent years and has dropped out of the top 50, was forced to save three match points.
He eventually went on to take the tie-break 7-3 with a forehand volley on the first match point to seal victory after an hour and 52 minutes of relatively dull tennis.
The 29-year-old Safin, who has lifted the Paris Masters trophy three times but is without a tournament win since the 2005 Australian Open, saved three match points with aces at 5-4 down in the final set. “I always came here to win but this time, frankly, I don’t think I can do that.
“The tennis I’m playing at the moment is not the best of my career,” Safin told reporters.”
One of the world’s most spectacular players when on song, Safin faces a tough task in the second round against US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro.
“I’ll just try to finish on a high note and say goodbye to everybody.
– Traded breaks –
Safin broke in the fifth game before winning the first set in 29 minutes. .
Both men looked equally clumsy in the deciding set until the unseeded Safin stepped up a gear in the closing stages.
The pair traded breaks early in the second before the Russian dropped his serve in the 10th game, losing the set by hitting a forehand long.
Czech Berdych, who won the indoor event in 2005, struggled at times against an opponent ranked outside the top 200.
Earlier, former champion Tomas Berdych recorded a 6-3, 7-6 victory over another French qualifier, Vincent Millot.
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The world number 20 next plays Spaniard Tommy Robredo, seeded 14

.French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who helped shape Western thinking about human civilisation, has died at the age of 100.
Levi-Strauss died on Friday and was buried at a private service in the Burgundy village of Lignerolles, where he had a house, senior colleagues said.
“Two years ago he broke his hip and he had been very tired ever since.
Trained as a philosopher, Levi-Strauss shot to prominence with his 1955 book Tristes Tropiques (A World on the Wane), a haunting account of travels and studies in the Amazon basin and one of the 20th century’s major works. He died at a grand old age,” said Philippe Desacola, his successor as head of the social anthropology laboratory at the College of France research institute.
The French leader described him as a “very great scholar, always open to the world, who created modern anthropology and raised the reputation of French human and social sciences to its highest level.
Paying tribute, French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave “homage to a tireless humanist, a curious academic who was always in search of new knowledge, to a man free of any sectarianism or indoctrination”.”
Levi-Strauss was a leading proponent of structuralism, which sought to uncover the hidden, unconscious or primitive patterns of thought believed to determine the outer reality of human culture and relationships.
French academia and the cultural elite marked his 100th birthday last year, paying homage to Levi-Strauss with a program of films, lectures and reflection on his contribution to modern thinking.
Structuralism was also, Levi-Strauss liked to say, “the search for unsuspected harmonies”.
He was the oldest member of France’s prestigious Academie of leading intellectuals, a respected but retiring figure, who had said he no longer felt at home on an overpopulated planet.
Among the more striking conclusions of his work was the idea that there is no fundamental difference between the belief systems and myths of so-called “primitive” races and those of modern Western societies.
“What I see are the current devastation, the frightening disappearances of living species, be they plants or animals.
– No longer at home –
In a 2005 television interview, Levi-Strauss expressed worry about ending his days in “this world that I do not love”. Because of its current density, the human species is living in a type of internally poisonous regime. Because of its current density, the human species is living in a type of internally poisonous regime.
He studied the lives of the tribes of the Mato Grosso and the Amazonian rainforest, collecting material for theories on the underlying structures of human relationships and myths shared by various cultures. He studied philosophy and in 1935 went to Brazil, where he became a professor at the University of Sao Paolo.
He was given the chair in social anthropology at the College de France in 1959, where he worked until retirement in 1982.
Returning to France in 1939 he was conscripted, but after the Nazi invasion he was, as a Jew, forced to flee to the United States, where he taught while awaiting his chance to return home and restart his career.
“He had an ecological approach to the world and to individuals that was ahead of its time.
“Straddling the worlds of philosophy and science, his work is essential for any attempt to reflect on our society and how it works,” said Denis Bertholet, one of Levi-Strauss’ biographers.
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Butcher Leon Russell thinks the brazen thief who pinched a Breast Cancer Foundation collection box from his Lower Hutt shop is “bloody low”.

Security footage from the Mad Butcher in-store camera shows a man sliding the distinctive pink box off the counter into a supermarket trolley and walking out.

“It’s pretty disappointing, bloody low to steal from a charity,” Mr Russell said. . “It probably had about $100 in it already.

The incident, which happened about 2pm on Wednesday, has been reported to police.

He had paid for some meat, then moved to the other cash register, which was unattended, and waited until the shop assistant was busy with another customer before stealing the box.

Suzanne McNicol of the Breast Cancer Foundation said it was the first time to her knowledge that a collection box had been stolen.

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REUTERS – The body of Mehdi ben Barka, an opponent of Morocco King Hassan II who was abducted in Paris in 1965, was burnt in Essonne, south of the French capital, author Georges Fleury told the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

Fleury was given secret police documents on the Mehdi ben Barka affair 25 years ago, the former marine commando told the paper in an interview to be published on Sunday.

In any case, for me, that is what happened, I believe a lot in this lead.

The person who handed over the dossier was convinced that his body was incinerated in Essonne, Fleury said.

Mehdi ben Barka, a hero for the international left, was kidnapped in broad daylight in front of the smart Lipp restaurant in the heart of Paris and his fate remains unknown. Was it looked into at the time? Can it be verified today? I ask myself the question, Fleury was quoted as saying.

The case has been a cause celebre for Moroccan advocates of greater political freedom in the kingdom, but it remains politically sensitive in Rabat, where Hassan son Mohammed succeeded him as king in 1999. French investigators believe he was tortured and killed. 2 for four Moroccans over the abduction but later suspended them, citing a request for information from Interpol, the international police organisation.

France issued international arrest warrants on Oct.

Fleury said he had since lost contact with his source and was ready to had over the documents in his possession to prosecutors if they asked him.

.French authorities have arrested an engineer working at an international nuclear research laboratory on suspicion of having links with the Al Qaeda militant network.
Officials connected with the case say the Algerian man worked at the CERN nuclear laboratory on the border with Switzerland.
Police arrested the man and his brother after following internet exchanges between the two and other people believed to have links to extremist groups.
It is believed the older man was planning attacks in France.
Computers, USB drives and hard drives were removed from the brothers’ home.
– BBC

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