Au revoir to smoking inside French cafes

Au revoir to smoking
inside French cafes

PARIS — From next week, one of France’s most iconic institutions — the smoky cafe — will be but a hazy memory. The extension of France’s smoking ban to bars, discotheques, restaurants, hotels, casinos and cafes on Jan. 1 marks a momentous cultural shift in a country where thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir once held court while clutching cigarettes in Left Bank cafes. For smokers, this is the most distressing part of a phased smoking ban that began last February in workplaces, schools, airports, hospitals and other “closed and covered” public places like train stations. Above, a Parisian enjoyed a cigarette outside a shop Friday.

Vermont town seeks
to ban Bush and Cheney

MONTPELIER, Vt. — President Bush may soon have a new reason to avoid left-leaning Vermont: In one town, activists want him subject to arrest for war crimes. A group in Brattleboro is petitioning to put an item on a town meeting agenda in March that would make Bush and Vice President Cheney subject to arrest and indictment if they visit the southeastern Vermont community. “This petition is as radical as the Declaration of Independence, and it draws on that tradition in claiming a universal jurisdiction when governments fail to do what they’re supposed to do,” said Kurt Daims, 54, a retired machinist leading the drive. As president, Bush has visited every state except Vermont. The town meeting requires about 1,000 signatures to place a binding item on the agenda.

Terror prisoner freed

ADELAIDE, Australia — An Australian who became the first person convicted at an American war crimes trial since World War II was freed from prison today, after completing his U.S. imposed sentence. David Hicks, who was captured fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan in December 2001, pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida after more than five years at Guantanamo prison and returned to Australia to serve out his sentence. The 32-year-old former kangaroo skinner was released from South Australia state’s Yatala prison. He was met by his father and lawyer and driven away in a civilian car with a police escort. He was expected to make a statement later Saturday.

Prosecutors: Wash. killers
apologized to relatives

SEATTLE— After slaughtering their parents, Joseph McEnroe apologized to his girlfriend’s young niece and nephew before shooting both in the head to end a Christmas Eve massacre, prosecutors alleged Friday. But even as they filed aggravated first-degree murder charges against McEnroe and Michele Anderson, prosecutors could not say what might have driven the couple in the violent killing spree. “In the end, what motive could you find that would make sense of the senseless slaying of the Anderson family?” King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said in announcing the charges. Anderson and McEnroe, both 29, were each charged with six counts of aggravated first-degree murder. fessed. Conviction on aggravated first-degree murder in Washington is punishable only by death or life in prison without possibility of parole, and Satterberg said he would give “serious consideration” to the death penalty.

Grinch suspects are kids

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Local police said it was a typical holiday Grinch tale: A home was broken into on Christmas Eve, and wrapped presents were stolen off a kitchen table. Little did they know the culprits were kids. Authorities said Friday that a 9-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy used a gift card to pick the lock on the back door of a home a block away. They then took about $200 in wrapped presents that were located on a kitchen table, including Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers CDs. The couple who lived in the home returned from some Christmas Eve shopping to find the house broken into, and the presents gone,.One of the children’s relatives who also lived in the neighborhood spoke with the couple and realized the gifts matched some mysterious extra presents the children appeared to receive on Christmas.

Associated Press