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This one-minute video shows skulls dating from the 4th century AD, excavated near Omsk, Siberia by Russian archeologists. They show a prominent deformation which they said was created by skull clamping or binding of newborns crania. Archeologists deem these too strange to be publicly displayed in the city museum. From the front the skulls look like that of a normal human, but when turned to the side it's clear that this is not the case. The skulls are grossly elongated. Scholars at the Omsk Museum of History and Culture have no conclusive answer as to the origins of these skulls,...

Benôite. Photos: ND du Laus In May 2008, Bishop Jean-Michel di Falco Leandri, the bishop of Gap in the French Alps, celebrated a special Mass to announce the Vatican’s approval of Marian apparitions in that diocese that occurred between 1664 and 1718. Although the location of the apparitions to Venerable Benôite (Benedicta) Rencurel and the shrine founded there have been drawing pilgrims since the late 17th century, Our Lady of Laus is relatively unknown outside of France. The website for the shrine is available only in French and Italian, for example, and the nearest airport is in Grenoble, about 60...

PARIS — French investigators began taking DNA samples Monday from 527 male students and staff at a high school — including boys as young as 14 — as they searched for the assailant who raped a teenage girl on the closed campus. Testing began Monday at Fenelon-Notre Dame high school in western France. All those who received summonses last week were warned that any refusal could land them in police custody, and no one rejected the sweeping request to test the high school's male population. The testing of students, faculty and staff at the school is expected to last through...

Mother Maria Goretti Lee's community of the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres Credit: Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres Vatican City, Apr 14, 2014 / 10:23 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A missionary order founded in the middle Ages in France is sending their burgeoning number of vocations from Asia and especially South Korea to evangelize countries throughout the world. “Our congregation has about 4,200 sisters, and we are serving 37 countries and we will expand 3 countries more this year� Mother Maria Goretti Lee, Superior of the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres, told CNA on March 18. “We send...

King Arthur is propaganda, say French By Peter Allen in Paris Last Updated: 10:56PM BST 29/06/2008 French historians have accused the English of propagating the legend of King Arthur for "political reasons". King Arthur: 'a mythical character who was invented at a certain point in history for essentially political reasons'Even if a character who vaguely resembled the fabled leader did exist, he would probably have been a Welshman with strong connections to Brittany and whose sworn enemies were the Anglo-Saxons, they said. The organisers of a conference and exhibition to be held at Rennes university in northern France next month...

Like I said on a previous post yesterday regarding similar Islamic insurgencies in Sweden and across Europe, we see a continuing escalation of this low-grade civil war in Europe. What next, walled off city-states? One thing is for certain. Europe is going to explode. But what is paramount and top priority is — the silencing of critics of Islam. That is the obsession of the EU and member states. Sharia compliance. “Native French under Attack in Muslim Areas,” By Dale Hurd, CBN, April 10, 2014

Unions and employers in France have come to a labor agreement that employees are not allowed to check their work-related emails once the work day is done, the Guardian reports. Although the country adopted the 35-hour work week in 1999, workers have complained about having to clock in at home. The deal, which is legally binding, affects 250,000 employees in the tech and consultancy industries, including workers at the French branches of Google, Facebook, and Deloitte. Under the new law – which does not have a particular time requirement – employees cannot look at their computers, phone, or anything else...

PM facing embarrassment over links between adviser and Islamist group. Adviser Tariq Ramadan is grandson of Muslim Brotherhood's founder . ... Tariq Ramadan is one of 14 members of the Foreign Office’s Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief, chaired by Tory peer Baroness Warsi. He is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, and was a member of a taskforce set up by Tony Blair after 7/7. But Prof Ramadan, 51, is grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder Hassan al-Banna and his father Said Ramadan was a leading light. ... He was kept out of France in...

Study: Megaflood Separated U.K., France Jul 18, 4:22 PM (ET) By THOMAS WAGNER LONDON (AP) - One of Earth's largest-ever megafloods broke apart a strip of land connecting what is now Britain and France, permanently separating them, a new study says. The flood unleashed about 35 million cubic feet of water per second, 100 times greater than the water discharge of the Mississippi River. The natural disaster, which occurred about 400,000 years ago during a glacial period, was later followed by rising sea levels that created what is now the English Channel, the study says. It is not known if...

A Chinese ship searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 detected a "pulse signal" in the southern Indian Ocean on Saturday, but there was no evidence yet that it was linked to the missing plane, state media said. The signal picked up by the vessel's black box detector had a frequency of 37.5kHz, the official Xinhua news agency said -- identical to the beacon signal emitted by flight recorders. The announcement came nearly a month after the Malaysian jetliner disappeared off radar screens en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, triggering an unprecedented international search. Australian...

A dog has given evidence in a French murder trial. Tango, a nine-year-old Labrador, was called to the witness stand to help determine who killed his owner. In a preliminary hearing, the suspect was ordered by the judge to threaten Tango with a bat, as jurors noted how the canine reacted.

Amid Economy Disaster, French Socialists Get Crushed in Election 02 April 2014 With France's economy falling apart under Socialist President Francois Hollande, the French voted this weekend for change — real change — in massive numbers. ... Full Article:http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/17964-amid-economy-disaster-french-socialists-get-crushed-in-election

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

Will a warming world eventually kill off roe deer in France? That question is being raised in light of new research indicating that the animals are having a hard time adapting to climate change. In a study published Tuesday in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, researchers tracked the births and subsequent survival of roe deer fawns in France's Champagne region. They noted that spring vegetation on which the adult deer depend for food was starting to flourish two weeks earlier that it did nearly three decades ago, due to gradual warming. But although spring was arriving earlier, the animals' birth...

French President and Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande announced the resignation of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and his replacement by hard-line anti-immigration and anti-crime crusader Manuel Valls. The action demonstrates the ruling Socialist Party’s desperation to reinvent itself after being trounced in municipal elections over the weekend.  As Europe’s economic malaise continues, even the Left is trying to transform itself into nationalists. But French socialism is melting like the Wicked Witch of the East in the Wizard of Oz. Manuel Valls represents the extreme right wing of the Socialist Party and his rise to power announces the beginning of a radical turn for...

LONDON — President Obama spent Wednesday in Brussels talking up the importance of the security relationship between Europe and the United States, but it is considered unlikely that Russia’s seizure of Crimea will prompt increased European military spending at a time of economic anemia and budget cuts. NATO and the European Union regard the Russian move in Ukraine as a wake-up call, a reminder that hard power can easily trump 21st-century assumptions about Europe as a sphere of trade, international law and cooperation. Despite the newly militant tone, NATO members will continue to spend paltry amounts on defense, experts say....

NATO's foreign ministers ordered an end to civilian and military cooperation with Russia on Tuesday and told their generals and admirals to quickly figure out ways to better protect alliance members that feel threatened by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. The 28-member alliance, the keystone of U.S. and European security since the end of World War II, was reacting to its most serious crisis in years: Russia's unilateral annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which the U.S. and its allies have condemned as an illegal land grab. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the other ministers, meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels...

The boom in American natural-gas production during the past several years, and the consequent crash of domestic natural-gas prices, has caused many to call for the liberation of U.S. natural-gas exports. The ongoing Russian invasion of the Crimea and threat to the rest of Ukraine has added still greater urgency to these calls, as the need take action to weaken Russian President Vladimir Putin’s natural-gas stranglehold over Europe has become vital. Despite these economic and national security imperatives, there are still those who maintain that allowing American natural-gas producers to export their product would damage the national interest. According to...

Why Poland Loves Ukraine ... For Now MARCH 28, 2014 Slawomir Sierakowski Eastern Europe, which beginning with Poland is celebrating its 25th anniversary of freedom from Communism, has suddenly awakened from a beautiful dream about the end of history. No less an authority than Adam Michnik, the legendary Polish anti-Communist dissident, recently announced that 2014 marks the end of the best period in Poland’s history in three centuries. We are entering uncertain times: In contrast to Eastern Europe’s foray into independence after World War I, no close intraregional alliances were formed in the aftermath of 1989; rather, each country placed...

France's socialist prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault resigned yesterday. Joined by his entire government following meltdown in local elections .. Resignation is huge blow to France's social President Francois Hollande. Last night, Hollande admitted mistakes and said priority was to cut taxes ... last night socialist President Francois Hollande – whose rule has become synonymous with a 75 per cent top rate of income tax – admitted to mistakes and said his priority was now to cut taxes. The government’s resignation is a huge blow to the president, who was elected to a five-year term in 2012 but whose first two...

French public debt decreased in 2013, but is still higher than expected. Total debt continues to climb and fails to meet the Maastricht criteria. EurActiv France reports. Despite austerity measures, France’s public deficit did not meet its government targets for 2013. The French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) published figures showing that it currently stands at 4.3% of GDP. The French government expected this percentage to be 4.1%, whilst the European Commission predicted 4.2%. However timid, the reduction of public deficit from its previous level of 4.9%, in 2013, is still a significant improvement. …

A CRUSHING defeat at French local elections has intensified pressure on François Hollande to reshuffle his government. At a second round of voting on March 30th, Mr Hollande’s Socialist Party lost over 150 towns, most of them to the opposition centre-right. This morning, the French president was holed up at the Elysée, the presidential palace, consulting close advisers over reshuffle plans, which could be announced as early as today. The Socialist losses were devastating. Although, as expected, the party hung on to Paris, where Anne Hidalgo becomes the capital’s first female mayor, the rest of the country snubbed the ruling...

1. Completed on March 31, 1889, the tower was the world’s tallest man-made structure for 41 years until the completion of the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930. 2. It is 324 metres tall (including antennas) and weighs 10,100 tonnes. 3. It was the tallest structure in France until the construction of a military transmitter in the town of Saissac in 1973. The Millau Viaduct, completed in 2004, is also taller, at 343 metres. 4. It is possible to climb to the top, but there are 1,665 steps. Most people take the lift. 5. The lifts travel a combined...

OSCOW, March 31. /ITAR-TASS/. Representatives of French public and the Catholic Christian Church who call for protection of traditional family will hold consultations with spiritual leaders of different religions in the Russian capital of Moscow and will deliver speeches in the Russian Parliament. The French delegation will arrive in Russia on Monday to stay in the country until April 4, a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Council of Europe told ITAR-TASS. “The leadership of organization Manif pour Tous are among our guests. The organization has gathered hundreds of thousands of demonstrators against same-sex marriages and adoption of...

Transport authorities in northern France laid off a driver “as a protective measure,” after he sprayed a teenage lesbian couple with water after they kissed in front of him last week. The driver stopped in front of a high school near Nancy to pick up students around 5:30 pm on Friday when the young couple shared the kiss. The driver allegedly uncapped a bottle of water he had with him and let its contents fly on the teenage girls. …

France's ruling Socialist Party suffered humiliating losses on a day dubbed "Black Sunday" in a local vote marked by breakthrough successes for the far-right National Front and the historic election of a first female mayor of Paris. On a day dubbed "Black Sunday" by one Socialist lawmaker, the National Front (FN) won control of at least fourteen towns, according to the interior ministry and was on track to claim 1,200 municipal council seats nationwide, its best ever showing at the grassroots level of French politics. It was also a night to savour for France's main opposition, the centre-right Union for...

France's historically unpopular President, François Hollande was handed another embarrassment this week when the top constitutional authority partially struck down another one of his laws. That strike-out left Hollande as the holder of a record he won't be proud of. France’s Constitutional Council ruled on Thursday that a reform that would have allowed the government to fine companies that shut down profitable factories was unconstitutional. The reform was deemed by the council - France's highest constitutional authority - to be a violation of “a freedom of undertaking and private property rights.” ... The council's ruling is the 13th law to...

The Algemeiner has acquired photos and footage from the aftermath of a horrific anti-Semitic attack that took place in Paris, France late last week. Speaking on camera a day after his assault, the victim -- a 59-year-old Jewish teacher only identified as David -- said he was attacked by three North African "Maghreb men" at 10 p.m. on March 20 after leaving a kosher restaurant in Rue Manin, Paris, and making his way to a subway station. "They started to curse me out: 'dirty Jew,' 'death to the Jews,' 'son of a b***,' etc. Then they started to beat me...

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a widespread consensus that high tax rates were economically misguided. Many Democrats, for instance, supported the 1986 Tax Reform Act that lowered the top tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent (albeit offset by increased double taxation and more punitive depreciation rules). And even in the 1990s, many on the left at least paid lip service to the notion that lower tax rates were better for prosperity than higher tax rates. Perhaps that’s because the overwhelming evidence of lower tax rates on the rich leading to higher revenue was fresh in...

A senatorial report proposes a junk-food tax on products that cause cardiovascular diseases. The tax aims specifically at soft drinks, which currently benefit from low taxes. EurActiv France reports. Similar to steps taken by other European countries, a new junk-food tax is doing the rounds in the French parliament. […] The senators who led the report, Yves Daudigny (socialist) and Catherine Deroche (UMP), encourage talk of “contribution to public health” and not the frequently used term “behavioral taxation”. …

“Permission to die, Mother?” “Go, my daughter!”During the French Revolution’s Reign of terror, on the evening of July 17, 1794, in Paris’s Place de la Nation, a hardened crowd waited at the guillotine for the carts carrying that day’s “batch” from the Palais de Justice. A heavy stench from the putrefying blood in the pit below the scaffold hung over the plaza. During the five weeks the guillotine had stood in the Place de la Nation, a thousand severed heads had fallen into the blood-stiffened leather bag of Sanson, the Paris executioner. The blood pit had been enlarged once already...

(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft, Jeff Mason and Steve Holland; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Paul Taylor) (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama told the European Union on Wednesday it cannot rely on the United States alone to reduce its dependency on Russian energy, as relations with Moscow chill over its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. Speaking on a visit to Brussels to discuss trade relations and the Ukraine crisis, Obama said concluding a new transatlantic trade pact, now under negotiation, would make it easier for Washington to license more gas exports. :snip: During a 65-minute lunch, European Council President...

Bangui (Central African Republic) (AFP) - Peacekeepers in the Central African Republic declared war on the majority-Christian vigilante known as "anti-balaka" on Wednesday as the UN warned the militia had crossed a red line by attacking international troops. The head of the MISCA African force blamed the groups for a series of attacks on peacekeepers in the former French colony, and said they would be treated as "enemies". "From now on, we consider the anti-balaka as enemies of MISCA," Congolese General Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko said in remarks carried by a private radio station. "And we will treat them as such."...

Checking out Rembrandts and checking in with European allies, President Obama seems blind to the rubble around him. The U.S. leadership vacuum has left NATO as ravaged as a post-World War II battlefield. In May 1945, a sizable force of Allied bombers flew photographers over European cities to document the destruction of what was then, and remains, the worst war in history. Their images of urban craters and flattened buildings are permanent reminders of the evils of totalitarianism. One can't help wondering, if Barack Obama had been on board, whether he would have looked down and remarked on the day's...

Today, the G8 minus 1 met in the Hague and, rather than kick out Russia outright, simply reformed as the G7, thereby punishing (in their minds) Russia for annexing part of the sovereign nation of Ukraine. ("Countries of the G7 end their membership in the G8," read the headline of the Soviet-era wire agency ITAR-TASS.)Really, though, it was the organization--and Russia--returning to a more natural state: The G8 just went back to being the organization it was until 1998, when Bill Clinton invited Russia in, hammering what he hoped would be the final nail in the Cold War coffin. Since then, Russia underwent...

Europe’s far left is set to almost double its deputies in the upcoming European Parliament elections in May. Poll predictions indicate that the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group is set to become the parliament’s third or fourth largest group, with the number of deputies rising from the current 35 to around 60. At third place, it would replace the liberals (ALDE), behind the center-left S&D and center-right EPP. […] The parties are against what they describe as neo-liberal policy-making at the EU level, want more funding for social programs, and want to create what they describe as “another...

President Obama promised Friday there would be “costs” if Russia moved troops into Ukraine, but he didn’t specify what those costs might be. Sen. John McCain has several suggestions for Obama, including the sanctioning of high-level Russian officials; restarting missile defense plans in Eastern Europe; and bringing Georgia, a former Soviet republic, into NATO. McCain said he plans to push from the Congressional side, he told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview Saturday evening. McCain wants the administration to expand its threat to pull out of the G8 Summit in Sochi scheduled for June. That limited move is unlikely...

Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) preferred plan for Ukraine: let the market fix it. The Texas Republican wouldn’t commit to voting for aid for the country fending off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army — or say whether there would need to be a financial offset to get his support — but argued that neither this nor conservative calls for military exercises are the right approach. Instead, Cruz argued for immediately passing a new free trade treaty with Ukraine and “looking at existing treaties between the United States and Russia, and considering abrogating those treaties.” “More important than aid is expanding economic...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared the G8 to be dead, thanks to Russia’s take over of the Crimea: German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the Group of Eight leading nations defunct given the current crisis in Ukraine, in a clear message to Russia that the world’s seven other major industrialized countries consider its actions in Ukraine unacceptable. “As long as there is no political environment for such an important political format as the G-8, the G-8 doesn’t exist anymore, not the summit nor the format,� said Ms. Merkel, in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. “Russia is widely isolated in all international...

The leaders of the Group of Eight have suspended Russia's participation in the body over Moscow's activities in Ukraine, the French foreign minister said Tuesday. In an interview with Europe-1 radio, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that "it is envisaged that all the other countries, the seven leading countries, will unite without Russia," The Associated Press reported. The other seven members had already pulled out of preparations for a G8 summit set to be held in June in the Russian city of Sochi. Fabius and French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian earlier postponed a trip to Moscow to meet with...

The world's leading industrial powers threatened further sanctions to deter the Kremlin from invading other parts of Ukraine and boycotted what was to be a Group of Eight summit hosted by President Vladimir Putin. Meeting for the first time since last week's annexation of Crimea by Russia, Group of Seven leaders said they won't attend the planned G-8 meeting which was to have to been held in Sochi, site of the Winter Olympics, and will instead hold their own summit in June in Brussels. "We remain ready to intensify actions including coordinated sectoral sanctions that will have an increasingly significant...

President Barack Obama and leaders of the world’s largest industrialized countries expelled Russia from the group until it “changes course” in Ukraine and formally canceled plans to attend an economic summit in Russia in June. The move was aimed at Russian President Vladmir Putin’s plan to host the G-8 group of economic powers at Sochi, Russia, which would have been its second starring role on the world stage after this winter’s Olympics. Instead, the G-7 leaders will meet in Brussels without Putin. At the same time, the group said it would not send its foreign ministers to a planned G-8...

A “Special Report” panel today discussed how G7 leaders met today in The Hague and announced that they would be excluding Russia from the G8 and boycotting a planned summit in Sochi. Jason Riley, of the Wall Street Journal, said Russian President Vladimir Putin is rebuilding the Russian empire while President Barack Obama and our allies in Europe are sitting around discussing international law and “kicking Putin out of clubs he doesn’t care about in the first place.” Riley said Putin knows that the administration doesn’t have the stomach for confrontation and will continue to take advantage of that.

THE HAGUE—Leaders of the world's largest economies agreed Monday to effectively remove Russia from the Group of Eight nations in response to Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine. The leaders, meeting in emergency session, also agreed that they would begin to exert punitive sanctions on Russia's energy, banking, finance and arms industries unless Moscow dialed back plans to seize the region of Crimea from Ukraine. "This group came together because of shared beliefs and shared responsibilities. Russia's actions in recent weeks are not consistent with them," the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Canada, Japan and Italy said in a joint statement. "We...

Paris – French winemakers got some long-awaited good news this week: their wines are selling well in the United States. Or at least some of them are. Fat Bastard, for instance, is highly popular, and so too are Wild Pig, Red Bicyclette and Pont d’Avignon. Those four were among the labels on display at Vinexpo, a wine fair in Bordeaux, and they set the tone for the debate about how French vineyards confront a crisis that has resulted in a lake of unsold Gallic wine of 2.5 million hectolitres (66 million gallons). It has two causes. At home, the French...

WINE lovers still coming to terms with plastic corks and screw caps will be in for a shock when the latest packaging revolution hits dining room tables later this month.In an unusual departure for the home of fine wine, one of France's top producers is to replace traditional glass bottles with cardboard and plastic cartons normally associated with milk and fruit juice.Burgundy-based producer Boisset says the controversial packaging will help preserve the quality of its wines as well as appeal to environmentally-conscious drinkers.Boisset president Jean-Charles Boisset said: "We wanted to be innovative with quality, in a way that was good...

Marquis Nicolò Incisa della Rochetta has no gripe with the look of the wine bottle with the 1995 Sassicaia label that sits on his file cabinet. Nor does he mind how it tastes. The problem is, he didn't produce it. Unlike authentic Sassicaia, the bottle doesn't come from vineyards on the Marquis's family estate on a hillside along the Tuscan coast. Instead, it was snagged with 20,000 other counterfeit bottles in a raid by Italian government inspectors. Real: A bottle of 1995 Sassicaia from Italy, which costs up to $640. Sassicaia is one of a number of top wine makers...

BORDEAUX, Burgundy… Xinjiang. The world's wine map may have to be significantly re-drawn with figures showing more than a glass is being raised to China. Such is the pace of wine consumption in China that last year the country produced more than 700 million bottles with new statistics showing that production will outstrip Australia's by 2009. Supermarket chain Morrisons has already added two wines ADVERTISEMENT from the north-west of China to its portfolio, while London fine wine merchants Berry Brothers & Rudd (BBR) has predicted that, by 2058, China will have all the essential ingredients to make fine wine to...

Wine producers must "let greatness happen."It's time to stop relying on science if you want to make great pinot noir. That's the message that Wine Spectator columnist Matt Kramer gave to delegates at the Pinot Noir 2013 wine conference in Wellington, New Zealand, on Monday. Kramer controversially declared that truly great pinot noir is currently produced only in Burgundy. “Burgundy has something that no other pinot region has achieved," he said. "In Burgundy, two plus two equals five. How did they get that other one? How did they find it? “The challenge is not to get two and two equals...

Washington D.C., Mar 21, 2014 / 04:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The life of Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, a French researcher who discovered the genetic cause of Down syndrome, is an example of faith, respect for the dignity of all human life, and search for truth in science, say those who work to spread his legacy. "The example of Jerome Lejeune is a man who serves as a witness in contemporary time for challenges that we all face," said Mark Bradford, president of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation USA, in a March 18 interview with CNA. As he has learned more about Lejeune,...