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President Vladimir Putin defended the jailing of a 77-year-old veteran activist over calls to a protest, saying that Russia doesn’t want a repeat of events like the “yellow vest” demonstrations that have rocked France in recent weeks. Moscow’s District Court sentenced human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov to 25 days in jail for allegedly called for a rally against the detention of a group of young people... Ponomaryov, whose sentence was later reduced to 16 days, was barred from attending the funeral of his longtime friend, veteran rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva — a ceremony Putin attended. “We don’t want to have...

America is still a great country, and it would be cruel to judge it by its patriots. I mean the sort of “patriots” who think the way to express your love for this country is to insult other countries. The events of 9/11 have brought the nastiest jingoists out of the woodwork, and their most toxic venom has been directed against France for opposing war on Iraq. Now that the war has failed in its express aims, the French are hated worse than ever. After all, they have committed the extremely annoying faux pas of being proved right by events....

LABOR has accused John Howard of suffering from "post-Iraq war Francophobia", calling on the Government to accept a French offer to join an Australian-led multinational intervention force in the Solomon Islands. The attack from Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd came as the Solomons Islands cabinet yesterday approved the terms of the Australian-led deployment, paving the way for the formal request to be made to Canberra this weekend. Mr Rudd's attack follows first the Prime Minister and then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer offering a lukewarm response to French overtures to provide military and police support to the mission. "It's time...

<p>HOWARD Leach, President Bush's ambassador to France, says the friction between America and its erstwhile ally are "in the past and now part of history." When an ambassador is so out of synch with the people he's supposed to represent, maybe it's time for him to come home. Leach needs to familiarize himself with the depth and intensity of anti-French feeling in the United States.</p>

LONDON - The dispute between Britain and France over disarming Saddam Hussein exploded into open hostility Thursday, as furious British officials accused the French of all but ensuring there will be a war. In shockingly blunt language for allies, British officials assailed their French counterparts for blocking efforts to set a deadline for Iraq to disarm. Britain accused France of rejecting its proposal without considering it. "What I find extraordinary (is) that without even proper consideration the French government have decided that they will reject these proposals," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Iain Duncan Smith, leader of the opposition...

Our correspondent discovers French businesses are starting to worry as the anti-Gallic feelings in the US intensifyIT IS a French idyll, enshrined by the 1995 film, Le Bonheur Est Dans le Pré (Happiness is in the Meadow). This features a small farm in the Gers département of South West France, a flock of geese, and the finest end product any gourmet could dream of — foie gras. Today, the idyll is tainted by the fear of war. But it is not military conflict with Iraq that worries the duck and geese farmers of the Gers. No, it is a trade...

Since the beginning of the year, Edward I. Koch, former mayor of New York City, has signed off most of his weekly radio broadcasts with a declaration of war loosely inspired by Julius Caesar: "Omni Gaul delenda est!" ("All Gaul must be destroyed!") Mr. Koch says he doesn't mean the phrase literally, of course. But it's become a way for him to express his antipathy toward France. In harboring such feelings, he is apparently not alone. While formal polls routinely show widespread American indifference to France, some experts say anti-French sentiment in the news media is on the rise. A...