Germany in Lena fever after Eurovision win

Germany is still celebrating its win last weekend in the Eurovision Song Contest, when Lena sang her way to victory with "Satellite" and there's even talk of her representing the country again next year when it hosts the competition.

Anyone who followed the Eurovision Song Contest held in the Norwegian capital Oslo last weekend surely knows by now that the winner was the German entry "Satellite" sung by Lena.



As she gets used to the "Lena epidemic" as the early evening magazine Explosiv on RTL television describes the reaction within Germany, her mentor, television presenter Stefan Raab, is already suggesting that she should be the country's representative at next year's musical jamboree.

"There's only one possibility, morally, musically and ethically," said Raab, himself a former Eurovision contestant, at a press conference in Lena's home city of Hanover earlier this week.

"And that of course is that this year's winner defends her title in her own country next year, "he added before turning to the winner and asking what she thought of the idea.

"Absolutely," she responded.

Whatever plans Lena and Raab might have for next year, right now the 19-year-old "Arbiturientin" (or high school graduate) as she's frequently referred to in the domestic media, and daughter of a former West German ambassador to the Soviet Union daughter, Andreas Meyer-Landrut, seems to be "enjoying the moment".

If Explosiv is to be believed the "Lena epidemic" is soon likely to spread to the rest of Europe.

With the title under her belt and her single already hitting number one in several countries, there has been praise for her performance from around the continent with some saying her win brought Eurovision into the 21st century.

The national French daily Aujourd'hui en France - Le Parisien described her as "the pretty brunette with long wavy hair in a little black dress, a tattoo on the inside of her left arm and a small black cross around her neck" who "enchanted audiences and professionals around the continent."

The Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung said of the Lena "she neither performed the best song nor had the best song or perfect English, but the mix of charm, beauty and joy of singing convinced audiences and juries across Europe."

The Irish Times also commented on Lena's simple and refreshing performance.

"The presentation of her song was pared-back: she performed on a bare stage with four backing singers," wrote the paper's Karen Fricker.

"Her onstage manner was informal, at times gangly and awkward, and the lyrics of her song express a young person’s real-life experience of love rather than expected platitudes about beauty and world peace."

Even the BBC, far from sulking or smarting from the UK's plum last finish, had words of praise for the winning entry, saying that "Satellite" had "reclaimed the contest's musical credibility" and was "the first contemporary pop hit Eurovision has produced in decades."

"Lena had no complicated choreography, no inexplicable backing dancers and she wore a simple black dress - the sort of thing you could pick up tomorrow in any high street store," wrote Mark Savage, the BBC News entertainment reporter.

"Her refreshingly direct performance reflected a vivacious, playful personality."

A "holy game" of football

The club football season might be over in Europe and supporters of the so-called "beautiful game" preparing to follow the World Cup which kicks off in a couple of weeks time, but one important match remained to be played last weekend - the Clericus Cup final

As Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency reports, the match was in a sense the Catholic Church's very own version of the event to be hosted next month in South Africa and one in which "both teams could claim to have God on their side."

Players in prayer at the end of the match, Agence France Presse TV screen shot

The Clericus Cup is a tournament which has been contested annually since 2007 and is made up of teams whose players are all priests or seminarists from around the world attending the Vatican City's Papal colleges.

Saturday's final (there are no tournament games on a Sunday) was a repeat of last year's with holders Redemptoris Mater taking on rivals Pontifical North American College; the Italians once again running out the winners with the only goal of the game.

While the president of the Cup, Monsignor Claudio Paganini admitted that there had been several on-the pitch incidents and that perhaps not all the players had always "behaved entirely correctly" the competition had shown another side of the Catholic Church - away from the scandals that have dominated recent news stories.

http://www.france24.com/fr/20100530-football-avant-le-mondial-leglise-catholique-a-deja-son-champion

"At a time when the Church is being attacked over issues of paedophilia we're showing here how games and the body are values and not limitations," he told AFPTV.

"The human body should be used to give glory to God, not for acts of deviance."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlDslMckFCg

Redemptoris Mater have appeared in each of the four finals that have taken place since the Cup began in 2007.

The only time they have failed to lift the trophy was in 2008 when they lost out to Mater Ecclesiae.

Remembering the victims of Air France flight 447

A memorial service will be held in Paris on Tuesday for families of those who died in the Air France flight 447 crash last year.

It'll take place at the Parc Floral in the French capital and will be followed by the inauguration of a monument at the Père Lachaise cemetery

The commemorations will be private and reserved for the families of the 216 passengers and 12 crew members who died exactly a year ago when the Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

But on the first anniversary of what was the worst accident in the airline's history, those whose loved ones perished are frustrated that so little progress has been made in determining the cause of the accident.

As the weekly news magazine Le Point says, the families looking for explanations are "caught in game of ping pong between different hypotheses; from Air France for example whose objective is to show that there was a fault in the design or construction of the aircraft (an Airbus A330-200 ) to Airbus which has suggested that the pilots were poorly trained or the 'plane poorly maintained."

"The assumptions," says Le Point "outnumber the certainties."

For Alain Jakubowicz, one of the lawyers representing the families, there has been a general unwillingness on the part of the investigating authorities to want to shed light on what really happened.

"In two of the reports released by the Bureau d'enquêtes et d'analyses (BEA, the French government agency responsible for investigating aviation accidents) there's no analysis of the autopsies carried out on the bodies that have been recovered," he's quoted as saying in another weekly news magazine L'Express.

"Investigators also downplay the role of the 'planes (speed) sensors," he added.

"Is there really any evidence that there's a desire by the investigators to provide information about the drama?"

It's that apparent lack of transparency which is most frustrating for many of the families according to Françoise Fouquet who lost her daughter and son-in-law in the accident.

"Everybody wants to know the truth and nobody can afford the luxury of not knowing," she told reporters on the eve of Tuesday's commemorations.

"The memory remains a nightmare and I have the impression that the suffering (of those who lost loved ones) has increased since the accident."