A la française

This is getting very serious with more than 1100 people infected and 17 people dead in the last two weeks. It seems a deadly strain of E. coli bacteria found on cucumbers in Germany is the cause but we can read here and there that nothing is sure as of today. Meanwhile, hundreds of tonnes of cucumbers from Spain have already been destroyed… Some people in France are sick, some were returning from Germany. The signs and symptoms of E. coli include ...

The May 24-25 forum is held in Paris and a delegation from the e-G8 Forum will then travel to Deauville for a dialogue with leaders of the G8 nations. Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt and Jeff Bezos, among many other guests, are discussing the future of the Internet. Here is the official introduction to the event: Launched by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the e-G8 Forum will organize multiple conferences and discussions, so that for the first time, ...

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of sexual assault. The International Monetary Fund head was charged with attempted rape, a criminal sex act and unlawful imprisonment after a housekeeper at a Manhattan hotel accused him of attacking her. His arrest sent shockwaves through French politics on Sunday and for five days now, DSK is on every channels. The Guardian says: ‘The Strauss-Kahn scandal is France’s Monica Lewinsky moment. The ...

Whether you are into movies or not, the Cannes film festival is a huge event and not only in France. This year should be a very good year, starting with the talented French actress, Mélanie Laurent (Shosanna Dreyfus in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’). She will serve as Cannes 2011 master of Ceremony of the 64th Festival de Cannes. Robert de Niro will head the nine-person jury that decides the Palme d’Or, as the ...

On his post published on the New York Times yesterday, Saltmarsh seems to be surprised by our interest for the royal event. When we say ‘our’, we mean the interest of our fellow citizens for the British royal wedding. We probably won’t watch television on Friday, unless we change our mind. But apparently, some others are getting ready… Here is an extract from the New York Times post: ‘Olivier Debeugny, 37, who lives in the ...

Update: You can find more information on ‘I Park Art’ locations on this Facebook page! For this new C’est la vie in France rendezvous we had to make a choice: talking about a new French law banning the burqa or about an art project. We chose art but we couldn’t totally ignore the ban on full-face veils in public. So let’s start with a few links so you will know what is happening in France on the ‘serious’ side; ...

Twenty years ago, on March 2, 1991, Serge Gainsbourg died. He was one of the major French music personalities of the 20th century. If you don’t know his music yet, a box set available on Amazon commemorates the 20th anniversary of Gainsbourg’s death in 1991 and is the first ever exhaustive collection of his work for Universal Music from 1958 onwards. In New York, the Gallery of the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) presents the US ...

We realized it was time to talk about shoe design. It is a topic we never brought to you, so let’s talk about it. This week an article published on the New Yorker caught our attention: Christian Louboutin and the psychology of shoes, by Lauren Collins. The title of this article is very well found and here is an extract: In homage to the Surrealists, the shoe designer Christian Louboutin once created a pair of pumps with a hydrodynamic shape, a ...

We usually don’t talk about politics on the Sama Gazette. Not that we are not interested in politics but we think ‘politics‘ has a wider meaning than just the elections and power. A few days ago,  French politician Marine Le Pen and the National Front, the French far-right, nationalist political party, performed more than well in local elections… Here is an extract of the article posted on The Guardian by Angelique ...

A few days ago, reading the online edition of the New York Times, we learned about a death nobody mentioned in France: D.L. Cox, a Leader of Radicals During 1960s, Dies at 74. Until then, we had no idea who was D.L. Cox and we didn’t even know he was living in France… Here is an extract of the article posted on the New York Times: Donald L. Cox, who was at the center of black radical politics as a member of the Black Panther Party high ...