France Travel News 08/09/2010

She wrote a love letter to the producers, and has been offered a role in an episode set in PARIS. If only all actors could get roles that way!

President Nicolas Sarkozy's popularity inched higher after he announced tough new measures against crime and illegal immigration, but more than half of voters say he is still not tackling the country's problems. A poll published on Saturday in daily newspaper Le Parisien showed the percentage of French people who trusted Sarkozy rose to 34 percent in early August, two percentage points higher than the previous month's poll. However, 61 percent of voters said they did not trust the 55-year-old conservative leader, who is widely expected to seek a second five-year term in 2012 despite his weak poll ratings.

On Saturday, 20 Eurotunnel passengers traveled to France and back to England without being able to get off the train…because they were forgotten, according to the Telegraph. The passengers, en route from Folkestone, U.K. to Calais, France, were loaded into seven cars that had previously been left empty because of an earlier oil spill. Eurotunnel staff unloaded the front cars and not the back. So back they went.

Four men, including two minors, were detained in a morning raid Wednesday in the southeastern French city of Grenoble, the site of recent clashes between police and local youth, a police official said. The unrest in Grenoble has had far-reaching political fallout, with conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy calling for naturalized French citizens who threaten the lives of police to be stripped of their nationality.

Alberto Contador, who captured his third Tour de France last month, won the Castillon-la-Bataille criterium race in France ahead of Sylvain Chavanel in a sprint finish. Riders completed 30 laps of a 1.9-mile circuit. Contador will leave the Astana team he rode for in the Tour and ride for the Saxo Bank team next year.

The Wines of France website gives recommendations based on your dishes and special occasions. Also in the running for WhyGo France's Best Title Ever.

Allen just began filming on his latest movie Midnight in Paris — a romantic comedy about a family traveling to Paris. The film includes a cameo with France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in her big screen debut. "I'm not at all an actress. Maybe I'll be absolutely terrible," she said. Her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy, didn't want to miss the action. He reportedly stopped by the set Tuesday in support of his wife.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will shut down squatters camps in a crackdown on French migrants and Roma immigrants. Authorities will close half of the illegal squats of migrants, about 300, in the next three months and will deport Roma convicted of crimes, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said after a meeting with Sarkozy and law-enforcement officials. [The] meeting at the Elysee Palace followed the destruction July 18 of a police station that was stormed by about 50 migrants in the Cher region, central France. The rioters were protesting the death of a 22-year-old shot by police. The groups that represent them were not invited to the gathering.

It's a devilish clever game. The object is simple: individually, or in two teams of two (doublettes) or three (triplettes), you have to get your own balls (steel; of restricted size and weight; marked and engraved as you choose) as close to the jack (the cochonnet, or piglet) as possible. But in the process – and here's the fun bit – you are permitted, nay encouraged, to interfere with your opponent's. Pétanque is thus a game of dexterity and technique, but also of gamesmanship, bad behaviour and sheer animal cunning. Of skill, and skullduggery. In French, pretty much the worst insult you can throw at a pétanque player is that he's "transparent".

Quillacq's nearly 5,000-mile trip from Barcelonnette, France, to Oshkosh, Wis., took him about eight days, aided by longer daylight hours in the far north. His route took him through the UK, Iceland, Greenland, Baffin Island and through Canada across the cold Labrador Sea. He hopes to continue on through the U.S. and Canada, through Russia and on home. The Kompress CH-7, as tiny as it is, is a two-place helicopter, but isn't built for such long trips. Quillacq fitted the back seat with a 40-ish gallon fuel tank he fabricated from carbon fiber. The tank gave Quillacq a range of more than 900 miles.