FRANCAIS AVEC MONSIEUR CALDWELL

from the NY Times By ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: April 27, 2007 PARIS, April 26 — No matter who wins the presidency of France on May 6, life in the grand, presidential Élysée Palace is destined to change. There is no future for the role of dutiful partner filled for the past dozen years by Bernadette Chirac, who as first lady has run charities, held dinners and served as a local official in the farming area of Corrèze. Both presidential candidates are members of unconventional couples. Ségolène Royal , the Socialist Party candidate, is not married to the father of her four children, François Hollande. But more than that, they are potential political rivals. As head of the Socialist Party, he was nearly the candidate himself, and says he will try to run in 2012 if Ms. Royal loses this time. “Certainly, without doubt,” he said Wednesday in an interview on a train from Paris to Nantes. “It’s also a competition between us.” He added that even if Ms. Royal won the election, he would not be

from the NY Times By KATRIN BENNHOLD Published: April 26, 2007 PARIS, April 25 — The defeated “third man” in the race for the French presidency seems to be calling the shots ever since he lost on Sunday. On Wednesday the candidate, François Bayrou, who won 18 percent of the vote in the first round and has been aggressively courted by both the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal , and the conservative front-runner, Nicolas Sarkozy , held a one-and-a-half-hour news conference where he unleashed a torrent of criticism against both candidates and refused to endorse either of them. In a sign that Mr. Bayrou intends to retain some influence in the contest, he said he would accept an invitation from Ms. Royal for a public debate before her May 6 runoff against Mr. Sarkozy. Ms. Royal reacted by proposing that Mr. Bayrou join her Friday when she meets the regional press, but appeared to back away when he insisted the debate be televised. If a debate occurs, it would present an unusual challenge

from the NY Times By ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: April 24, 2007 PARIS, April 23 — The French presidential race is on — for the vote of the center. The campaign entered a new phase on Monday, as the winners of the first round, Nicolas Sarkozy on the right and Ségolène Royal on the left, began a battle for the 6.8 million voters who chose the path down the middle. Taken together, the two winners scooped up 57 percent of the vote in the first round on Sunday. But François Bayrou, the legislator and farmer who heads the centrist Union for French Democracy, came in a strong third with more than 18 percent of the vote, and those votes are up for grabs. “The voters of the center control the election,” said Stéphane Rozès, a director of the CSA polling institute. “The challenge is not knowing where they will go.” go to http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/world/europe/24france.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fFrance&oref=slogin for the full story including

from the NY Times By ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: April 23, 2007 PARIS, April 22 — Nicolas Sarkozy , the conservative, and Ségolène Royal , the Socialist, won the first round of the presidential election on Sunday, setting up a classic left-right contest next month between two candidates with competing visions of how to govern France . Whoever is elected will also usher in a new generation of leadership: For the first time, France will have an elected president who did not come of age during World War II. With more than 99 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Sarkozy was leading with about 30.7 percent of the vote, and Ms. Royal had about 25.2 percent. François Bayrou, the centrist who vowed to plot a new, conciliatory way of governing, came in a distant third with about 18.4 percent A field of nine other candidates, including the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen , who came in second in the first round in 2002, captured the remaining vote. The balloting on Sunday was marked by high anxiety, sunny

from news.france.com http://news.bbc.co.uk posted by Editors 13 hours ago view profile Centre-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy will face Socialist Segolene Royal in the run-off of France's presidential election on 6 May, results indicate. With most votes counted in Sunday's first round, Mr Sarkozy had nearly 31%, with Ms Royal, bidding to be France's first woman president, on 25%. Centrist Francois Bayrou got 18%, and far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen almost 11%. Voting throughout the day reached record numbers, with turnout put at 85% - the highest for nearly 50 years. On a bright spring day, disillusionment with politicians and their promises did not translate into apathy, reports the BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris .

from the NY Times By ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: April 20, 2007 PARIS, April 19 — Nicolas Sarkozy , the conservative candidate and front-runner for president, evoked his immigrant roots and quoted Martin Luther King Jr. Ségolène Royal , the Socialist, pledged to usher in 21st-century-style Socialism and never to kneel before President Bush. François Bayrou, the centrist, declared that he loved France more than he loved power. And Jean-Marie Le Pen , the head of the ultra-right National Front, branded all three of his main opponents worthless hypocrites. Fanning out to the far corners of France, all but one of the dozen French presidential candidates held their final major campaign rallies on Thursday night, offering starkly different personal styles and visions for governing. Every uttering, every nuance could be crucial. With the official end of the campaign on Friday and three days to go before the first round of voting, the French election is wrapped in tension and suspense, as the

from the NY Times By ALAN RIDING Published: April 14, 2007 PARIS, April 13 — Over the last two decades, as successive French governments have poured money into renovating the Louvre and building new museums, an opera house and a national library in Paris, lovers of orchestral music here grew resentful. Even with the vocal backing of the conductor and composer Pierre Boulez , their insistent calls for construction of a state-of-the-art concert hall went unheeded. Now, just weeks before President Jacques Chirac leaves office, their impatience has been rewarded with the unveiling of an eye-catching design for a $260 million concert hall by the French architect Jean Nouvel. The Philharmonie de Paris, as it will be called, is scheduled to open in the Parc de la Villette, in northeast Paris, in 2012. for the complete story including photos, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/arts/design/14hall.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fFrance&oref=slogin

from the NY Times By ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: April 11, 2007 PARIS, April 10 — Nicolas Sarkozy , the conservative candidate for president, suggests that pedophilia is most likely a genetic flaw; Ségolène Royal , the Socialist, does not seem to know that Taliban extremists are no longer running the government of Afghanistan; and Jean-Marie Le Pen , the ultrarightist, recommends masturbation instead of free condoms to meet young people’s sexual needs. With 12 days to go before the first round of France ’s presidential election, the campaign has entered a phase of improvisation and even silliness that reflects the absence of any single defining issue and a frenzied competition to win over the country’s large bloc of undecided voters. Every twist seems important. Monday was the “official” opening of the French campaign, in which all 12 candidates put up campaign posters across the country and began broadcasting short prepared free spots, of exactly the same length, on state-run televisi

from the NY Times By G. THOMAS SIMS Published: April 11, 2007 FRANKFURT, April 10 — The French luxury goods retailer PPR bid about $7 billion on Tuesday for Puma , the German sporting goods company, promising to keep its chief executive, Jochen Zeitz, at the helm of the company he turned around. The question is whether Puma investors will continue to show the same confidence in Mr. Zeitz, who emphatically endorsed the deal, and sell their shares to PPR, or whether they will resist and put Europe on course for yet another cross-border takeover battle. PPR, famous for its Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent brands, said it had acquired a 27.1 percent stake in Puma for 1.4 billion euros ($1.87 billion), and that it would offer 330 euros ($441) each for the remaining shares, valuing the company at $7.08 billion. But the share price rose 29.68 euros ($40), or 9.4 percent, on Tuesday to 343.93 euros ($460) on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and some bankers were already recommending that shareholder

from the NY Times By ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: April 4, 2007 PARIS, April 3 — For France’s Socialists, among others, the coming presidential election could descend into a nightmare like last fall’s in Florida. This is the first presidential election in France to use paperless computer voting. As many as 1.5 million of the 44.5 million registered voters are expected to cast their ballots electronically in more than 80 municipalities around the country. But with election day less than three weeks away, opposition to the electronic voting machines has grown, in part because a small percentage of them are made by the same American company whose machines were involved in a bitterly disputed Congressional election in Florida last November. “We have doubts about the reliability of these machines,” Gilles Savary, a spokesman for Ségolène Royal , the Socialist Party candidate, said in an interview. “I don’t want to lecture America. But we don’t want France to fall into the same Kafkaesque bal

from Yahoo News by Julie Charpentrat Tues April 3 - 8:18 am et ON BOARD TGV V150, eastern France (AFP) - France's TGV train set a new world speed on rails Tuesday, hitting 574.8 kilometres (357.2 miles) per hour on a stretch of track in eastern France. The experimental version of the Traine a Grande Vitesse (TGV), equipped with two supercharged locomotives and extra-large wheels, easily beat the 515.3 kph set by a TGV in 1990. The TGV narrowly missed the overall world train speed record of 581kph (360.8 mph) reached in 2003 by a Japanese magnetic levitation, or Maglev, train. Manufacturer Alstom arranged the exploit in order to test its latest engineering designs in extreme conditions, and also to display the TGV's technological prowess to clients in a growing world market. go to http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070403/wl_afp/francetransportrail_070403121835 for the complete story including a slide show