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Writers issue cartoon row warning

The writers say the violence sparked by the publication of cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad shows the need to fight for secular values and freedom.

The statement is published in Charlie Hebdo, one of several European papers to reprint the caricatures.

The images, first published in Denmark, have angered Muslims across the world.

One showed the Prophet Muhammad, whose depiction is banned in Islam, as a terrorist bomber.

Many newspapers defended their decision to reprint the cartoons on the grounds of freedom of expression.

‘Global threat’

French deal creates energy giant

The new 72bn euro ($85.3bn; £48.9bn) operation will be 34%-owned by the French state and is expected to deliver annual cost savings of 500m euros.

Italy has complained strongly that the merger is aimed at blocking a possible takeover of Suez by Italian firm Enel.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called on the European Union to intervene.

Italy’s Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti is expected to meet with the EU’s Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes in Brussels on Tuesday.

Other Italian government officials also have also been voicing their concerns about French protectionism.

French 'haven of politeness' changing

The French government had a simple solution for any lack of respect among the young – send in the riot police.

Or at least that was the ambitious French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy’s solution.

Back in October last year, he announced plans to deploy hundreds of riot police in difficult neighbourhoods to crack down on crime, and offer reassurance to householders.

“Do you want us to get rid of this trash?” he asked a housewife as he toured the tower blocks of the Paris suburbs, referring to youths who had been causing trouble in the area.

A miscarriage of justice calls an entire system into question

IT HAS been a landmark case in French judicial history in more ways than one. Since mid-January, a parliamentary inquiry has been studying one of the country’s biggest post-war miscarriages of justice: how six innocent people, jailed for years in connection with a paedophile ring, were acquitted on appeal only last December, after it turned out that key evidence against them had been made up; and how seven other innocents spent months behind bars. The testimony of the acquitted has been televised live, gripping the public.

Chirac warns media over cartoons

Mr Chirac said any subject matter that could hurt other people’s convictions should be avoided.

But Denmark’s prime minister told the BBC that it was not for the government to censor the media.

Another French publication printed the controversial cartoons on Wednesday, as protests continue in the Muslim world.

Four people were killed and up to 20 injured in a protest by about 400 people in the Afghan town of Qalat.

The deaths bring to 11 the number of people killed in Afghan protests over the cartoons in recent days.

French weekly prints more cartoons

The latest edition of Charlie Hebdo, featuring all 12 Danish drawings together with several new religious cartoons by its own contributors, went on sale today after a Paris court rejected a legal bid by French Muslim organisations to prevent publication.

Charlie Hebdo’s cover shows Muhammad covering his eyes with his hands, saying: “It’s hard to be loved by idiots”. The illustration is by the magazine’s in-house cartoonist, Cabu, and the headline reads: “Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists.”

Several Muslim organisations, including the French Council of the Muslim Faith and the mosques of Paris and Lyon, had initiated court proceedings against Charlie Hebdo for alleged “racial and religious insult”.

France sets slavery memorial day

PARIS, Jan. 30 (Xinhuanet) — France is to make May 10 a memorial day to mark the abolition of slavery, French President Jacques Chirac announced on Monday.

“From this year I would like mainland France to honour the memory of slaves and commemorate the abolition of slavery,” the president said in an address to a government-appointed Committee for the Memory of Slavery.

“Slavery fed racism. When people tried to justify the unjustifiable, that was when the first racist theories were elaborated. Racism is a crime of the heart and the spirit … which is why the memory of slavery remains a living wound for someof our fellow citizens,” he said.

Computer decodes Mona Lisa's smile

The findings? Mona Lisa was 83 percent happy, 9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful, and 2 percent angry, according to the British weekly “New Scientist.”

Still, scientists will probably never know what made her feel the way she did.

The computer software, developed by Nicu Sebe at the University of Amsterdam and researchers at the University of Illinois, examines key facial features, the journal reports.

Sebe loaded average, neutral expressions of female faces into a database, which the software used to compare the painting against, says the “New Scientist” Web site.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece is housed at the Louvre, in Paris, France, and is the museum’s top draw.

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.