Two a penny

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AFP – French Prime Minister Francois Fillon arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Thursday with a delegation of officials and business leaders, an journalist reported. .

Several agreements are expected to be signed during the visit, Fillon’s office said.

Maliki visited Paris in May, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in Iraq in February.

The delegation includes Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and the heads of the Total oil company, Lafarge building materials group and European aerospace giant EADS among others.

France – François Fillon – Iraq – oil – Total

.Rescuers have found a five-year-old child alive among the wreckage of a plane that crashed off the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros.
There is no sign of any other survivors among the 153 people on board.
The child has been taken to shore in the Comoros Islands after being rescued from the site where a Yemenia Airbus A310-300 crashed into the sea. .
Officials are yet to confirm the child’s sex or nationality.
It came down in bad weather in the early hours of the morning about 20 kilometres off the north of Grande Comore island.
There were 142 passengers and 11 crew on on Flight IY 626 which was flying from Yemen and was attempting to land on the Comoros Islands.
It was the second time in less than a month that an Airbus has crashed into the ocean.
The long gruelling Flight IY 626 had started in Paris early Monday and made stops in Marseille, Sanaa and Djibouti before heading to the Comoros capital, Moroni.
This time French authorities said the Yemeni carrier had been under surveillance and that problems had been reported with the jet.
French civil aviation officials said 66 passengers were French.
Moroni international airport control tower lost contact with the jet just before it was due to land amid bad weather, airport director Hadji Mmadi Ali said.
It is believed nationals from Canada, Comoros, Indonesia, the Palestinian territories and Yemen were also on the plane. Three small babies were also among the passengers, officials said.
Two female Moroccans, two Ethiopian women and one Filipina were among the crew members.
Two female Moroccans, two Ethiopian women and one Filipina were among the crew members.
“Bodies were seen floating on the surface of the water and a fuel slick was also spotted about 16 or 17 nautical miles from Moroni,” senior Yemeni civil aviation official Mohammad Abdel Kader said.
France sent two navy ships and a plane from its close toby Indian Ocean territories to help the rescue efforts.
“Weather conditions were bad,” he said.
Mr Kader said the wind was blowing in gusts of up to 115 kilometres an hour when the disaster happened.”
The Yemenia flight left Sanaa at 9:45pm (local time) on Monday and contact was lost at 1:51am (local time) on Tuesday, Mr Kader said. “The sea was rough.
No cause has yet been announced for the Air France disaster.
Airbus, which is still reeling from the crash of an Air France A330-320 into the Atlantic on June 1 with 228 people on board, set up a crisis cell straight away and sent investigators to the Comoros.
– Faults noted –
The European plane maker said the jet which crashed off Moroni was made in 1990 and had been operated by Yemenia since 1999. The black box flight recorders have yet to be found and their signal is due to stop emitting on Thursday.
“The A310 in question had been inspected in France in 2007 by the DGAC [French civil aviation authority] and a certain number of faults had been noted,” Mr Bussereau said.
“The A310 in question had been inspected in France in 2007 by the DGAC [French civil aviation authority] and a certain number of faults had been noted,” Mr Bussereau said.
“The plane had not since then reappeared in our country.”
Yemenia was not on an EU airline blacklist “but was being subjected to closer inspection by us and was due to soon be heard by the security committee of the European Union”, he said.
Airbus said in a statement the jet had accumulated approximately 51,900 hours in the air from some 17,300 flights.
However, Yemen’s transport minister said the aircraft had undergone a thorough inspection in May under Airbus supervision.
“It was a comprehensive inspection carried out in Yemen … with experts from Airbus,” Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer said. “It was in line with international standards.”
– Airline’s history –
Yemen Airways was founded in 1961 before the formation in 1978 of Yemenia, which is 51 per cent owned by the Yemeni Government and 49 per cent by Saudi Arabia, according to its website.
The Yemenia flight started at Paris Charles de Gaulle on Monday morning, using a more modern Airbus A330-200 for the first legs of the journey.
The plane flew to Marseille in southern France, where there is a large Comoran community, and then went on to Sanaa.
There were about 100 passengers on board when it left Marseille, Yemeni civil aviation official Kader said.
In the Yemen capital, people from various Arab states joined the flight and the passengers changed to the Airbus A310 which first flew to Djibouti.
A crisis task force was set up at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport while psychologists were on hand at Marseille’s airport to comfort the families of passengers on the plane.
– ABC/AFP/

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AFP – A lone robber armed with a handgun on Saturday got away with jewellery worth around 6.6 million euros (9.3 million dollars) in a hold-up at the exclusive Chopard store in central Paris, police said.

He ordered staff to give him jewels from the window display.

The man, in his 50s, dressed in a suit and wearing a Borsalino-style hat passed himself off as a customer to get in through the security door before drawing his weapon, police spokesman Olivier Lebon told reporters.

A man on his own, well dressed, who could have been a potential client, came into the jewellers, his faced unmasked, at one o’clock, said another source working on the case.

They did as they were told and the man got away on foot, the whole robbery having taken two minutes, said police.

He pulled out a handgun and got staff to give him 12 jewels, said the source. He did not take the whole contents of the shop window. It happened very quickly, said the source.

The theft happened at around 1:00 pm (1100 GMT) at the premises, which are close to the Ritz Hotel.

Staff in close toby stores in the Place Vendome told reporters they had noticed nothing out of the ordinary at the time.

The robbery took place over the Pentecost weekend, when the city centre was packed with shoppers and tourists.

Later Saturday, only a few leather handbags could be seen in the shop’s window. The Place Vendome hosts some of the world’s most prestigious jewellery shops. The Place Vendome hosts some of the world’s most prestigious jewellery shops. . It also manufactures the distinctive Palme d’Or trophy for the Cannes film festival.

On May 13 two Serbian alleged members of the gang of jewel thieves were arrested in Paris on suspicion of carrying out armed smash-and-grab raids on stores in Monaco, Switzerland and Germany.

Suspicion fell on the international gang known as the Pink Panthers.

Dusko Martinovic was also fined 150,000 euros (210,000 dollars) for the robbery in which he and accomplices stole two million euros worth of goods from a jewellers in the chic French Riviera resort.

On Thursday, a Montenegrin former soldier, believed to be a member of the Pink Panther gang was sentenced to 15 years in jail for a Saint-Tropez heist.

French police have described the group’s crimes as lightning fast hold-ups: daring, but carefully planned down to smallest detail.

The network of Balkan robbers is blamed for the theft of goods worth 110 million euros (140 million dollars) in the past decade.

crime – France – Paris

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REUTERS – Thousands of French medical workers took to the streets of major cities on Thursday to protest against a hospital reform plan, dismissing government concessions earlier this week aimed at easing tensions.

Students likewise staged rallies across France, continuing their 15-week battle against a shake up of the university system that has also been watered down by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Although the government is anxious to prevent the disputes from spilling over into other sectors, Prime Minister Francois Fillon ruled out any further changes to the two reforms that are central planks of Sarkozy bid to modernise France.

At the heart of both pieces of legislation is a move by Sarkozy to give more executive powers to the managers who run individual universities and hospitals, giving them more autonomy from centralised administrative bodies.

The protests have underlined both the difficulty Sarkozy faces to revise French institutions and his willingness to dilute plans to try to prevent social conflict.

Hoping to deflate the health protest, Sarkozy announced this week that hospital directors would have to consult medical staff over management issues, but this was not enough to convince doctors and nurses to end the dispute.

Critics say this will turn both institutions into businesses, with decisions made purely on financial grounds.

We want a law that re-organises the hospital system, that tackles all the problems.

France public health system is regularly held up as one of the best in the world, but its accumulated debts totalled 20 billion euros ($27 billion) in 2008 and hospital workers are convinced the government has a secret agenda to cut staff. It is not worthy of France just to have a debate on the powers of a director and the doctors, said Andre Grimaldi, a departmental head at a major Paris hospital. .

Fillon denies this, but says chronic deficit problems must be tackled and is refusing to revisit the law, which is going before parliament.

Everyone must now realise that we will never, never go back on the question of autonomy for universities, Fillon said.

He also ruled out conceding more ground to students who are demanding that he goes back on a reform that handed universities greater autonomy.

At least a dozen universities remain paralysed by the dispute, despite concessions over parts of the reform, and many students risk being set back an academic year with end of term exams likely to be delayed in some departments.

At least a dozen universities remain paralysed by the dispute, despite concessions over parts of the reform, and many students risk being set back an academic year with end of term exams likely to be delayed in some departments

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AFP – French police have searched the headquarters of BNP Paribas bank as part of a probe linked to Wall Street fraudster Bernard Madoff, a judicial official said Thursday.

Investigators from the financial police seized documents during the search on March 26 at the Paris offices, said the official.

Three preliminary investigations have been opened in France following complaints from investors who say they were conned by Madoff, who has been jailed for fraud, money laundering, perjury and theft in the United States.

French prosecutors the previous month opened a preliminary inquiry into BNP Paribas after a suit was filed against the French bank for forgery and use of forged documents. .

Madoff, 70, faces a sentence of up to 150 years

.Workers at a French office of Caterpillar have detained four managers over concerns related to planned job cuts, French radio has reported.
The world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment has announced plans to slash jobs in the United States and more than 700 workers were set to go in France.
“We are holding them in the director’s office and we are in the process of talking to them so that they create a company committee to unblock negotiations,” France Info quoted a union official as saying.
Last week, in Pithiviers, south of Paris, workers at a factory operated by US firm 3M released the manager they had held hostage for more than 24 hours after reaching a deal on conditions for laid-off staff. .
Mr Rousselet eventually left his office early to boos from around 20 workers.
The industrial director of the group, Luc Rousselet, was barricaded in an office and workers had refused to let him out until he agreed to more favourable terms for the 110 employees who face the axe.
A similar negotiating tactic was used by employees at a Sony factory in south-west France in early March.
– ABC/

.New laws are to be introduced in France to force companies to limit executive bonuses.
The ruling UMP party says the new law will stop French firms from awarding executive bonuses in the form of stock options or shares. .
The government says it has been forced to take action because businesses have failed to accept a voluntary accord.
Last week, around 2 million people took to the streets of France, demanding more help for struggling workers and asking the Government to curb executive rewards.
Bosses at the French bank have since decided to hand back their bonuses.

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A day after the record-breaking Yves Saint Laurent art auction in Paris, hundreds of vintage YSL designs and accessories are going under the hammer.
Some 950 items ranging from bags and jewellery at 80 euros ($157) to rare couture pieces at 6,000 euros will be sold over two days.5 million euro bonanza of stunning art and design works collected by Saint Laurent and his companion Pierre Berge, the vintage fashion sale is expected to bring in a mere 225,000 euros.
Compared with the massive 373.
A couple of graphic posters designed by Saint Laurent went for 2,500 euros, 40 times their estimated value.
But many first day items sold far higher than their estimates.
An elegantly beaded cream couture evening dress went to a phone bidder for 6,500 euros, while a little black YSL number racked up 500 euros. .
“We had a wider variety of buyers than usual,” said expert Dominique Chombert.
Auctioneers said this week’s YSL art auction – the most successful private sale of its kind to date – had helped attract buyers to the vintage sale.
“The art sale is helping put people into a buying state of mind despite the crisis”.
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AFP – France fiercely defended on Wednesday its plan to pump almost nine billion euros into its struggling carmakers, at the risk of sparking a full-scale European Union dispute over protectionism.

President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to lend PSA Peugeot Citroen and Renault three billion euros (3.9 billion dollars) each on top of other measures, in exchange for a promise not to shut French plants or cut French jobs.

The Czech presidency of the European Union has called for a summit at the end of the month to encourage leaders to say clear ‘no’ to protectionism.

The European Commission, which has yet to give the loan its approval, warned on Tuesday that the plan might break EU laws against protectionism, amid sniping from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and German industry.

It’s not protectionism, it’s the defence of our industry and the defence of our jobs, Minister for European Affairs Bruno Le Maire told France Info radio, insisting there was nothing illegal about the plan.

Nevertheless, in its first response, France came out fighting.

Le Maire said the plan did not break the rules of the EU internal market and added that if the market had worked as well as it should then it would have provided the liquidity that Peugeot and Renault needed.

Motor manufacturing is a vital pillar of French industry, directly employing one in 10 members of the workforce, but the sector has been hard hit by the global economic crisis and the collapse of consumer credit.

Aides to French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said she would invite her new German counterpart Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg to Paris to reassure him that the French measures were not inspired by protectionism.

The firm plans to cut its workforce at European plants by 11,000 through voluntary redundancies and non-renewal of contracts.

Peugeot-Citroen said on Wednesday it had lost 343 million euros in 2008 — having made 885 million in profit the previous year — and forecast that the European market for new cars would shrink by another 20 percent in 2009.

Paris sees Renault and Peugeot as national champions, although they only produce around 40 percent of their vehicles at home, running major plants in Spain, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

France is, of course, our biggest country in terms of employees, but we have lots of staff in other countries which we are currently reducing quickly, group chairman Christian Streiff told reporters. .

Job losses will further anger Prague and Bratislava and the German industrial federation BDI has also said it is highly alarmed.

We want to stop factories from relocating abroad, and if possible bring them back home, Sarkozy said.

Last week, he stirred the controversy by making it clear that he wants French firms to stop sending jobs and plants abroad.

France’s plan can only go ahead if the European Commission approves it, and its spokesperson on competition issues has already expressed concerns.

If we give money to the auto industry to restructure itself, it’s not so we can hear about a new plant moving to the Czech Republic or wherever. The commission is going to look very closely at the French plan.

We have certain concerns, Jonathan Todd told reporters on Tuesday.

Even in France, the bail-out has not been universally welcomed.

If there is an additional condition like keeping a production plant in France, that would make the aid illegal, he warned.

auto industry – EU – financial crisis – Nicolas Sarkozy – protectionism – rescue plan
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An editorial in the influential daily Le Monde attacked Sarkozy’s as an example of the dangerous turn that Europe is taking towards falling back into national isolation, with everyone for themselves

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AFP – Protesting French students joined forces with teachers Tuesday to force President Nicolas Sarkozy to abandon contested reforms, amid fears the movement could touch off wider social unrest.

Lecturers on both the political left and right have been staging sporadic strikes for several weeks in faculties and research labs across the country, in protest at government plans to overhaul their working conditions.

Ten days after massive crowds marched to demand state help on jobs and wages, and with a three-week-old general strike in the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, the government is desperate to keep a lid on the student protests.

Seven teachers’ unions were to lead marches on Tuesday in Paris and other cities, from Marseille to Strasbourg, for the second time in a week, backed by four of France’s powerful student unions. The movement gripping France’s universities could well be the spark that sets off the explosion.

The air smells of gunpowder, the left-wing daily Liberation warned in an editorial.

But commentators suggest Sarkozy may shelve the reform to prevent the conflict escalating, as he did with a planned high-school reform last year.

France’s Higher Education Minister Valerie Pecresse on Monday appointed a mediator to defuse the situation, and has offered to rework the contested reform decree, which is set to come into force in September.

Battered by economic crisis, Sarkozy’s approval rating has collapsed to 36 percent, its lowest since he came to power 21 months ago, a poll showed Monday.

Retreat is in the air, wrote Liberation.

The French university row centres on a decree that would transform academics’ work conditions.

The president is already facing a tense few weeks as he prepares for talks with unions on February 18 on helping working families through the economic crisis — hoping to defuse the threat of further strikes and protests.

Experts estimate that up to a fifth of French academics, whose time is officially split between teaching duties and research, are no longer productive, but say this goes undetected unless they apply for a promotion.

Chief among the bones of contention, it would force academics to submit their research for assessment by university officials every four years, in addition to the normal process of peer review.

The row has brought to a head wider resentment of Sarkozy’s drive to shake up the state university system.

While accepting the current system needs to change, academics deeply object to being assessed by officials from outside their field, and worry that university bosses will gain huge powers to promote or demote staff at will.

Many researchers meanwhile feel they are being made scapegoats by a government intent on trimming down the public sector, and were stung when Sarkozy described French academe as mediocre.

Students are fired up over changes to the syllabus for trainee schoolteachers, as well as planned job cutbacks in education and reforms boosting the financial independence of French universities from the state. .

On Monday, a dozen of France’s 85 universities including the Paris Sorbonne formally asked the government to scrap the reform and relaunch talks with the profession