News

France stands firm on scarf ban

Speaking on Radio France Inter, Francois Fillon said the state would be ready to expel any girl who wore a headscarf to a state school.

“I will personally ensure that there are no exceptions, the Republic will stand firm,” Mr Fillon said.

He urged leaders of Muslim groups not to inflame and politicise the issue.

Religious symbols

France’s Muslim groups, who represent some of the country’s estimated five million Muslims, responded angrily when the ban on headscarves and other overt religious symbols in state schools became law in March.

Proponents of the ban on religious insignia in the classroom argue it equally applies to Jewish skullcaps and Christian crucifixes.

Lance Armstrong Currently Fourth in Tour de France

The Tour de France is in the midst of its second longest stage and enters
the French countryside from Belgium with five-time champion Lance Armstrong
in fourth place.

The
riders are traveling from Waterloo to Wasquehal in northeastern France.
This stage covers 210 kilometers over mostly flat ground. When the stage
began, Thor Husvold of Norway was wearing the leader’s yellow jersey eight
seconds ahead of former overall leader Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland.

Thrills, spills at Tour de France with more to come

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France Telecom Arm to Go Ahead With IPO

France Telecom SA’s phone directories unit, Pages Jaunes, said Tuesday it will go ahead with one of the largest initial public offerings seen in Paris in two years despite difficult market conditions.

The plan to float Pages Jaunes – “Yellow Pages” in French – values the company at between 3.6 billion euros and 4.2 billion euros ($4.4 billion to $5.1 billion).

“I still believe the underlying value of Pages Jaunes is largely over 4 billion euros,” said Michel Combes, France Telecom’s CFO and chairman of the Pages Jaunes supervisory board.

Disgraced Ex-CEO, No Longer Master of the World

PARIS (Reuters) – Jean-Marie Messier, who once celebrated a transatlantic mega-merger with a sound-and-light show in a courtyard of the Louvre, awoke on Tuesday in a Paris police cell.

The man who once dubbed himself J6M — “Jean Marie-Messier, me myself master of the world” — and transformed a dowdy water utility into a media empire at a cost of $50 billion, turned himself over to police on Monday as they carry out an insider trading probe.

Messier was set to spend a second night in a fraud squad cell on Tuesday, a far cry from the $18 million New York loft he lived in as Vivendi chief.

France’s Zidane destroys the evening for Eriksson

Portugal (AP)After 90 minutes, England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson was leading France 1-0 – and then Zinedine Zidane struck with a free kick and game-winning penalty in three minutes of injury time.

France 2, England 1.

“Suddenly, one free kick and one penalty destroyed the evening for us,” Eriksson said. “Football is tough sometimes. We are a little bit down in the dressing room, but it is important tomorrow morning that we keep our heads up.”

Instead of leading Group B, England is at the bottom with two group matches remaining against Switzerland and Croatia.

France head Euro rankings

Reigning European Champions France are ranked second, behind Brazil, with Spain one place behind in third.

Holland are ranked joint-fifth with Argentina and Turkey, who failed to qualify for Portugal.

Despite their poor form in their run-up Germany go into the tournament ranked in eighth place, while England are in 13th spot.

The USA continue to hold a top-10 spot in ninth place, while Cameroon are the top-ranked African nation in 12th.

France stages funeral for 200-year-old royal heart

French royalists staged a pageant-filled funeral yesterday for a tiny, rock-hard relic they hailed as the heart cut from Louis XVII, who died of tuberculosis at 10 in a filthy revolutionary prison.

A hearse brimming with lilies – the symbol of the French crown – delivered a crystal vase containing the heart to the Saint-Denis Basilica. There, it was placed in a royal crypt containing the remains of Louis XVII’s parents, Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI.

After 200 years of mystery surrounding the boy’s fate, DNA tests have convinced many historians that the relic passed secretly from person to person is truly the royal heart.

World Leaders Gather in France to Remember D-Day

CAEN, France (Reuters) – Seventeen world leaders and thousands of World War II veterans gathered to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy Sunday under blue skies and amid tight security.

The heads of state and government attending the ceremonies in Normandy have underlined the importance of reconciliation as well as remembrance as they prepare for one of the biggest security operations staged on French soil.

Some 30,000 soldiers were deployed in the area around the Normandy beaches and army helicopters patrolled overhead. Combat jets were ready to shoot down any aircraft violating the no-fly zone around the event if requested to do so by Paris.

French move to annul gay 'wedding'

Stephane Chapin, dressed in a white suit and dabbing tears of joy from his eyes, and Bertrand Charpentier, in deep gray pinstripes, embraced, kissed and smiled broadly after the brief civil ceremony in the Begles town hall in southwestern France, near Bordeaux.

The justice minister quickly said that the Bordeaux court would be petitioned to declare the marriage null, while the interior minister said the mayor who performed the ceremony — a Green party politician known as a provocateur — would be sanctioned.

Begles Mayor Noel Mamere defiantly wore the blue, white and red ribbons — France’s national colors — that are conferred on mayors as representatives of the state and used during all official functions.