Free Republic

THERE is something about smoking that is very French. Jean-Paul Sartre enjoyed a cigarette, so did Colette, Bardot, Camus and Coco Chanel.But as in other European countries, smoking in public is becoming taboo - much to the annoyance of many who are used to lighting up pretty much anywhere, even in the revered corridors of power. Last week, after a five-month government inquiry, a parliamentary committee approved a proposal to ban smoking in public areas. Under the measure, cafés, hotels, restaurants, discos and casinos could designate spaces for smoking only if they could be "hermetically sealed areas, furnished with air-extraction...

08 February 2006, 11:00 Majority opinion needed on whether or not to bury Lenin - Putin Moscow, February 8, Interfax - Any decision on whether or not to bury the body of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, currently housed in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square, should be guided by the sentiments of the majority of Russians, President Vladimir Putin said. "I will seek decisions that have the support of the overwhelming majority of the citizens of our country and, I would like to emphasize this again, decisions that are conducive to conciliation and to national unification rather than to schism,"...