Antipodes

In spite of their curious reputation of arrogance (akin to the ridiculous notion that they wear berets and eat frogs' legs), the French ...

Tomorrow morning, the new president of France will be sworn in. So, this evening at eight o'clock, Jacques Chirac spent five minutes on...

The dictionary informs me that one of my favorite French adjectives, ringard , came into existence at about the same time I first arrived in...

Respect of the dead is one of the most ancient human principles that exists. In the splendid trilogy of films by Jacques Malaterre on the o...

Talented journalists [of the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein caliber] work like successful detectives. They acquire piles of fragmentary d...

Back in the days of Charles de Gaulle , few people would have used the word "couple" to designate the General and his wife Yvonne ...

Up until a few days ago, the Olympic gold-medal swimmer Laure Manaudou and her trainer Philippe Lucas were a unique tandem in top-level sp...

A few weeks ago, my friends Natacha and Alain in Marseilles invited me and my dog Sophia for a three-day excursion in Provence. They drove u...

On February 26, 2007 I wrote a blog article whose title was What's in a name? [Click here to display it.] I mentioned the fact that,...

When you see the new dog basket without Sophia inside, it looks enormous. But in fact, it's just right. I'm constantly amazed by the...

The morning after his election, Nicolas Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocsa jumped on a private Falcon jet with his wife Cécilia née Ciganer-Albeniz , t...

Tarts and pies, like pizzas, are generally round. So, it's not surprising that the ready-made pastry you buy in supermarkets is also cir...

Click here to see the victory website of Nicolas Sarkozy.

An encouraging aspect of the final round of the French presidential elections was the massive turnout of voters (in a nation where voting is...

Popular French singer Grégory Lemarchal was 23 years old when he died a week ago of a terrible hereditary disease, cystic fibrosis , for wh...

I seem to recall that a political leader stated recently that small business is the backbone of Australia's prosperity. In Queensland, t...

During my trip out to Australia last year, I was thrilled to receive an unexpected gift from my young sister Jill. In an outdoor market, pro...

This 48-year-old woman (an Israeli lawyer, former Mossad agent, and a Likud member elected to the Knesset in 1999) has always impressed me g...

I've already stated my opinion that the "tough guy" image of Nicolas Sarkozy could become a provocation for countless individu...

Tony Blair has had no more luck in his bid to achieve a political victory in Scotland than in dealing militarily with Iraq. And the Scottish...