Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris and Alexander Payne’s The Descendants win best screenplay prizes at the Writer’s Guild Awards.

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Allen wins Writers Guild honour

London has come second, beaten only by Paris, in a ranking of the world’s best cities for students.

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London ‘second best study city’

LAS VEGAS — A pair of hand-knit slippers, adorned with a Mormon symbol. A tiny stack of yard signs. An autographed Ron Paul placard. And a wadded, used tissue, tucked in a candidate’s pocket. Nevada had its strange moment in the political spotlight this week, as stage-managed campaigns roared through with rallies and TV ads. This was faux intimacy, done in a city where faux is a fact of life: The casinos are named after Paris and New York, and the dust-dry streets around them are named, aspirationally, for trees and oceans. Read full article > >

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Gifts and pocket fillers on the campaign trail

A chaotic Oscar season found a bit order on Tuesday, as “The Artist” and “Hugo” joined “The Descendants” and “Midnight in Paris” in scoring an array of major nominations, including those for best picture and best director.

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The Carpetbagger: Nine Films Vie for Best Picture

In 1968 I began my life in diplomacy as an aide to Averell Harriman and Cyrus Vance, who were heading peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris. Thirty-four years later, I ended that career as the George W. Bush administration’s first special envoy to Afghanistan, appointed weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Like Richard Holbrooke , my contemporary on the Paris delegation and my eventual successor as envoy to Afghanistan, I have been struck by parallels between the two wars and the two peace processes, the first of which ultimately ended in failure and the second of which is only now taking shape, the fruit of much effort by Holbrooke and his successor, Ambassador Marc Grossman . Read full article > >

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Negotiating peace in Afghanistan without repeating Vietnam

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau — President Malam Bacai Sanha, who was elected in this tiny, coup-prone nation on Africa’s western coast about two years ago after the previous leader was assassinated, died Monday in Paris after a lengthy hospitalization. No immediate cause was given but the 64-year-old president was known to have diabetes, and had undergone medical treatment in both France and neighboring Senegal during his time in office. National radio announced his death Monday afternoon. Read full article > >

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National radio: Ill president of tiny West African country of Guinea-Bissau dies at 64

David Beckham is set to stay with the Los Angeles Galaxy after turning down a chance to join Paris Saint-Germain, the French club said Tuesday.

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Beckham to Remain in Los Angeles

French police are looking for the person who left 20kg of gold bars on a Paris train, after the mystery ingots go unclaimed.

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Mystery gold found on Paris train

David Beckham decides not to join Paris Saint-Germain for family reasons, according to reports in France.

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Beckham ‘rules out’ move to PSG

The Times’s Baghdad bureau chief, Tim Arango, looks back at the year in Iraq | Steven Erlanger reports from Paris on the challenges for the euro in 2011.

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TIMESCAST: TimesCast | December 27, 2011

An exhibition in Paris looks at the history of so-called human zoos, that put inhabitants from foreign lands, mostly African countries, on display as articles of curiosity.

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Why were people once put in ‘human zoos’?

PARIS — Tens of thousands of women with risky, French-made breast implants should have them removed at the state’s expense, the health minister recommended Friday, adding that such removals were “preventive” and not urgent. While implants made by Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP, have not been linked to an increased incidence of cancer, the risk that they could rupture and leak a questionable type of silicone gel has been shown, Xavier Bertrand said in a statement. Read full article > >

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France recommends ‘preventive’ removal of risky breast implants

PARIS — France and Britain escalated an unusual bout of sniping Friday, as Prime Minister David Cameron took a swipe at religious freedoms in France while the French finance minister criticized the U.K. economy. The latest cross-Channel squabbling — triggered in part over a tense European Union summit last week — bared efforts to win political points at home at a time when the financial crisis has pinched both governments. Read full article > >

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France, Britain engage in cross-Channel sniping amid tense politics, sour economic climate

PARIS — Carlos the Jackal, the flamboyant Venezuelan who symbolized Cold War terrorism, was sentenced to life in prison — again — in a Paris trial that ended late Thursday with him rallying for revolution and weeping for Moammar Gadhafi. Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, hasn’t seen freedom since French agents spirited him out of Sudan in a sack in 1994. He’s already serving a life sentence in a French prison for a triple murder in 1975, the worst punishment meted out in a country that does not have the death penalty. Read full article > >

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Paris court sentences Carlos the Jackal to life in prison for 4 deadly attacks in 1980s

PARIS — In a landmark decision, a French court convicted former president Jacques Chirac on Thursday of embezzling government money while he was mayor of Paris and handed him a two-year suspended sentence. The ruling against Chirac, at 79 a grandfatherly figure who is widely admired in the polls, stained a long record of political service that started under Charles de Gaulle and included two terms as president, from 1995 to 2007. His attorneys said he would not appeal but considered the verdict unjustified. Read full article > >

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French ex-president Chirac convicted of corruption