Two a penny

.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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.Ninety-six shoe addicts have signed up for Friday’s Stiletto Championship, which takes place after office hours on an indoor track in the old stock exchange building in central Paris.
The only rule is to be perched on heels at least eight centimetres high. The prize is boxes and boxes of shoes.
“Walking on heels is no piece of cake.
“The finalists are training very seriously,” said Caroline Gentien, who works for the online shoe sale site that came up with the idea.
“We came up with the idea just two years ago.”
The finalists hail from all over France and made it into the glam challenge after a series of regional races. This year, 400 candidates signed up for the regional races,” Ms Gentien said.
The race, being run at 9:30pm (local time), is a three-part relay over 180 metres involving 32 teams of three with names such as “Yes We Can”, “Sexpistols” and “Superwoman”.
The prize is 3,000 euros worth of shoes.
Winners of the 2008 race will be competing again this year – a TV journalist, a psychologist, and a lawyer competing under the name “Talk To My Foot”.
Volunteers from the Red Cross will be standing by in case of accident, but last year’s competition wound up without a single twisted ankle.
“The only training we do is running to catch a train or a bus every day.
“We all love shoes and we love having fun,” said journalist Dorothee Kristy, 29.”
Also taking part in the race is stiletto school “Talons Academy”, a private business that doles out tips on how to walk in heels without hurting one’s back or ankles.”
Also taking part in the race is stiletto school “Talons Academy”, a private business that doles out tips on how to walk in heels without hurting one’s back or ankles. They go to a rendezvous in flat shoes and put their stilettos on at the last minute,” she added.
“Or else they cheat.”
The trick for Friday’s contestants, she says, is “mastering the half-turn.
“It’s true that it is harder to find your balance on heels. You have to get it right for each foot. .”
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. Stilettos is all about technique

.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

.There is fresh evidence about the potential cause of an Air France Airbus crash which killed all 228 people on board when it plunged into the Atlantic while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
The Airbus A330 disappeared on June 1, when it flew into a notoriously stormy area of the South Atlantic.
One of the biggest problems for investigators has been their failure to find the all important black box flight data and voice recorder.
But before the plane crashed it did send a routine maintenance message back to France.
It stopped transmitting a location signal a few days after the plane crashed and is now on the bottom of the ocean, probably four kilometres down.
They read the outside air pressure and convert it to measure the all important speed of the plane.
The message indicated a failure of the aircraft’s air speed indicators, known as pitots. .
As it headed into the stormy area, known as the inter-tropical convergence zone, it is possible the radar which is designed to pick up water droplets was blinded.
The kind of pitots used on Air France flight 447 were known to have problems icing up, particularly at the super cold high altitudes where modern jets like the Airbus fly to save fuel.
He said the Airbus had weather radar which picked up a lot of information.
Airbus vice-president of the flight test division, Fernando Alonso, admitted to Foreign Correspondent that the Airbus onboard radar could not “see” ice particles.”
If the plane did fly into an ice storm, blocking the pitots and giving a false air speed indication, it is possible the Airbus stalled.
But when asked if it was correct to say that the ice could not be detected as easily by the radar as rain, he said: “I believe that the ice could not be detected.
According to Air France pilots, the pilot would have had to wrestle not just with the plane, but contradictory advice on how to deal with a stall warning from the aircraft.
According to Air France pilots, the pilot would have had to wrestle not just with the plane, but contradictory advice on how to deal with a stall warning from the aircraft.

Watch Foreign Correspondent tonight at 8:00pm (AEDT) on ABC 1.”
Shortly after the crash the pilots threatened to strike if Air France did not change the pitots and they did, the next day.

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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.

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An employee at France Telecom jumped off a bridge on Monday morning, bringing the number of suicides at the French group since February 2008 to 24, the company management confirmed. .

The action plan included delaying any relocation plans until October 31 and an internal inquiry into the suicides which have shocked France.

Further reading

&raquo Focus on the string of suicides at France Telecom
&raquo State intervenes as suicides mount at France Telecom
This latest death comes just over a fortnight after a suicide on September 11, after which the company, which employs around 100,000 people in France, bowed to governmental pressure, and agreed to adopt more humane methods of management.

Once entirely state-owned, France Telecom is now semi-privatised, though the state is the group majority shareholder.

Unions in France are demanding an end to site closures, redundancies and forced relocations, but the company chief executive, Didier Lombard, has said that the company’s big restructuring programme – brought on by the economic crisis – will continue.

France – suicide – telecommunication

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Some 15,000 French churches, castles, hot springs, parks, archeological sites, and even the Moulin Rouge cabaret are opening their doors this weekend for the 26th annual European Heritage Days.

The national culture ministry, which organises the event in France, is even itself opening its doors. It will be presenting a special exhibition of a marble bust of Julius Caesar, discovered in the Rhone River in 2007 and usually housed in the Mus&eacutee D&eacutepartemental de l’Arles et de la Provence antiques. The ministry is promoting different kinds of accessibility to national monuments and other cultural sites. .

Europe – France – heritage
. This includes – and is free for young people – a series of events designed for the handicapped, and other events geared toward parents with children

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Jean-Pierre Treiber, currently France’s most wanted man, escaped from a prison in northern France on September 8. French authorities have not been able to locate him since.

In 2004, Treiber was arrested for the murder of G&eacuteraldine Giraud, daughter of French actor Roland Giraud, and her lover Katia Lherbier. On Thursday, the fugitive broke his silence by sending a letter to French magazine Marianne denying he was guilty.

The escapee included his prison identity card as proof that it was really him and promised to be present at his trial in the spring of next year. .

France – justice

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Three New Zealand soldiers will be sent home for passing on a photo featuring a bomb plastered with an energy drink sticker and the words “dear Taleban, enjoy this”.

In the photograph the three soldiers are seen with what is thought to be a 2000-pound bomb of the type which can be fired from an F-16 fighter jet, and is used in airstrikes which have claimed civilian lives.

The photographs were sent to Demon Drinks, which runs competitions for consumers to send in humourous photos, and became widely distributed on email.

The bomb is plastered with the Demon energy drink’s “no limits, no laws” slogan. A subsequent investigation found two of the three soldiers guilty of an offence under the Armed Forces Discipline Act, and those soldiers were punished. .

“Irrespective of the investigation into whether the acts contravened military law, the NZDF sets and expects very high levels of professionalism and behaviour from its people – this is especially the case in an operational theatre where the protection of information is vital to the overall security of New Zealand interests and activities.

“The return home of these three personnel was a command decision,” said Commander Joint Forces NZ Air Vice Marshal Peter Stockwell.”

“Let me be very clear that this is not about a group of young soldiers just taking a photograph of themselves; soldiers have been doing this since the availability of cameras. On this occasion those standards have not been met and as a consequence these three soldiers will be returned to New Zealand at the earliest opportunity. These three are returning to New Zealand as a result of a series of actions and errors of judgment on their part that did not meet the standards we expect of our people.”

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Civil rights groups have welcomed a decision by France immigration minister to scrap controversial DNA tests for residency-seekers wishing to reunite with their families in France. .

In an interview with the French radio station Europe 1 on Sunday, Besson said he would not sign the measure, declaring that it was too difficult to implement in time for the Dec.

Responding to Besson announcement, Jean-Pierre Dubois, head of French group The Human Rights League, also welcomed the latest moves to scrap a measure that was widely viewed as scandalous and inappropriate. Besson also admitted that the measure damaged France image abroad. 31 deadline and that confidentiality issues remained.

The measure was approved by the French parliament in 2007 as a means to prevent residency-seekers from making fraudulent family ties.

We could just give it up altogether, which is my preferred option, because in the end it serves no purpose other than to bring the image of France into disrepute, said Besson.

The original draft law, which was introduced by former French immigration minister Brice Hortefeux, also met with criticism across the political spectrum. But it required the signature of the immigration minister and the move was strongly criticised by civil rights groups.

The move would have allowed officials to propose to applicants that they take a test at their own expense to prove a biological link with other family members.

Concerns over implementation and confidentiality issues

Under the terms of the measure passed by parliament, DNA tests were approved for applications for visas of more than three months when there were doubts about an immigrant’s birth or marriage certificates.

One of the issues was that French consulates are not staffed with doctors, raising the problem of properly administering the DNA tests.

But the logistics of carrying out the tests at French consulates were another reason for rejecting the law.

French politics – genetics – human rights – immigration
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Privacy concerns were another issue, with rights groups questioning whether the results of thousands of DNA tests could be kept confidential