French police on Sunday ended their practice of hiding plastic explosives in air passengers' luggage to train bomb-sniffing dogs after one such bag got lost, possibly ending up on a flight out of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.
WTF were they thinking? Isn't there a better way to train the dogs without making innocent people unwittingly carry plastique?
posted by Vidiot
on Dec 5, 2004 -
34 comments
She claimed to be a sporting champion whose brave and public battle against cancer turned her into a national hero across France.
But when
Florence le Vot was asked to become the patron of a charity to tackle the disease her conscience finally got the better of her.
posted by sgt.serenity
on Feb 17, 2004 -
10 comments
French President Suggests Banning Religious Symbols From the
Washington Post: "French President Jacques Chirac asked parliament on Wednesday for a law banning Islamic head scarves and other religious insignia in public schools ... 'Secularism is one of the great successes of the Republic,' Chirac said in an address to the nation. 'It is a crucial element of social peace and national cohesion. We cannot let it weaken.' Chirac said he would push for a law to be enacted in time for the school year that begins next autumn. Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes would fall under the ban.
Man, just when I thought we could start referring to "
freedom fries" as "french fries" again.
posted by monkey-mind
on Dec 17, 2003 -
74 comments
Another great French prison escape. Two members of an international drug smuggling ring hijack a helicopter, abseil into the prison exercise yard, and resuce a third man. Also, “last month, a commando-style gang used plastic explosives and a rocket launcher to blow its way into a prison near Paris and free a convict serving a sentence for organized crime. In a separate attack, men brandishing what turned out to be a fake rocket launcher freed another crime kingpin from a prison in Borgo on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.” In August,
a man secretly replaced his brother, a Basque separatist leader, in prison.
posted by Mo Nickels
on Apr 14, 2003 -
7 comments
Now, this is just odd... The case, which has shocked France, came to light on Saturday with police saying the 19-year-old man had been beaten with a baton, burnt with an iron, raped, had his nose smashed, his ears half torn off and starved.
I have read of some strange stories of people taking advantage of others, though this strikes me as odd. Again, those questions of
WHY smack you in the forehead!
posted by Kodel
on Sep 2, 2002 -
11 comments
Is this the big one? With some 18,000 sick and over 700 people having died of the flu in a country the size of France over the past couple of months, I find it odd that the media seems obsesessed with the US / Iraq thing and missing children.
The 1918 flu epidemic killed some 675,00 Americans alone, with a global tally in excess of 20 MILLION killed. Some of the photos taken back then
are pretty grim. It seems the power of influenza is that it (ahhem)
mutates and thats why it could once again be a big killer. Cynical as it might sound, as a race maybe we
need something like this to teach us that we've got a lot more in common with each other than skin colour and religion might otherwise lead us to believe.
ObDisclaimer: I'm unemployed right now, have maybe six months of canned goods in the flat; if this hits London, I ain't opening my door to nobody.
posted by Mutant
on Aug 30, 2002 -
22 comments
"I get a lot of questions like
'Why are you the King of France?' Hopefully, this document will help those who just don't understand the overwhelming obviousness of it all. Then they can stop living in denial."
posted by moz
on May 27, 2002 -
8 comments
French culture in crisis ? After the
Vivendi Universal french CEO
Jean-Marie Messier fired
Canal+ chairman Pierre Lescure yesterday,
many questions arise in
France. Will Vivendi, through Canal+, continue to help French cinema the way Canal+ did in the past ? Is this the last straw in a long series of acts and declarations from Vivendi's CEO against "Franco-French cultural exception" ? Has The Man finally won in France ? What's to happen in all the other countries were Vivendi (or any of the BigCo) basically
owns the culture through local companies ?
posted by XiBe
on Apr 17, 2002 -
10 comments
French politicians polish cultural credentials. France's presidential hopefuls have begun pledging to defend the country's cherished culture, hoping to drum up support from artists worried that American films and music will steamroll finer French productions.
This rhetoric makes it sound like American films are picking up guns to massacre poor defenseless French culture. Maybe American films are so successful because they give people something that the "finer French productions" don't, and if so, then is that such a horrible thing? After all, we are just giving the people what they want, right? And if that takes money away from more artsy productions, then whose fault is that anyway?
posted by epimorph
on Apr 8, 2002 -
15 comments
The Night They Invented Champagne... Tonight's the night for
Champagne. Meaning French. No other is as appropriate or necessary. If you know nothing - or a lot - about this most pleasant and aphrodisiac of all wines, you should still get more serious about it. The
Champagne Growers' Association has an excellent website where you can learn how to
chill,
open,
serve and properly
taste Champagne. They'll even send you four free, attractive little
notebooks to keep in your cocktail cabinet. The green
roll-down menus are all enlightening and to the point.
But don't think the French have all the experts. There's this amazing American website, called
IntoWine, put up by the
M2 Communications Wine Education Center, which is just as wise and, typically, more complete and snobbish.
Their
Champagne section is faultless. Compare cultures by noting how they
serve Champagne. Check out their full list of Champagne
houses and related
movies.
Happy New Year, MetaFilter!
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Dec 31, 2001 -
28 comments
Le Tour So, is there any chance the Tour De France will become more popular with US viewers? Or even that our own Tour will reach the interest levels displayed in Europe? I was absolutely on the edge of my seat during Armstrong's rush today, and I'm nothing of a biker.
posted by Kikkoman
on Jul 17, 2001 -
36 comments
