.France has left itself with a ‘home run’ to a Six Nations Grand Slam after the tournament leader held its nerve to beat Wales 26-20 at the Millennium Stadium.
Victory appeared all but assured at half-time with France 20-0 in front following two interception tries.
But Wales, just as it did in its dramatic come-from-behind 31-24 win over Scotland last time out, rallied and cut France’s lead to 20-13 heading into the final quarter under the Millennium’s closed retractable roof.
Replacement fly half Frederic Michalak scored a penalty nine minutes from time that, importantly, put France two scores in front.
However, against a team of France’s all-round quality Wales left itself with just too much of a mountain to climb on this occasion.
There was still time for wing Shane Williams, on his 33rd birthday, to become the first Wales player to score 50 tries after a typical jinking run.
And with just two minutes left, scrum half Morgan Parra kicked his third penalty after Wales was caught offside in front of its posts.
Fly half Stephen Jones converted and Wales, who had been 14-24 behind against Scotland with minutes remaining, had hopes of another great escape. .
But France, unlike Scotland, booted the ensuing kick-off ‘dead’ through Michalak, belying his reputation for recklessness, and with that South African referee Jonathan Kaplan blew for full-time.”
France, which has now won three games in a row for the first time under coach Marc Lievremont, can look forward to wrapping up the Championship with matches in Paris against Italy and England on March 13 and 20 respectively.
“We’ve just got to stop pushing the self-destruct button.
“It was like watching the ghost of the Wales-Scotland match appear before us.
“We lost all coherence, you could feel that at half-time even,” Lievremont said.
“I’m very happy to win three in a row, but my emotions are divided between happiness and relief.
“I’m very happy to win three in a row, but my emotions are divided between happiness and relief.
France: 26 (Palisson, Trinh-Duc tries; Parra 2 conversions, 3 penalties, Michalak penalty)
Wales: 20 (Halfpenny, S Williams tries; S Jones 2 conversions, 2 penalties)
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.France shattered Ireland’s dreams of a repeat of its Six Nations Grand Slam in Paris overnight beating them 33-10 with scrum half Morgan Parra, who had accused the Irish of being cheats earlier in the week, masterminding the defeat.
First-half tries by William Servat and Yannick Jauzion and a second-half one from Clement Poitrenaud with Parra chipping in with 15 points saw France easily see off a rather flat Irish team.
“It’s a great start for us but it’s too early to start talking about Grand Slams,” he added.
Toulouse winger Vincent Clerc described the win as a “great performance”.”
Ireland - winless here since 2000 - managed one try through David Wallace while Ronan O’Gara kicked the rest of its points.
“I was surprised how easily we beat the Irish but we played the perfect match.
The French were not faring very well in the line-outs as they lost three in a row on their throw and it was from the third one the Irish came desperately close to scoring the opening try as Brian O’Driscoll broke through, chipped over Poitrenaud and raced for the line.
The Irish camped themselves in the French half for the first 10 minutes but some sterling defence by France kept them at bay.
That led to two disastrous minutes for the Irish as Imanol Harinordoquy set up a great move that culminated in Cian Healy tackling Parra who did not have the ball and referee Wayne Barnes flourished the yellow card without hesitation - Parra slotted over the penalty to give the hosts a barely-deserved lead.
However, 31-year-old O’Driscoll having outpaced Poitrenaud didn’t get the bounce of the ball and it was ruled a dead ball when it hit the post.
Palisson, though, had played to limp off clutching his right thigh to be replaced by Julien Malzieu.
Ireland hooker Jerry Flannery was fortunate not to join Healy on the sidelines as his leg connected with Six Nations debutant Alexis Palisson laying him out - Barnes opted to give him the benefit of the doubt and just awarded a penalty to France.
However, the French now well and truly had their tails up and in the 31st minute Jauzion went over, after Mathieu Bastareaud had made the initial break, leaving the Irish to get a talking to by O’Driscoll - Parra converted to make it 17-3.
The French finally made the Irish pay properly for being one man down as with Healy preparing to return to the fray Servat crashed over while Parra converted to make it 10-0 - O’Gara reduced the deficit with a penalty just before the half-hour mark.
The pressure told as Keith Earls - who had moved from wing to replace the injured Rob Kearney at full-back - caught the ball in the 22 for a fair catch but in taking the quick kick he fumbled it and knocked it on.
The Irish were really under the hammer from the start of the second-half as the French pierced their defence at will highlighted when O’Driscoll failed to intercept a pass and Trinh-Duc ran 30 metres only to knock on close to the line when he was tackled.
Ireland showed some spirit in grabbing effectively a consolation try through David Wallace, which was converted by O’Gara, but the peerless Parra was to make it 30-10 with just over 10 minutes remaining with a long range penalty.
France took full advantage from the ensuing scrum as they fed it out to the left and Poitrenaud eased into the corner to touch it down - Parra added an impressive conversion followed minutes later by a wonderful drop goal.
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The mercurially-gifted Frederic Michalak was to rub salt even deeper into the wounds close to the final whistle with a drop goal to end a miserable day for the Irish
.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
.England international fly half Jonny Wilkinson has extended his contract with French side Toulon by one year, the Top 14 club announced without providing further details.
Wilkinson, whose contract was set to expire at the end of the current campaign, arrived at the club last summer from Newcastle, where he had played since making his professional debut in 1997.
The 30-year-old, a World Cup winner in 2003 and finalist four years later, is the leading scorer in the Top 14 with 177 points.
Wilkinson has managed to shake off the injury problems that bedevilled him for the latter years of the last decade and has also re-established his claim for a starting berth in the England side.
Toulon is currently fourth in the French championship with seven matches remaining and must finish in the top six to qualify for the play-off phase of the season. .
He is currently in training with England in preparation for the start of the Six Nations tournament on February 6, the English kicking off with a home game against Wales at Twickenham
.Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin has been acquitted on charges of plotting a smear campaign against long-time rival Nicolas Sarkozy in order to sabotage his presidential bid.
Mr Villepin immediately vowed to return to the political fray, criticising Mr Sarkozy’s policies for “not giving results” and saying he would challenge the president from within their ruling UMP party.
He is now believed to be considering a run for president in 2012. .
The court ruled there were no grounds to convict the 56-year-old politician of complicity to slander Mr Sarkozy in 2004 when the two men were angling to succeed president Jacques Chirac.
The silver-haired politician said he now looked forward to “serving the French people and contributing in a spirit of unity to the recovery of France”.
“After many years of ordeal, my innocence has been recognised,” Mr Villepin said after walking out of the Paris courtroom.
Speaking on French television later, Mr Villepin said: “I want to offer an alternative to policies that I believe are not giving results..”
“We need new ideas, new proposals… I think that there are other possible answers within the ruling majority. Nicolas Sarkozy has his way.
“I want to be above the traditional partisan divisions.
“I want to be above the traditional partisan divisions.
Mr Villepin and four other defendants were accused of using falsified bank accounts to discredit Mr Sarkozy ahead of his party’s nomination for the 2007 presidential vote.
The French leader is also struggling with poor approval ratings.
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Mr Sarkozy’s name was on the bogus list of hundreds of account holders at the Clearstream financial clearing house which allegedly took bribes from the sale of French warships to Taiwan
.The World Health Organisation and the pharmaceutical industry have been criticised for their handling of last year’s swine flu pandemic.
At a hearing of the Council of Europe - the European Union’s human rights body - the WHO faced accusations that it exaggerated the danger of the virus under pressure from drug companies.
When a pandemic was declared last June, most European countries changed their health priorities to accommodate thousands of expected patients. .
A number of European governments had signed contracts with the drug companies to buy back vaccines, believing a flu pandemic long predicted by health experts would be a virus-like bird flu with a very high death rate.
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The organisation denies any conflict of interest
.France captain Thierry Henry’s infamous handball in the World Cup play-off win over Ireland will go under the microscope on Monday (local time) when FIFA’s disciplinary commission assess the incident.
Two months to the day since the Barcelona man’s controversial intervention secured the 1-1 draw that took France to South Africa and ended Ireland’s World Cup dream in the second leg of their play-off tie in Paris, Henry will face up to the possibility of a fine or even a ban.
“I had a phone conversation with Thierry Henry,” Blatter said.
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.
Despite the media storm that followed the match, with the goal dubbed “The Hand of Frog” in the Irish press and Irish prime minister Brian Cowen calling for a replay, Henry is likely to escape lightly.
The disciplinary commission is likely to issue a symbolic penalty, as FIFA’s rules do not explicitly address incidents of such a nature and a heavy punishment would create an unwelcome precedent for world football’s governing body.
Blatter, meanwhile, has raised the possibility of awarding “moral compensation” to the Irish team.
Article 57 of FIFA’s disciplinary code concerns “anyone who insults someone in any way, especially by using offensive gestures or language, or who violates the principles of fair play or whose behaviour is unsporting in any other way” and refers to punishments ranging from warnings to the return of awards.
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 for what proved to be the decisive goal after illegally controlling the ball with his hand.
“That could be a special trophy or a prize, we’ll have to see,” he said.