Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
For the last six days, she has barricaded herself inside her office in Paris to prevent her members from firing her. Ms Pujol, 61, part of a family which owns hotels and restaurants in the southern town of Carcassonne, winches bags of food up to her third-floor office on the end of a severed television cable.
Read more on French boss kidnaps herself to keep her job…
Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
The opposition Socialists comfortably topped the poll, with around 30 per cent of the vote nationwide, pushing Mr Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP, with around 27 per cent, into second place. The turnout was low, but if voting patterns are repeated in the second round next Sunday the centre-left and their Green and hard-left allies could win an unprecedented grand slam of all 22 regional councils in metropolitan France and the four councils overseas.
Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
According to the final opinion polls, the much-divided and quarrelsome main opposition party, the Socialists, will replace Mr Sarkozy’s centre-right as the most popular single political force in France. In alliance with a booming Green movement, the centre-left seems certain to win 20 of the 22 French regions in the second round of the elections next weekend.
Read more on Embattled Sarkozy facing new blow at hands of French voters…
Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
The French first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, said last night that she “trusted” her presidential husband “never” to have affairs. Good for her. And for him. But why is that news?
Read more on Sarkozy rumour: end of the affair? or a cruel hoax via Twitter?…
Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
The Algerian government has formally protested to Paris about a poster which associates its flag with Islamisme, or radical forms of Islam. The poster shows France covered by an Algerian flag and a forest of mosque minarets. The slogan reads: “Non à l’Islamisme”.
Read more on Le Pen infuriates Algeria by draping France with its flag…
Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
The film, which has won glowing tributes from advance viewers, tells the story of the arrest of 13,000 Parisian Jews, including 4,000 children, by French police and gendarmes in July 1942. The Jews, mostly French-born and deeply integrated into Parisian life, were herded into a giant cycling stadium, the Vélodrome d’Hiver, or Vél d’Hiv, close to the Eiffel Tower. Almost all of them died in Nazi death or concentration camps.
Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
The film, which has won glowing tributes from advance viewers, tells the story of the arrest of 13,000 Parisian Jews, including 4,000 children, by French police and gendarmes in July 1942. The Jews, mostly French-born and deeply integrated into Parisian life, were herded into a giant cycling stadium, the Vélodrome d’Hiver, or Vél d’Hiv, close to the Eiffel Tower. Almost all of them died in Nazi death or concentration camps.
Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
On the first visit by a French leader to Rwanda for 25 years, Mr Sarkozy did not formally apologise. Nor did he accept allegations that France had played an active role in training and arming the Hutu militias and troops who led massacres of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Read more on Sarkozy admits France’s role in Rwandan genocide…
Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
A campaign to discourage young people from smoking shows male and female teenagers kneeling in front of a man, as if being forced to have oral sex. A cigarette takes the place of the man’s sexual organ. The caption reads: “Smoking is to be a slave to tobacco.”
Read more on French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters…
Author: By John Lichfield in Paris
The French actress and performer on Channel 4’s Eurotrash, Lolo Ferrari, best known for her artificially enlarged 52in bust, has died of “natural causes”, her lawyer said yesterday.
Read more on Lolo Ferrari, soft porn star of Channel 4, dies…
