.A storm that killed at least 47 people in France on the weekend has been officially declared a national disaster.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has visited the storm-battered Atlantic coast, where most of the storm’s victims drowned. . Others were killed by falling buildings or trees.
France’s Prime Minister Francois Fillon declared the storm a national disaster and said money would be allocated to help communities rebuild.
The Atlantic storm hit the western coasts of France, Portugal and Spain on Sunday, then swept towards Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
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He said the focus would now turn to protecting those left homeless and those threatened by rising waters
.Al Qaeda’s North African wing has released French hostage Pierre Camatte after Mali freed four Islamist prisoners in response to an Al Qaeda threat to kill him.
“We confirm the liberation of Pierre Camatte,” Malian presidency spokesperson Seydou Cissouma told state radio.
Mali freed four Islamist prisoners last week after Al Qaeda threatened to kill Mr Camatte unless they were released.
He said Mr Camatte, kidnapped in Mali in November, was in the hands of Malian authorities.
Algerian media said two of the freed men were Algerian.
Their release prompted Algeria to recall its ambassador to Mali earlier on Tuesday in protest.
He said he had thanked Malian president Amadou Toumani Toure for his handling of the crisis and pledged French support in the struggle against terrorism. .
The group has waged a campaign of suicide bombings and ambushes in Algeria, but in the past few years has shifted a large part of its activities south to the Sahara desert.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has also claimed responsibility for the abduction of three Spaniards and an Italian couple.
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.A probe has strongly criticised cross-Channel train operator Eurostar for failing to prepare its trains to cope with winter weather that led to breakdowns and mass disruption in December.
Eurostar also had “no plan in place” to deal with the chaos created when five trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel with more than 2,000 passengers aboard in the busy pre-Christmas period.
Passengers stuck on the trains endured overflowing toilets and darkness and stuffy conditions for hours on end, the report said, adding that “provision of information to customers was inadequate”.
The maintenance of the trains came in for particular criticism - one of the broken-down trains had no snow screens on its power cars allowing a fine form of snow to cause the electrical systems to fail.
The poor quality of information offered to passengers waiting to take cancelled or delayed trains was also highlighted.
Services were cancelled and disrupted following the breakdowns, throwing the travel plans of thousands of passengers trying to travel between London and Paris and Brussels into disarray.
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The study, by former train company boss Christopher Garnett and French civil engineer Claude Gressier, said the weather in northern France on December 18 was “extremely severe with heavy snowfall”.. .
The first train to break down in the tunnel was recovered “quickly” but “four further trains then broke down in rapid succession and passengers from two of them had to be evacuated onto Eurotunnel passenger shuttles inside the tunnel. found that Eurostar trains had not undergone sufficient winter weather preparations to withstand these conditions and that maintenance procedures should be revised,” it read.
While the evacuations of trains inside the tunnel were carried out “safely and efficiently”, the report highlighted concerns about conditions in the trains after they lost air conditioning and lighting.
“This was the first time this had happened in 15 years of operation,” the review said.
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Eurostar says it will spend more than 30 million pounds ($53 million) upgrading its infrastructure and equipment
.Mathieu Bastareaud’s rugby redemption has been completed at Murrayfield as Six Nations favourite France kicked off its campaign with an 18-9 win over Scotland.
Bastareaud was the difference between the two sides, his two first-half tries putting the French in control of an open contest and justifying coach Marc Lievremont’s decision to hand the giant centre the opportunity to resurrect a career he had done his best to destroy.
The bizarre episode quickly spiralled out of control with diplomatic relations between France and New Zealand becoming strained and Bastareaud himself, a shy 21-year-old, was hospitalised after an apparent suicide attempt on his return to France.
The 110-kilogram centre was starting his first Test since his ignominious involvement in last year’s tour of New Zealand, during which he falsely claimed to have been beaten up by All Black fans in order to cover up a drunken fall in his hotel bedroom.
Robinson, who cuts a happier figure than during his unsuccessful stint as England coach, said there were positives to be taken out of the match ahead of next week’s clash with 2008 Grand Slam winner Wales, which lost to England yesterday.
Scotland, as so often in recent seasons, was let down by its failure to convert openings and phases of pressure into tries although, in Andy Robinson’s first Six Nations match in charge, it posed the French enough problems to suggest it could yet make an impact on this tournament.
“Also we got behind the French defence several times but the French defence scrambled very well and Imanol Harinordoquy made two or three great tackles.
“We conceded two soft tries, but I thought we were in control defensively,” said Robinson, who was assistant coach when England won the 2003 World Cup final. We have a number of positives to take out of this match and I was especially pleased by the performances of Sean Lamont and Johnnie Beattie. .
“We are of course very happy to win, it was a very tough match out there,” said the 29-year-old, who was winning his 58th cap.”
Harinordoquy, who belied his nickname bestowed on him by some Anglophine commentators of ‘very ordinary’ and was named man of the match, said that he and his team-mates had never been able to let up. In the scrum we had to have a big performance and I believe we won in that area.
“We had to play till the last minute because Scotland play with all their heart.”
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.Two burqa-wearing robbers have held up a French post office using a handgun concealed beneath an Islamic-style full veil, court officials said.
Officials said postal office staff let the pair through the security double doors of the banking branch near Paris, believing them to be veil-wearing Muslim women.
Once inside, the pair flipped back their head coverings and pulled out a gun.
Police have opened an investigation.
They made off with 4,500 euros ($7,100) seized from the staff and customers of the branch in Athis Mons, just south of Paris, according to the online edition of Le Parisien newspaper.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing party has already presented a bill to make it illegal for anyone to cover their faces in public on security grounds.
France is seeking to restrict use of the head-to-toe Islamic veil on the grounds it is incompatible with French values, after a parliament report called for a ban in schools, hospitals, government offices and public transport. .
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According to the interior ministry, only around 1,900 women wear the burqa in France, which is home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority
.French climber Alain Robert, known as Spiderman for his death-defying antics, has set his sights on scaling Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower, a report said.
The Gulf emirate of Dubai opened the glistening 828 metre concrete, glass and steel skyscraper on January 4 this year.
“I’ll have to do it …
“I know the people of Dubai, they are interested [in seeing me climb the skyscraper]. maybe between January and April 2011,” Mr Robert was quoted as saying by Malaysia’s official Bernama news agency.”
The tower, the tallest in the world, was named in honour of the Abu Dhabi leader whose billions of dollars bailed out Dubai from its financial crisis last year.
He has climbed skyscrapers including the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower and Taipei 101, according to his website.
Mr Robert, 47, was in Malaysia to receive an award for his extraordinary feats in scaling tall buildings.
“The problem in Dubai is the hot weather [of] up to 40 degrees Celsius,” he said.
He admitted that climbing the Dubai tower will be a tough mission because of the Middle Eastern heat. For me, climbing is as important as eating and breathing.
“My biggest fear is to waste my time on Earth. Climbing skyscrapers is my lifetime love and passion. .
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.A French court found the niece of a British minister guilty of murder and has sentenced her to 15 years in jail for the alcohol-fuelled slaying of a young Frenchman she had befriended in a bar.
Jessica Davies, 30, was also ordered to pay 105,000 euros ($165,452) in damages to the family of the dead man.
Davies told the court close to Paris that she had knifed Olivier Mugnier, 24, to death in November 2007, but said her recollection of the multiple stabbings had vanished “into a black hole”. Her uncle is Quentin Davies, the British minister for defence equipment and support.
Davies, a former model, was born in London and has a French mother and British father. Later that night she phoned the emergency services and when police arrived they found her cradling the young man’s naked body.
Davies met Mr Mugnier by chance in an Irish bar on the outskirts of Paris and took him back to her flat.
French media said she told police: “I am a monster…”
It emerged that she had been drinking heavily and had also taken a large quantity of medicines prescribed to treat her depression. I wanted to cut him a bit and [the knife] went right in.
The court heard that Davies had been traumatised by the separation of her parents during her adolescence and had once tried to commit suicide, using the same knife she later turned on Mr Mugnier. .
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.Northern Europe is bracing for what is expected to be the coldest day yet of the big freeze affecting the region.
Conditions have left many people dead and another Eurostar train has been stranded in the Channel Tunnel. .
The Arctic freeze has seen temperatures in central Sweden plunge to between minus 30 and minus 40 degrees Celsius, the coldest weather in more than 25 years.
In Germany, at least nine homeless men have frozen to death.
Around 10,000 schools shut down in Britain and will not reopen until well into next week.
Gas supplies are running low in the UK where the national grid has had to start rationing supplies of energy.
One Eurostar train arrived in London two hours late after breaking down in the Channel Tunnel, while four others were cancelled after snow got into the engines.
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The average weather in Britain recently has been only 2 degrees warmer than the North Pole
.Veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday has been released from a Los Angeles hospital where he underwent a back operation earlier this month, his publicists said.
“The doctors judged that Johnny Hallyday’s current state of health has improved and justifies a return home to his family while he continues to receive the medical treatment he needs,” they said.
He will spend Christmas at his home in Los Angeles with his wife Laeticia and two daughters.
He has begun legal action to determine whether the surgeon who performed the operation in Paris was at fault and earlier this week submitted a letter to French judges declaring that he had “come close to death”.
Hallyday, 66, who had been due to resume a concert tour in January, was admitted to the Cedars-Sinai hospital on December 7 suffering complications after an earlier operation in Paris.
His health problems have forced the cancellation of the remainder of his concert tour, prompting widespread speculation about the likely financial impact for insurers and promoters.
Hallyday, one of France’s most popular entertainers in a career spanning almost 50 years, is particularly famous for his energetic live performances.
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.Four Eurostar trains with hundreds of people on board have broken down in the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France.
The trains were on their way from Paris to London when they suffered serious technical failures and rescue locomotives are being sent down the tunnel to get the passengers out.
A Eurostar spokesman says the breakdowns happened when the trains entered the tunnel where temperatures were higher compared to the sub-zero conditions in northern France.
A total of around 1,200 to 1,300 passengers from two of the trains in one tunnel are being evacuated on an empty vehicle shuttle being sent to collect them from the other tunnel, the spokesman said.
“Currently the tunnels are closed,” the spokesman said, calling the situation “unprecedented”.
“At the moment we’re not giving timescales.
The third train, in the other tunnel, is scheduled to be pushed out later. We hope to get this done as quickly as possible,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman said the passengers are safe and well as the heating and electricity systems in the carriages are functioning.
A fourth passenger train had earlier broken down and was pulled to its London terminus. They have been stranded for several hours and its not yet clear when they’ll reach London.
But for the hundreds on board each train it could be a long night.
“Subsequent to that, as the snow stopped falling, we were preparing to run shuttles through with passengers from the UK, and we had a succession of Eurostar breakdowns in the tunnel.
“The weather in France was absolutely appalling and we were cooperating with the French authorities to limit the amount of traffic getting through to the French motorways,” the spokesman said. .
“There are currently three Eurostars broken down blocking both tunnels.
“That’s an awful lot of people to move safely from one train into a service tunnel and then from that service tunnel through on to a shuttle.
“We’re talking about 600 to 700 people on each train.”
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“Nobody’s been transferred, we’re working it through as safely and as smoothly as we can