FRENCH NEWS - in English of course. Politics, sports, reviews, travel, a slice of life in France and stories you might not necessarily be able to find elsewhere on the Net.
After the events of Wednesday, when armed gunmen shot and killed 12 people at the offices in Paris of the French satirical weekly "Charlie Hebdo", there's little that hasn't been said, written or reported, both within France and abroad.
As a tribute to those who died here are two images.
The first is a screenshot taken for the weekly news magazine "L'Obs". It's the very last cartoon drawn by "Charlie Hebdo's" editor, Stéphane Charbonnier or "Charb", who was one of those killed in the attack.
It's tragically predictive with the headline reading, "Toujours pas d'attentats en France?" "Still no attacks in France?" and an armed Islamist militant saying, "Attendez" or "Wait".
"On a jusqu'à la fin janvier pour présenter ses vœux "We have until the end of January to present our New Year's wishes" - a satire on the French (political and social) tradition of wishing others a happy New Year throughout the whole of the month.
...and of course some academics get their proverbials in a twist
"Teaching in English - Let's do it" was the front page headline in Tuesday's edition of Libération, making it clear where the national daily stands on government plans to relax the law which prevents English from being used as a language to teach subjects (other than English of course) at French universities.
In fact the paper went further - its entire front cover was in English.
The parliamentary debate opens today - and although the government is in favour, it's up against the usual head-in-the sand opposition from some academics.
Speaking on Tuesday's edition of La Matinale on Canal + the minister for higher education and research, Geneviève Fioraso, said a change in the 1994 law which currently prevents English being used to teach subjects at universities would attract foreign students and be of benefit to French students.
"It's a move which makes sense and in no way threatens the values or culture of the French language," she said.
"And it seems ridiculous to me that a blind eye is turned when it comes to les grandes écoles, which have ignored the law and taught subjects in English, while the rest of the country's universities have been prevented from doing so," she continued.
"It's a matter of making certain the law meets the needs of the country."
Geneviève Fioraso (screenshot from Canal + La Matinale)
Fioraso has the backing of some of France's leading academics - including a couple of Nobel prize winners - who wrote and signed an open letter in Le Monde supporting the idea.
But of course there are also those horrified at the thought that the proposal will "marginalise the French language" or worse!
One of France's most distinguished (French) linguists, Claude Hagège, writing in Le Monde called the proposal "suicide" and "an act of sabotage" of the French language.
While Bernard Pivot, a leading literary figure in France, toldLe Croix in an interview of the dangers of French becoming "banal, or worse, a dead language."
Er. M Pivot et al.
In the words of that modern French-speaking cultural icon, Nabilla, "Non mais 'allô quoi!"
There has been something of a furore in France this week - or as the media is so fond of saying "polemic" - surrounding a couple of headlines that have appeared in the national daily Libération.
The Left-leaning newspaper has been having fun with the news that France's richest man, Bernard Arnault, has applied for Belgian citizenship.
And it has been harking back to some of the most infamous phrases uttered by former president Nicolas Sarkozy to express its disgust at what it sees as a possible attempt by Arnault to avoid this country's inheritance tax laws.
The reasons for Arnault's decision aren't exactly clear.
He has always paid taxes in France and says he'll continue to do so, claiming the application which was confirmed last weekend, was not a reaction to the proposed tax hike in France aimed at the super rich - of which he is the super-est.
You know the proposal: the one François Hollande conjured up from absolutely nowhere during his presidential campaign and is now grimly sticking to. Um. that interpretation probably deserves a Daily Telegraph link. Here you go.
There have also been suggestions that there are business reasons behind Arnault's application as well as a change in Belgium's laws next year which will apparently make it harder for anyone applying to be granted citizenship.
And then there's the inheritance tax issue of course - Arnault thinking about how to ensure that each of his five children gets as much of his money as possible when he pops his clogs.
Whatever the reasons, the media - national and international - has been largely leading with headlines that seem to suggest Arnault is running scared and there's about to be a mass exodus of the wealthy from France.
Libération though has been taking a different approach, and in the process incurring the wrath of the man himself who now says he'll sue the newspaper for insulting him publicly.
Oh dear. the poor man.
Er...hang on. Perhaps that needs to be put into some perspective.
How poor?
Well, according to Forbes magazine, the 63-year-old is not only France's richest person but also the wealthiest in Europe and the fourth in the world.
And as chairman (among other things) of the luxury goods company LVMH (Louis Vuitton-Moët Hennessy) and the fashion house Christian Dior, the appropriately described "business magnate" (merci Wikipedia) is worth a cool...hang on, get your calculators out...€31 billion or $41 billion - a not insubstantial sum whichever way you look at it and an awful lot of zeros.
All hail champagne bubbles and high fashion heh?
So perhaps it's a little hard to have sympathy for someone who has made something of a PR blunder.
All right, Monday's edition of Libération which ran with a Sarkozy-type tribute of "Casse-toi riche con!" (thanks to The Guardian for providing a translation of "Get lost, rich jerk") might have been more than a little vulgar for those on the Right and many on the Left.
And perhaps Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the founders of the newspaper might have a few words to say about the rather "cheap" headline which harked back to Sarkozy's 2008 visit to the annual agricultural show in Paris and his reaction to a visitor who refused to shake his hand.
Thankfully though Libération didn't take Arnault's threat of a legal suit lying down and went a step further for Tuesday's edition with another front page headline "Bernard, si tu reviens, j'annule tout".
That of course was a reference to the alleged text message Sarkozy (never) sent his then-wife Cécilia back in 2007 when she hot-footed it across the Atlantic to be with her now-husband (boy, this is some soap opera-type sentence huh?) Richard Attias.
Of course Libération could have a lot more fun with phrases borrowed from the not-so-distant presidential past. How about Sarkozy's sort-of 2007 campaign mantra - oops, slogan - "Travailler plus pour gagner plus" or the "Ensemble tout devient possible"? They could surely work with a little imagination.
Or coming bang up-to-date and bringing Hollande into the equation, "Le changement, c'est maintenant"...hold the press "in two years time".
The Socialist party had its annual summer do - sorry, conference - over the weekend at La Rochelle in the western French département of Charente-Maritime.
Activists mingled with the "good the bad and the (ahem) ugly" of a party which holds power at just about every level in France.
Everyone who is anyone within the party turned up - well with two notable exceptions; François Hollande, because he's now "above" these sorts of things and...Ségolène Royal, who decided to give the place where she was electorally humiliated (again) back in June, a wide berth.
There again, Seggers had already put in a guest star appearance at the Green party's summer bash - sorry, conference - in Poitiers the week before.
So the Great and Glorious - minus the Two - were present to give themselves a collective pat on the back for all their electoral success and pay homage to the woman who had engineered victory, Martine Aubry.
Martine Aubry (screenshot Europe 1 interview)
We know that because she said as much.
"Back in 2009, here in La Rochelle, I outlined a 'road map' (don't you just love that expression?) for the future of the party," she told an attentive audience - all the more so because those present wanted to know whether she was going to stand down as leader and, if so, to whom she would give her blessing (Amen) as her successor.
More on that in a moment.
"That included being more aware of society's needs, doing away with the multiple mandates, gender diversity, the primaries and how best to get rid of that eternal pain, Seggers (all right, she didn't say that last bit, but she might just as well have done)."
Ah yes. as Libérationwrote, Aubry was able to bask in the party's success due in no small measure, as far as she was concerned, to her own leadership.
All Hail Martine!
So now what?
Well, with bated (or baited, if you must) breath everyone waited to hear whether she would officially announce she wasn't going to stand again for the post at (yet another of) the party's conference in Toulouse in October.
She didn't.
Apparently everyone knows she's not going to run again, but nobody seems to have told Aubry. Or rather Aubry seems to have told nobody.
Er.
Well that's leadership for you. Keep everyone guessing right up until the last moment.
So what of the pretenders to the throne?
Well there are two of them.
First up is the wonderfully named Harlem Désir. No, not as in the dreadful 1980s single "Harlem Desire" from the British-German dance pop duo London Boys, (click on the link, if you dare, to discover just how awful it was) but the former president of the French anti-racist organisation, SOS Racisme, member of the European parliament and the party's number two.
Désir would be the obvious choice especially as he took over the leadership temporarily when Aubry took the plunge and contested the party's primaries for this year's presidential elections, losing out in the second round head-to-head against Hollande (just in case you had forgotten).
Plus the 52-year-old is believed to have Hollande's backing.
But of course this is politics - and France is no different from any other country in having its fair share of intrigue and shrewd plotting.
Enter Jean-Christophe Cambadélis - or "Camba" as he has apparently been dubbed by Aubry - a former right-hand (or should that be left-hand) man to none other than Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose shoes Aubry so reluctantly tried to fill in those very same primaries.
Both men were spotted at La Rochelle showing their full support for Aubry - naturally, but "Camba" was a little less subtle about it, cosying up even more closely to her supporters and earning the status of "friend" from another Aubry crony, Claude Bartolone, the president of the national assembly.
So Désir or Camba? Which of the two will it be should Aubry decide to step down?
Oh what a tough one.
Cue London Boys?
You have been warned
Just imagine the behind-the-scenes power Aubry could wield with Bartolone already perched at the national assembly and Camba installed as party leader.
The French president François Hollande is back from his summer break all bronzed and ready to get cracking with affairs of state.
Er. Hello? Isn't there something wrong with that?
François Hollande and Valérie Trierweiler - end of summer hols. Nice tan (screenshot Var Matin)
Unemployment, economic recession, the problems in the Eurozone, Syria - all trifling concerns of government which could be put on hold, it would appear, while Hollande, sunned himself in the south of France for three weeks.
Oops, 18 days to be precise. Mustn't exaggerate now.
Those are points driven home not only in Tuesday's edition of Libération with a headline that reads as though it's taken straight from Le Figaro "L'été très moyen de françois Hollande", but also by a piecein this week's Le Point by Hervé Gattegno.
"Where else would a 'normal' employee begin a job at the beginning of May and be automatically entitled to three weeks holiday in August," asks Gattegno in his piece entitled "Hollande was on holiday for too long."
Gattegno surely has a point.
Sure he's now calling his ministers in and having detailed head-to-heads with them about how to tackle the recession (what recession?), economic hardship at home and throughout Europe, what to do about Syria, the Roma, violence and security in France and the list goes on.
But shouldn't he have been doing exactly that - or at have least given the appearance of doing so - already?
In an interview with Le Journal de Dimanche last weekend, Jean-Luc Mélenchon characterised (or rather caricatured) Hollande's first 100 days in office as "100 days of almost nothing."
Gattegno says Mélenchon was, in his usual style, exaggerating but there's also the uncomfortable feeling - even among those to the Left - that there might be some substance in what he says, and a potential sign of things not to come.
The article in Libération, a paper that is not shy in its support of the Socialist party, is surely evidence in itself that some on the Left are questioning Hollande's tactics - or lack thereof.
Hollande might want to be demonstrating that he's not as omnipresent as his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, but isn't he taking delegation perhaps a little too far and appearing almost absent?
If he carries on at this rate his five year mandate will come to resemble those of Jacques Chirac's second term in office - a time when French politics stood still while the world moved on.
Smutty probably isn't the right word to describe the latest advertising spot that went online just a week ago and is, according to the national daily Libération, under attack from some French feminists for being sexist.
Soft porn would be nearer the mark as once again a company is creating a stir by using that age-old advertising tool to sell - sex.
It's for 11footballclub, a French online store specialising in football garb - mainly the sort you can wear - and which is planning to open its first retail outlet shortly in the western French city of Nantes.
Time then for a spot of publicity - anything will do, as long as it gets the company noticed and everyone talking about it.
And the commercial certainly does that.
It features a sexy (of course) red headed woman on her knees apparently - so the ambiguity of the camera angle would have you believe - about to give a man oral sex.
Of course that's what you're meant to think because as the camera pans out out you see that in fact she's helping a customer try on a pair of shoes.
There are the customary sexual groans and moans (because the shoes are too tight - naturally) , very little dialogue (after all who needs it in erotica) and mood-setting background music.
Highly creative - not.
It's meant to be amusing, as Benoît Defois, co-manager of the company told the free daily newspaper 20 minutes.
"The message of the ad isn't to denigrate women, but just to say we take care of our customers," he said.
"The next episode in the the series - which might run to four or five in total - could well see a man kneeling in front of a woman," he continued.
"We might release it just before the Euro 2012 (scheduled to take place in Poland and Ukraine from June 8 - July 1) to promote women's football."
Yes that would seem entirely logical.
The intended humour though isn't how one feminist group sees it.
For the Nantes-based "Collectif radical anti-sexisme et homophobie" (Crash) it's both sexist and offensive.
"We can't constantly laugh at sexism and machismo, when we know that a woman is raped every five hours in France," a member of the group told 20 minutes.
"If a black man were in the place of women, I don't think it would make many people laugh."
It's unlikely that he'll manage to get the support of the 500 mayors necessary to stand in the French presidential elections, but former international footballer Eric Cantona is apparently seriously thinking about it.
According to the national daily Libération, the 45-year-old has sent out a letter to all of the country's nearly 37,000 mayors seeking their backing and outlining how much of an "engaged citizen" he is.
In the letter he wrote that he wants to collect at least 500 signatures to "send out a clear and powerful message; a message of of truth and respect at a time when the country faces difficult choices which will be decisive about its future."
Cantona is already a sponsor of one of the country's most well-known charities helping the homeless, Fondation Abbé Pierre.
And he has the full backing off the Fondation which launched a petition in September 2011 to make homelessness and the lack of affordable housing a major issue in the presidential campaigns.
"We need a stimulus such as Cantona to restore (the issue of) housing to the place it deserves in the campaign," the Fondation's managing director Patrick Doutreligne toldAgence France Presse.
So Cantona for president?
Well it'll be an uphill struggle. Even if he manages to collect those 500 signatures needed to stand, there's the additional problem of financing a credible campaign.
And few will forget his last foray into the political arena in December 2010 when he called for a run on the country's banks by encouraging savers to withdraw all their money in protest at the role of the banks in the global financial crisis.
That day of protest came and went with few heeding the call.
Friday's French music break this week has more than a hint of the US to it
Claire Denamur's "Bang bang bang" features an hypnotic twanging guitar, a country music-influenced rhythm and a simple, catchy chorus, which should all go a fair way to making it a hit.
Even before its release it had been receiving a fair amount of airplay, and should get something of a boost when the recording Denamur made for the television music show Taratata is broadcast in October.
The 27-year-old apparently spent a chunk of her childhood in the States and that has heavily influenced her music and style described as, "characterised by very text-based gender relations and intimate country folk acoustic music sung with a slightly rough and ready - or 'broken' - voice."
Of the quality of her voice, she's quoted as saying in a recent article about her music in the national daily Libération, "It's that of a heavy smoker who knows the joys of bourbon!"
And that's not too far off the mark.
Distinctive? Yes.
Unpleasant? Most definitely not.
And very Blues.
Plus she write her own material which has to be the mark of a true "artiste" doesn't it?
"Bang, Bang, Bang" is the first track to be released from her second album "Vagabonde" - also well worth a listen.
Check out a review of that album on the French radio station France Inter and zap over to her official website for concert dates.
Well not quite. The controversial blood sport is also popular in parts of southern France.
And France has become the first country in the world to recognise bullfighting as part of its cultural heritage.
A bull and a raseteur at the 75th Cocarde d'Or, Arles, France 2006, from Wikipedia, author JialiangGao
As the French daily Libérationreports on Friday the ministry of culture announced that bullfighting had been "identified as an 'intangible cultural heritage' giving it the same status as tarte tatin (an upside-down apple tart), fest-noz (a traditional Breton night festival), Aubusson tapestry and Grasse perfumers."
But as the ministry also stressed the decision did not constitute "any form of protection, promotion or special moral bond" and "there was no intention to propose bullfighting for inclusion on Unesco's Intangible Heritage list," as had been the case for French gastronomy which was awarded that status last year.
But opponents of bullfighting were quick to condemn the announcement.
"Frankly I find the decision appalling," Claire Starozinski, the founder and president of l'Alliance anti-corrida, told the regional daily Midi Libre.
"At first I wondered how a ministry in a country which promotes 'enlightenment' could also encourage such a barbaric tradition," she continued.
"On reflection though I don't see it as protecting bullfighting, but if we're ready to give intangible cultural heritage status to popular movements then why not also include rave parties?"
Others critics were less measured in their obvious disgust; among them the former actress, model and singer and not animal rights activist, Brigitte Bardot.
"Including bullfighting on the list of France's cultural heritage is a huge mistake (Bardot used stronger language)," she wrote in an open letter to the minister of culture Frédéric Mitterand on the Brigitte Bardot Foundation website.
"I'm shocked because such a bloody and barbaric activity has nothing to do with French culture," she said.
The news came on the eve of opening of the five-day Féria De Los Ninos in the southern city of Arles.
And locals seemed delighted at the move.
"Bullfighting is part of our tradition and out heritage," Alain Lartigue, organiser of the festival toldBFM TV.
"We don't want in any way to 'oblige' people to come to watch bullfighting but simply to respect the liberty of those who do want to come to do so."
A bloodsport of historic, economic and cultural importance or a barbaric, shameful and contemptible activity? French singer-songwriter Francis Cabrel sums it up best perhaps in his 1994 song La corrida.
Ryanair Boeing 737-800 (Wikipedia, photographer Adrian Pingstone)
Lowcost airline Ryanair might well be the cheapest way for many Europeans to fly from point A to point B, but it surely needs a lesson or two on how to treat its passengers.
During the night of Tuesday to Wednesday more than 100 of them refused to leave one of its 'planes after it arrived in the Belgian city of Liège after being diverted from its original destination Beauvais in northern France - 342 kilometres away.
Beauvais of course is the town Ryanair refers to as "Paris" on its list of destinations, even though it is in fact almost 80 kilometres from the French capital.
Most of those on board were reportedly French, returning from holidays in Morocco, and their night of misery began when the flight left - three hours late - from the Moroccan city of Fez.
Unable to land in Beauvais because it was too late and the airport was closed, the 'plane was diverted to Liège, not a destination to which the airline normally flies, and landed late in the evening at 11.30pm.
But the passengers hadn't been alerted ahead of time according to one of them, Mylene Netange.
"The plane didn't land in Beauvais but in Liege without warning us," she told Agence France Presse.
"Consequently, we refused to leave the plane."
The passengers reportedly refused to be budged for four hours, demanding that an alternative means of getting home be provided.
Remember they were over 300 kilometres away from where they should have been.
But their protests seem to have fallen on deaf ears as far as Ryanair was concerned.
Instead they were left sitting in the dark after the pilot and cabin crew had disembarked and it was airport officials who took over the task of trying to negotiate with them and arrange alternative transportation.
Great PR for Ryanair who, as the French daily Libérationpoints out, only a few days ago announced a net half-year of €424 million.
If reports in the French media are confirmed, then the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, looks likely to cancel the annual garden party held at his official residence, the Elysée palace, to celebrate Bastille Day on July 14.
It's a move which is being interpreted by many here as the government wanting to be seen to be setting an example by tightening its own belt at a time when it's also likely to ask the French to face tax rises and spending cuts.
The news that the garden party is to be cancelled first appeared in the national daily Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui en France.
It hasn't yet been officially confirmed by Sarkozy's office, that's expected next week, but after the weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the government spokesman, Luc Chatel, gave every sign that newspaper reports weren't that far off the mark.
Chatel stressed the need for government ministers and their departments to be "exemplary" in times of fiscal austerity, according to the left-of-centre daily Libération.
"A lot has already been done and changes made in the way departments operate under this current administration," said Chatel
"It was Nicolas Sarkozy who called for the Elysée palace to have a fixed budget just like all the other state institutions, and to have its spending audited," he added.
The first garden party held in the grounds of the Elysée palace, took place in 1978 under the then-president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
Since then it has grown and last year's rather lavish affair saw Sarkozy and his wife play host to 7,500 invitees among them government ministers, ambassadors from other countries, foreign dignitaries and prominent French celebrities.
The total cost for staging the event was revealed to have been €732,826 or around €100 per person.
Bastille Day is a national holiday in France marking the storming of the Parisian prison of the same name in 1789 which sparked the French revolution.
So much so that when he "found a cigarette butt" in her room last week, he hit her, to such an extent that she was unable to go to work for eight days.
Najlae decided to file a complaint against her brother.
But as Stéphanie Revillard, a friend who encouraged Najlae to go to the local police explained, rather than being seen as the victim, the 19-year-old found herself being questioned about her status here in France as she didn't have the required identity papers.
And that detention quickly led to her deportation as the police contacted the local préfecture, an "expulsion order" was signed and Najlae put on a 'plane bound for Morocco.
Once there, she was taken into custody once again, this time for having "illegally fled her country" five years ago.
She has since been released and is currently being looked after by the local branch of le Réseau éducation sans frontières, RESF.
Women's rights groups in France have been quick to react to Najlae's plight and criticised the speed with which she found herself sent back to Morocco.
"The deportation of Najlae, a young woman who was in distress, is abominable," said Dominique Tripet from the Orléans branch of Droits des Femmes.
Speaking to the national daily Libération by 'phone on Monday, Najlae described what life had been like since she returned to a country she hasn't seen since she was 14 and where she apparently doesn't know anyone.
"After remaining 24 hours in jail, some members of RESF came to collect me," she said.
"I don't understand how or why I'm here," she added.
Forget the financial crisis of last autumn and the promises made by bankers that lessons had been learnt and things would be different in the future.
The French bank BNP Paribas, one of this country's biggest, has announced second-quarter net profits of over €1.6 billion or 6.6 per cent and along with it of course come bonuses for its traders for a job well done.
And not just a couple of centimes scattered here and there, but a full €1 billion more than in 2008 according to the national daily, Libération.
It's a figure, although not denied by the bank, that isn't far off the mark as it admits in a written statement released in response to the article.
"Libération's calculations are close to the amount," it read. "But in any case at the moment they're only virtual bonuses because they won't actually be paid out until the end of the year depending on the results."
Oh well, that's all right then. They're just "virtual bonuses" and traders won't be taking home wallets stuffed to overflowing - well not quite yet.
But wait. There's more. As well as confirming the news, the bank actually justifies it too,
And it comes from none other than the BNP Paribas CEO himself, Baudouin Prot.
In an interview with the daily financial newspaper, La Tribune, Prot clearly doesn't see a problem admitting that the bank has plans to pay out bigger-than-expected bonuses.
"As far as paying bonuses to traders is concerned we have been one of the first banks in the world to respect scrupulously the recommendation of the G20," he said.
"For example, we intend to spread bonuses over several years and make them dependent on results and not revenue," he added
"Those are the principles we're going to apply for 2009."
Reassuring words indeed from a man who also insists that the "crisis has changed us".
Ah yes, as it proudly promotes itself on its official website, BNP Paribas really is La banque d'un monde qui change" or "The bank for a changing world".
Off to Dhaulagiri
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Here is a summer update. The weather has been quite rainy but the clouds
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*on how to blend in and*
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It's been a while since I have posted to Polly-Vous Francais! I am happy
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