French News Items

Items in the French News we've noticed recently:

Au revoir, Grégory: The 24-year old winner of a previous edition of "Star Academy" (the French version of "American Idol", which I can proudly say I've never watched a complete episode of, in either language) unfortunately died recently. His name is Grégory Lamarchal and he was afflicted with cystic fibrosis.

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Sarko's First Presidential Scandal: Immediately after winning the election, Nicolas Sarkozy took a vacation to "rest up" before taking office (scheduled for May 16th). His choice of vacation, a cruise on some rich businessman's luxury yacht, was criticized by many as inappropriate and an indication of the nepotism suspected in his future administration. More Monkey Business?

Paris' Crappy Football Team: Despite being the cultural and industrial capital of France, Paris has a football (aka soccer) team which has historically sucked. The situation nearly reached epic proportions this year when the team (PSG = Paris St-Germain) was nearly demoted from the "Ligue 1" due to a bad record. Interestingly, the membership in "Ligue 1" (the premier league in France) fluctutates--the bottom few teams each year are demoted to "Ligue 2" while the top few teams from "Ligue 2" are allowed entry into "Ligue 1". Can you imagine what it would be like if the New York Knicks were forced to play in the CBA because they sucked so badly? Anyways, PSG narrowly escaped this shameful demotion thanks to a strong month of March. By the way, the main sponsor for PSG is "Emirates Airlines", the international airline originating in Dubai; their game jerseys actually read in big letters, "Fly Emirates". Isn't that weird?

French For the Day: The word for "cystic fibrosis" is actually "mucoviscidose".