François Fillon

François Charles Amand Fillon (French pronunciation: ​[fʁɑ̃.swa ʃaʁl amɑ̃ fi.jɔ̃]; born 4 March 1954) is a French lawyer and politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 17 May 2007 to 16 May 2012. He was appointed by President Nicolas Sarkozy on 17 May 2007. As a member of the UMP, Fillon became Jean-Pierre Raffarin's Minister of Labour in 2002 and undertook controversial reforms of the 35-hour working week law and of the French retirement system.

Fillon became Minister of National Education in 2004 and proposed the much debated Fillon law on Education. In 2005, he was not included in the new government headed by Dominique de Villepin, but was elected Senator for the Sarthe Département. His role as a political advisor in Nicolas Sarkozy's successful race for President led to his becoming Prime Minister. Fillon resigned upon Sarkozy's defeat to François Hollande in the 2012 presidential elections. In 2013 during a visit in Russia, Fillon criticized the French government led by Francois Hollande for its support to a military intervention in Syria.

François

François (French pronunciation: ​[fʁɑ̃.swɑ]) is a French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis.

People with the given name

France

France (French: [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a sovereign state comprising territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European part of France, called metropolitan France, extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. France spans 643,801 square kilometres (248,573 sq mi) and has a total population of 66.6 million. It is a unitary semi-presidential republic with the capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. The Constitution of France establishes the state as secular and democratic, with its sovereignty derived from the people.

During the Iron Age, what is now Metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The Gauls were conquered in 51 BC by the Roman Empire, which held Gaul until 486. The Gallo-Romans faced raids and migration from the Germanic Franks, who dominated the region for hundreds of years, eventually creating the medieval Kingdom of France. France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years' War (1337 to 1453) strengthening French state-building and paving the way for a future centralized absolute monarchy. During the Renaissance, France experienced a vast cultural development and established the beginning of a global colonial empire. The 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots).

Christine Angot

Christine Angot (born 7 February 1959) is a French writer, novelist and playwright.

Life

Born Pierrette Marie-Clotilde Schwartz (Schwartz being her mother's name) in Châteauroux, Indre, she is perhaps best known for her 1999 novel L'Inceste (Incest) which recounts an incestuous relationship with her father. It is a subject which appears in several of her previous books, but it is unclear whether these works are autofiction and the events described true. Angot herself describes her work – a metafiction on society's fundamental prohibition of incest and her own writings on the subject – as a performative (cf Quitter la ville).

Novels

David Pujadas

David Pujadas (French: [david pyʒadas], Spanish: [daˈβið puˈxaðas], Catalan: [dəˈβit puˈʒaðəs]) was born in Barcelona (Spain), on December 2, 1964, to a Spanish father and a French mother.

A former news broadcaster for TF1's LCI, he now is an anchorman on France 2's weeknight newscast, Le Journal de 20 Heures, at 20:00 CET in Metropolitan France. He has anchored these newscasts since September 2001, when he replaced Claude Sérillon, on orders from Olivier Mazerolle, the new France 2 news director.

The newscasts Pujadas presents are repeated in Canada on TV5 Monde weeknights at 6:30 North American Eastern Time, and in Australia on SBS at 8:40 weekday mornings.

In Metropolitan France, the audience for France 2's flagship evening newscast, at 20%, is less than the 26% audience share garnered by Laurence Ferrari's TF1 evening newscast

David Pujadas has gone to the middle East for interviews of the Iranian and Syrian Presidents.

Biography

Graduate of the University of Aix-Marseille and Sciences Po, David Pujadas entered Paris's Centre for Journalist Training (CFJ) in 1988.