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Emily the stowaway cat travels home to the US from Paris in style

Emily the cat is back after flying home in the lap of luxury. The curious cat who wound up traveling to France in a cargo container touched down at the Milwaukee airport on Thursday, greeted by her family and a horde of reporters.

A Continental cargo agent handed her over to 9-year-old Nick
Herndon, son of the cat’s owners, Donny and Lesley McElhiney. Emily meowed and pawed at reporters’ microphones as the family answered questions.

“She’ll be held onto a lot all the way home. And then when we get home, too, she’ll be cuddled a lot,” Donny McElhiney said.

Her sumptuous return in business class on a Continental Airlines flight was a sharp departure from her trip to France where she was found thin and thirsty but still alive.

Report: Two CIA Flights Stopped in France

PARIS Dec 2, 2005 — Two flights chartered by the CIA made stopovers in France in 2002 and 2005, French newspaper Le Figaro said Friday, adding to likely questions facing U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visits Europe next week.

A French Foreign Ministry official said authorities were checking

with civil aviation authorities whether the flights, first mentioned Thursday in the New York Times and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, did indeed take place.

“It is perfectly possible there were flights,” said spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei. The ministry had previously said it had no knowledge of any CIA flights in France.

France launches news network to rival CNN, BBC

President Jacques Chirac, addressing his cabinet, said that France “must be at the forefront of the global battle of images, that’s why I am resolved that our country should have an international news channel,” according to government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope.

The French International News Network (CFII), known colloquially as CNN a la francaise will be run by a joint company owned by the leading private French television broadcaster TF1 and the public broadcaster France Televisions, Communications Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres told a media conference.

First face transplant performed in France

Doctors in France said they had performed the world’s first partial face transplant, forging into a risky medical frontier with their operation on a woman disfigured by a dog bite.

The 38-year-old woman, who wants to remain anonymous, had a nose, lips and a chin grafted onto her face from a brain-dead donor whose family gave consent. The operation, performed Sunday, included a surgeon already famous for transplant breakthroughs, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard.

“The patient’s general condition is excellent and the transplant looks normal,” said a statement issued Wednesday from the hospital in the northern city of Amiens where the operation took place. Dubernard would not discuss the surgery, but confirmed that it involved the nose, lips and chin.

France blamed Brit spies for Rainbow Warrior bombing

The Times newspaper in London has reported that
documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher was infuriated by the campaign of
“misinformation and smears” suggesting that MI6 bombed the Greenpeace
flagship in Auckland and framed French secret agents, or that MI6 knew
in advance of the mission.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, then a Foreign
Office minister, told UK diplomats in Paris to demand an end to media
reports, but they continued to appear.

Germany's Merkel calls for stronger ties with US, smaller EU states

BERLIN (AFX) – New German Chancellor Angela
Merkel has called for closer ties with smaller EU states and the United States, in an interview to be published Monday on her foreign policy goals.

‘Relations with the smaller member states of
the European Union will be intensified,’ Merkel, who took office
Tuesday, told news weekly Focus.

‘And there will be a more intense transatlantic relationship. But that is not intended as a message against anyone.’

Cold spell brings chaos to Europe

Ski slopes in Belgium and Germany opened early after as much as 30cm of snow fell overnight in some countries, while in Paris, the Eiffel Tower closed to the public for four hours after a morning snowfall made it too slippery to climb.

The winter storm hit hard in The Netherlands, where high winds and sudden freezing temperatures caused havoc on the national rail and road networks. Hundreds of stranded Dutch commuters spent Friday night in temporary Red Cross shelters at train stations, theatres and more than a dozen other locations.