Two Scientists from France take half the Nobel Prize for HIV discovery
October 25, 2008
French scientists who discovered the HIV-AIDS virus share Nobel Prize for Medicine
Françoise Barré -Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier of France have been awarded the Nobel prize for Medicine for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which has since killed 25 million people since it was identified by the Frenchmen in the 1980s. They shared this year’s Nobel with Harald zur Hausen of Germany, who won for his discovery of the human papilloma viruses that can cause cervical cancer. The popular drug Gardasil was developed to combat the this virus.
French scientists Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier were cited for identifying HIV 25 years ago in early and late stages of infection from lymph nodes. Other scientists in France and around the world later built on that first step to learn how HIV replicates and damages cells. These discoveries led in turn to a way to screen the blood supply, protecting more people from contracting AIDS from blood transfusions, and to provide life-saving treatments.
The Nobel Prize to the French scientists is a decisive moral and real victory for Montagnier in a long-running dispute over who first discovered and identified the virus. The other person to claim first discovery is Dr. Robert Gallo, then of the U.S. National Cancer Institute. But the Nobel committee came down firmly in favor of the scientists from France.
Medicine is traditionally the first of the Nobel prizes to be awarded every year. Alfred Nobel, a Swedish man credited with inventing dynamite, created the prizes in his will in the areas of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The economics prize was created by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.
The prizes the scientists will receive include $1.4 million, a diploma and an invitation to the gala awards ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on Dec. 10, 2008. That date is the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.
Nun dubbed France’s Mother Teresa dies at 99
October 24, 2008
French activist nun Soeur Emmanuelle who stood up to the Vatican and many Popes, passes away in Callian, France
A French socialite who took holy orders at the age of 23 saw her long and colorful life come to a peaceful end on Monday. Soeur Emmanuelle, whom French President Nicolas Sarkozy called everyone’s sister, was a tireless advocate for the poor and was often compared to Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
However, the French nun often created controversy. She supported married priests and urged Pope John paul II to apporve birth control pills for the poor rag-collectors of Egypt whom she served. Soeur Emmanuelle took care of the ppor of both Christian and Muslim faiths with no partiality, epitomizing the “god is love” inscribed on the door of her simple home in Cairo. She shamed the audience at a lackluster fundraiser in Switzerland into giving more money by threatening to rob a bank if donations did not get better. To the consternation of her Vatican bosses she even revealed a love affair early in her life.
Born Madeleine Cinquin, shes took the vows of the sisters of Notre-Dame de Sion and became Sister Emmanuelle when she ws 23 years old.
While Soeur Emmanuelle often posed challenges for th Vatican during her lifetime, Soeur Emmanuelle was hailed by the Vatican on Monday in response to the news of her passing as a “personification of Christian charity, whose actions, like those of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, erased national frontiers”.
Soeur Emmaunelle officially retired twice, but did much of her life work during these so-called retirements. In actuality, she worked almost up unti lthe day of her death, which was 26 days shy of her 100th birthday.
Restaurants in France bitten by tight economy
October 17, 2008
In Paris and all over France, some restaurants starve for business.
Profits for French restaurants and cafés have dropped 20% in 2008. Worse yet, almost 3,000 restaurants and cafés across France closed their doors in the first half of 2008—a 30% rise over the same period last year. In a notoriously difficult business, the economy in France and around the world has made it even more difficult for restaurants to succeed, as more people in France sacrifice the luxury of eating out and more tourists are staying home.
It amounts to a full-blown restaurant crisis in France, according to François Simon, the much-feared restaurant critic of the French newspaper Le Figaro who first broke the story.
Some restaurant owners blame the problems on the new ban on smoking in restaurants and cafés, which took effect on January 1, 2008. While the ban has certainly altered the long-held habits of the French, the timing of the restaurant slowdown with the smoking ban is seen by most as an unfortunate coincidence, or at best a perfect storm. French diners already feeling the economic pinch have a further disincentive to eat out at restaurants when they know they can’t even enjoy a cigarette after their meal. But this alone does not account for the steep decline in restaurant customers.
At the same time as French people are feeling the effects of the tight economy in their own disposable income, prices at restaurants in France have had to rise on account of rising wholesale food prices.
The rise of the euro against the dollar is also a culprit, as American tourists are finding travel to France too expensive, and even those who do travel to France have to watch their budgets more closely. Restaurant prices in Paris, considered high even before the fall of the dollar, are now astronomical for Americans, who may easily pay the equivalent of $50 for a simple lunch in a café and hundreds for a good dinner in a fine restaurant. More and more savvy American tourists are fighting the high cost of travel in France by renting private apartments, which are not only cheaper than hotels but also have kitchens for preparing simple meals at home, obviating the need to have all their meals out. Of course, that’s all business taken away from restaurants and cafés.
The French financial insurance company Euler Hermes SFAC issued a report recently that said that 1,782 traditional French restaurants went bankrupt in the first six months of 2008—a 25% increase over the same period last year. Victims are mostly low or mid-range neighborhood restaurants, rather than high-priced gourmet establishments. The problems are greatest for restaurants offering menus at €16 to €30.
The hit for cafés in France—a 56% rise increase in bankruptcies—was even worse. Here the smoking ban is clearly to blame. What’s a cup of espresso without a cigarette?
Desperate for some relief, officials from restaurateurs’ trade body in France are begging the French government to deliver on its promise to persuade the EU to allow a cut in VAT on restaurant meals in France. A cut from 19.6% to 5.5% was pledged by former President Jacques Chirac six years ago. President Nicolas Sarkozy has revived the idea but it remains blocked in the EU, where other countries fear similar demands.
Tourism and high prices for locals in France isn’t the whole story, however. Many restaurant owners bemoan the changing eating habits of the French and their lessening interest in well-prepared food as convenience begins to trump quality in the French soul. Many younger people in France are no longer being brought up with the emphasis on fine cuisine and the enjoyment of food that was such a feature of the past.
Behavior in France has been changing in business as well. Where the civilzed business lunch, complete with wine, was once a way of life, now more people in France are acting more like Americans and bringing sandwiches to eat at their desks, both for economic reasons and time constraints as companies in France are forced to adapt to become more competitive in a global economy.
France First Lady Carla Bruni’s latest album: Gold or flop?
October 16, 2008
Huge discrepancies in sales numbers reported for Carla Bruni’s album released in July 2008
Already a celebrity in France and elsewhere in Europe in her own right, Carla Bruni made front pages worldwide when she married the President of France Nicolas Sarkozy. And her much-anticipated third album, Comme si de rien n’était , seemed to cause a huge splash, as much for its racy lyrics and subject as for its famous singer.
The album’s title translates to “As if nothing happened.” And now, three months later, some are saying the title is an apt one. Reports for sales numbers for Bruni’s album vary wildly, with the lowest reports suggesting the project was a bust, while the higher figures would put the album in the gold record category. Bruni’s CD has sold either 85,000 copies to French music-lovers or 175,000 copies, depending on how the sales are counted.
Her production company, Naïve, says the official industry figures are misleading, with sales figures being based on market research, which is often inaccurate, rather than actual sales numbers. The theory is that many people who actually purchased the album might not have admitted it to researchers who asked. According to these official industry figures, retail sales of the album in France have struggled to reach 85,000.
The more reliable figure, Naïve says, is the wholesale sales of Carla’s album to French stores and outlets – 175,000, enough to make it a “disque d’or” or gold record, and double the official figure. Of course, wholesale sales count what the stores bought, not what actual customers did. Only a check of the remaining inventory in stores in France would paint a true picture. But even if the higher figure is accurate, it still adds up to only 10% of the sales of Carla Bruni’s first album, released in 2002, which sold two million.
Bruni’s latest album caused much controversy when it was released in July, because of the propriety of a first lady of France recording music in the first place, perhaps, but especially because of the intimate, illicit and sometimes even illegal subject matter of some of the songs. Among the 14 tracks is a song called Ma Came(My Dope) – comparing love to an illegal drug. Written before she met Mr Sarkozy, the album was nevertheless dedicated to her new husband. On the track, Bruni sings: “You are my dope. More deadly than Afghan heroin. More dangerous than Colombian white powder,” adding: “My guy, I roll him up and smoke him.” In another song on the album the Italian former model sings: “I am a child. Despite my forty years. Despite my thirty lovers. A child.” It was public knowledge that Bruni had had some other famous lovers before her new husband, such as Mick Jagger, kevin Costner and even Donald Trump, but to be singing about them as a married woman, and married to the President of France, struck more than a few in France and elsewhere as more than a little inapporpriate.
Still, as some say, there is no such thing as bad publicity, and the racy nature of Bruni’s album garnered it a level of free buzz that many recording artists and labels would kill for. In view of this, even the higher sales numbers touted by recording label Naive are not especially impressive.
To generate more public enthusiam for the release in France and worldwide, Carla Bruni’s record label Naive made all 14 tracks of Comme si de rien ‘était available for a two hours per user on the internet. The strategy may have backfired — this may have enough to satiate the curiousity of many in France, who, having heard the “shocking” lyrics for themselves, then did not go on to buy the album, either in protest or out of simple lack of interest.
While some might cite Carla Bruni’s album’s quality for its poor performance, French critics at the time of its release would not have agreed. French newspaper Le Figaro in particular reviewed Bruni’s album in glowing terms, paying the ultimate compliment in comparing it to her earlier efforts: “In a word, it’s less America, more France, more Beatles.” Of course, they, too, may have been under the Carla Effect as the glamourous new First Lady of France was enjoying a honeymoon period with the world. Record buyers in France and worldwide quickly came down to earth when it was time to vote with their wallets.
Air France plans rival train to Eurostar
October 15, 2008
New high-speed train from Air France due to hit the rails in 2010
Good news for travellers between France and the UK. Very soon they will have more choices and possibly quicker trips and lower fares. Air France-KLM announced last month that it will offer high-speed train service between Paris and London starting in 2010. Service between Paris and Amsterdam is also planned, which will allow travellers to then connect to other trains going to other points in Europe.
The announcement comes in anticipation of the end of the monopoly held by Eurostar on the use of the rails and the Channel Tunnel in two years, when new “open access” laws take effect.
Not only will the new Air France train offer travellers more choice in train travel, the company also says it will be a time-saver.The trip from London to Paris could take less than two hours under Air France’s plan to bring a new generation of high-speed trains to the St. Pancras station in London, the most recently added stop on the Eurostar itinerary. The new Air France trains will be capable of a maximum speed of 224 mph, which is 38 mph faster than the current top speed of trains running to France.
When Eurostar launched its Paris-London train service, using the brand new Channel Tunnel, it was a novelty. Until then the only choices for travel between the two cities was either to fly to to take the long drive to Calais, the ferry to Dover and a drive or a train to London. Eurostar revolutionized travel by making it possible to go from the center of Paris to the center of London in about 4 hours by train. Over the years, as the technology of the French trains and the tracks were improved, travel time was cut to just over 2 hours 40 minutes.
Eurostar officials scoff at the claims of Air France that their new trains will cut the journey to under two hours, saying that the tracks are already at the limit as to the train speed they can accommodate.
Train travel has become the mode of choice for many travellers between Paris and London, both for convenience and price. As rising oil prices have hit airlines, trains have become comparatively more economical. Use of Eurostar jumped 18% in the first half of 2008. As far as convenience goes, Eurostar — and soon the Air France train — travels between city centers, rather than airports in outlying areas, obviating the need for a long, expensive taxi ride into town. For the growing number of people in France and elsewhere concerned about the environment, train travel also offers a greener mode of transportation.
By launching the rail service, Air France is taking an “if you can’t beat’ em, join ‘em” strategy. Rather than continuing to compete and trying to convince travellers to use their planes, they will offer their own, better version of the competition’s service.
Virgin Atlantic and the German rail company Deutsche Bahn are also said to be considering similar services once the monopoly is lifted.
France weathers worldwide housing price bust
October 9, 2008
France and especially Paris seem set to withstand the worst of the drop in residential real estate prices.
It’s only news in the US — the real estate boom is well and truly over. prices are falling around the country as foreclosures turn real estate auctions into fire sales. The trend, albeit on a less catastrophic scale, is starting spread around the world, with Britain, Spain and Ireland seeing home prices falling. France has begun to feel the effects of the housing-price meltdown trend, but some signs indicate that France, and Paris in particular, will weather the storm better than most countries in Europe and certainly better than the US.
Home prices in France have appreciated steadily over the past 10 years. Nationally, average prices in France more than doubled in the decade to 2007. But now France home prices are appreciating at their lowest rate in 10 years — and even falling in some areas for the first time. Still the rise could hardly be characterized as the “bubble” seen in other markets where prices soared beyond most people’s wildest dreams. The French penchant for regulation and bureaucracy kept a lid on unbridled speculation. Taxes and stricter banking rules had kept the rally more discreet than in more free-wheeling British and Spanish markets. Just as the surge in France was less spectacular, the hit to the housing market may be similarly muted. Mortgages in France have long been at low fixed interest rates and the French as individuals carry some of the lowest debt in Europe.
However, with the mortgage banking and credit crisis in the US influencing and affecting markets around the world, banks in France may exercise more caution in issuing mortgages in future, which will make it harder for new home buyers in France to enter the market. This could lead to a fall in prices as supply languishes and demand is curbed by financial constraints if not by the desire of prospective home-buyers.
Still, conditions in France suggest that while it will not be immune to the slowdown of the real estate market, it will see a gentle leveling off rather than a full-blown slump. Anyone having bought five years ago or more will still have made a tidy sum on their investment.
And then there is Paris. With its history, fame and popularity as a tourist destination and space so limited, old homes are priced several times above the national average. Demand for housing is still strong as students and young professionals in France see Paris as a great place to live. And foreigners looking for apartments and second homes for investments and leisure make up more than 10% of homebuyers in Paris. Even with the euro high against the US dollar, a Paris home might seem like the smartest place for your money to live, especially if you can occasionally live in it too. Prices may rise and fall, but one principle holds true in real estate — location, location, location. For many France –and especially Paris — is the location of choice, and that more than anything should help home prices there retain their value.
The Pope in France: As France and Europe grow more secular, the pontiff pushes back
October 8, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI’s recent visit spotlights changing role of the Catholic Church in French and European society.
Benedict’s visit to France last month marked the 150th anniversary of the year a 14-year-old French girl, Bernadette Soubirous, reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in a Lourdes grotto. Lourdes has since been a popular pilgrimage site for Catholics in France and around the world. This year a record eight million pilgrims are expected to visit Lourdes.
But the vision the Pope is seeing now in France and Europe is less inspiring. Church attendance and applications for the priesthood continue to drop, as does the influence of the church in everyday life and politics. While many in France still consider the Catholic Church to be a strong moral force in society, many political and cultural initiatives in France and other EU countries are diametrically opposed to church teaching. While in Lourdes, the Pope reminded France of the church’s opposition to same-sex couples, communion for divorced people (the divorce rate in France is even higher than in the US) and euthanasia, which is also legal in some European countries under certain circumstances. The Pope appealed to French Roman Catholics to speak up, as the church doesn’t want European law to conflict so starkly with church teaching.
EU law forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Same-sex marriage became legal in Spain in 2005, following the example of the Netherlands and Belgium. Roman Catholic orphanages in the UK have said they will have to close or make a break with the church if they are forced to place orphans with same-sex couples. On the cultural front, Gay Pride parades in France and across Europe routinely draw more participants than papal events like outdoor Masses. In Paris last month, an estimated quarter-million people turned out to hear the pope celebrate Mass at the Esplanade des Invalides– exactly half the turnout at the Paris Gay Pride parade in June two months earlier. The Pope’s visit spotlights the church’s underdog position in French culture today.
The Pope’s appearance in Lourdes, often disdained as a religious zealot’s Disneyland, where “relics” are sold as souvenirs on the streets and visions or miracle cures are routinely reported, show that the Catholic Church is trying for all the support it can get, even from people sometimes viewed as on the fringe of orthodox church teaching.
France, like the US, has a stongly-held penchant for church-state separation. But if Pope Benedict XVI has his way, French Catholics –at least the ones who are left– will become more vocal and active in the politics of their country and the EU.
French wine is put to shame in true-life US movie
October 7, 2008
Film portrays Judgment of Paris that sparked repercussions still felt in French wine world
No accounting for taste? Tell that to French vintners who were upset and judges who were duped and shocked by a Napa Valley wine that won a prestigious wine competition in France. Now a recently-released US-produced film tells the tale of the early days of California wine-making featuring the now infamous, blind Paris wine tasting of 1976 that has come to be known as “Judgment of Paris”.
Bottle Shock depicts the true story of upstart California vintner Chateau Montelena’s victory over French wines in the 1976 Judgment in Paris competition. While compared –often unfavorably in reviews — to the critically acclaimed wine-themed movie Sideways, Bottle Shock could be the oenophile equivalent to sports underdog movies.
In 1976 British wine merchant Spurrier (played by veteran actor Alan Rickman in the film) traveled to Napa, California to see, and taste, what he might bring back with him to Paris and a wine-tasting event, pitting the celebrated French labels against the Napa Valley newcomers. The tasting was blind; the judges were French; the winner was a chardonnay produced by residents of Calistoga, California. Suddenly, California wine was a joke no longer.
While the film is humorous, French pride over their wines and the fervor of some farmers and winemakers to protect their livelihood is no laughing matter. The resurgence of wines outside of France that was launched in 1976 has paved the way for World Wine and the swift and steady decline of the French wine industry and way of life. This process may have led French winemakers in the Languedoc-Roussillon this past July to plot to bomb the local stop on the Tour de France.
What really is at stake here is the French concept of terroir, one of those rare words for which there is no real translation but refers in this case to a patch of ground capable of producing a unique, inimitable agricultural product. So, during ‘The Judgment of Paris’, when the French critics praised a wine they claimed to recognize as an inimitable product of exquisite French dirt but was actually a California chardonnay, it caused an Emperor’s-new-clothes style uproar in France and around the world, where France had long held a stranglehold on the position of top wine producer. Nothing has been the same since. Once it was established that good wines could be produced outside of France, not only Calfironia but Australia, Chile, Argentina and others began to get into the act, and now all compete for the same palates.
Another movie on the same subject, reportly to star Keanu Reeves as the American winemaker in the story, is allegedly already in pre-production. Its title: The Judgement of Paris.
Paris Balloon takes visitors up in the air while measuring air quality
October 3, 2008
Air quality in Paris is no secret thanks to high-flying tourist attraction with a green angle
Look! Up in the sky! It’s… an air quality measurement system?
In Paris, the tethered balloon in the Parc Andre Citroen has been a fixture going up and down on the Paris skyline for almost 10 years. Manufactured by Aèrophile of France, the balloon provides visitors the opportunity to travel over 50 feet into the air for 360° panoramic views of Paris. Powered by an eco-friendly hydroelectric winch and helium, the balloon can transport up to 30 people at a time. Over its life-span, the Paris balloon has taken up a total of half a million visitors to experience Paris from the air.
But now the balloon is doing double-duty. While retaining its role as a popular Paris attraction for tourists and romantic couples, the balloon now also measures and broadcasts the quality of the air in Paris. Paris has often suffered from heavy pollution and poor air quality, particularly during the warmer months of the year. The city wants to make people aware of air quality for their health, but also to raise awareness of the contribution of traffic to air pollution in Paris and encourage people to take more public transportation.
Since Spring of 2008, the balloon, called Ballon Air de Paris, has been partnering with Airparif, a licensed air-quality-measurement company in France. Not only does the balloon have the capacity to take air-quality measurements, but changes color to reflect the results. The balloon reports air pollution via two methods: the first monitors ambient air quality, while the second indicates the amount of pollution resulting from auto emissions in the city. The balloon turns green for good air quality in Paris, orange for fair and red for poor. It can be seen for over 12 miles.
From the balloon’s open-air basket, visitors to Paris can have a birds-eye view of major monuments (including the Eiffel Tower, located just north of the park), the bridges along the Seine, and Paris’ western suburbs, to name only a few. The balloon is not free flying like familiar hot-air balloons, but is on a cable whose winch is powered by an electric engine that consumes very little energy. So whatever color the balloon turns, it is always “green.”
The Ballon Air de Paris is located in the center of Parc André Citroën in Paris’ 15th arrondissement. It is open to the public everyday from 9am until 30 minutes before the park’s closing. On weekends and holidays, adults ride for 12€, children ages 12-17 ride for 10€, and children ages 3-11 ride for 6€. On normal weekdays, adults ride for 10€, children 12-17 ride for 9€, and children 3-11 ride for 5€. Children under 3 years ride free at all times.
French Cannes winning film opens in France
October 2, 2008
The Class (Entre Les Murs) by French director Laurent Cantet makes its big-screen debut in Paris theatres.
No French film in 21 years had done it. But in France last summer, the world-renowned Cannes Film Festival awarded its highest honor, the Palme d’Or, to Laurent Cantet’s film Entre les Murs (The Class). The gritty movie depicts a year in the life of an inner-city high school located in one of Paris tough culturally mixed neighborhoods. The film is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by the same title. The author, Francois Bégaudeau, also stars in the film.
The long-awaited release was a box-office triumph in Paris, attracting 356,494 movie-goers over 5 days on 368 screens, surpassing musical comedy flick Faubourg 36, despite the latter’s being released in fewer theatres.
Entre les murs – which translates to “between the walls”- debuts at a time when French schools are still in the spotlight. France’s 2004 ban on headscarves, which was extended to prohibit students wearing any symbols of religion in schools, including large crosses or skullcaps or stars of David, continues to be a controversial topic after it provoked bitter outcry and near-riots at the time. Only weeks before the movie was shown at the Cannes Film Festival thousands of teachers and students in France took to the streets to protest the government’s plan to cut over 11,000 education jobs including 8,000 teachers.
French director Laurent Cantet, best known for his 2001 film Time Out, gives The Class a documentary feel by using teenage non-actors, mostly students from the French school where the movie was set. The film depicts the struggles of a young idealistic teacher teaching in Paris’ rough 20th arrondissement where the tensions of poverty, race and culture spill into the classroom. The class becomes a metaphor for France and its current struggles with a changing racial landscape, political correctness and cultural clashes.
True to French form, the film is no feel-good picture like the US’s Mr. Holland’s Opus or the original teacher-as-hero movie To Sir With Love. A lot goes wrong in The Class, and much is out of the teacher’s control. Although it’s primarily aimed at adults, the French minister of culture, Christine Albanel, has recommended that it be shown in all secondary schools throughout the country.
The film wasn’t officially due to be released in France until October 15 but distributors moved the date forward apparently because it was scheduled to hit some other foreign cinemas Italy this month.
Entre les murs has reportedly been chosen by France for the 2009 Oscar nominations in the best foreign language film category. To be able to qualify, a film must be released before September 30. Director Cantet already has a 10-city tour planned in the US to promote the film. He got some help from the New York Film Festival, which opened its 46th year with the film on September 26.
The film opens under the title The Class in the US on December 12. The official announcement of the nominees for Best Foreign Film will be made in January, with the awards ceremony the following month. France is holding its breath to see if Entre Les Murs can top La Vie En Rose, which missed being chosen as best Foreign Film for France last year but nabbed the Best Actress award for its star, Marion Cotillard. France has not won the Best Foreign Film category since 1993.