French Unemployment Drops, Worse Expected

No one is ever going to accuse the French of knee-jerk exuberance. Case in point: the reaction to Monday’s announcement by government officials that France’s main unemployment index actually shrank in June — the first reversal in rising joblessness since April 2008.

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Study: Sunbeds as harmful as cigarettes

Sunbeds pose a similar cancer risk as cigarettes and asbestos, according to an international cancer research agency. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) had previously classified sunbeds as being a “probable” cause of cancer. However, the agency is now recommending that tanning machines should be moved to “the highest cancer risk category” and be labeled as “carcinogenic to humans”

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London marks three years until Olympics

Three years from Monday, the eyes of the world will be on London for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games. The city is celebrating the three-year mark by showcasing the event’s centerpiece — the under-construction Olympic Park — and highlighting the progress made on everything from building work to transportation to getting sponsorship money

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Mob Allegations Turn Rome’s ‘Sweet Life’ Sour

“In all Europe there is no street quite so lively, quite so cosmopolitan or quite so zany as Rome’s Via Venetos” So began a 1959 TIME story trumpeting Café de Paris as the new must-see-and-be-seen spot on the then already famous leafy boulevard. Fifty years later, the sidewalk locale is as luxurious as ever , attracting both well-heeled Italians and tourists looking for a hint of the breezy, post-War sweet life celebrated in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, in which the café was a key location. On Wednesday, Café de Paris was back in the spotlight for different reasons: Even as sharply dressed customers and summer travelers in shorts sipped cappuccino, police seized the premises on suspicion that it had fallen into the hands of the increasingly powerful Calabrian mob

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Is Secretary Clinton being back-benched?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers a major foreign policy speech and some Washington political observers ask: "Is she trying to get back in the spotlight?" Since she slipped and broke her elbow last month, the secretary has had to cancel an international trip, and some inside-the-Beltway types are reading the tea leaves. Is it another step in the process of keeping Secretary Clinton from the real foreign policy decision-making in the Obama administration “The Daily Beast’s” Tina Brown writes: “Left behind on major presidential trips, overruled in choosing her own staff — Hillary Clinton is the invisible woman at State.” “It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa,” she said

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