.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.
.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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.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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.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
.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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