France is to launch a French-language news channel next year in a long-awaited attempt to challenge the dominance of the American view of world current affairs, the prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said yesterday. The government will provide €30m (£21m) in start-up funding for the channel, which will "allow international broadcasting that will express the diversity to which our nation is attached," Mr Raffarin said. The CII (International Information Channel) project, better known in France as "CNN à la Francaise", is a pet project of Jacques Chirac's and was first announced shortly after his 2002 re-election. It was initially greeted with...