French Egyptologists Defend Pyramid Theory
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CAIRO, Egypt - A pair of French Egyptologists who suspect they have found a previously unknown chamber in the Great Pyramid urged Egypt's antiquities chief to reconsider letting them test their theory by drilling new holes in the 4,600-year-old structure.    Jean Yves Verd'hurt and fellow Frenchman Gilles Dormion, who has studied pyramid construction for more than 20 years, are expected to raise their views during the ninth International Congress of Egyptologists in Grenoble, France, which starts Monday...
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A plan by French President Nicolas  Sarkozy to commemorate a young communist resistance hero shot  by France's wartime Nazi occupiers has stirred controversy and  sparked accusations of manipulation by the government.
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Jakarta - A leading Indonesian scientist on Saturday challenged the widely publicised theory that fossilised bones found on the eastern island of Flores were from a previously unknown species of human.
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France is to hand over to Egypt a lock of hair said to belong to the mummy of Ramses II that was put on sale on the Internet last year, French officials said Monday.
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The notion that French cinema consists mainly of pretentious soft-core pornography is an ignorant clichÃ©, but âOne to Anotherâ does little to disprove it.
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Lawmakers are questioning whether a French bank failed to comply with U.S. money-laundering laws, possibly helping Saddam Hussein manipulate the &#36;60 billion U.N. oil-for-food program. The bank denies any wrongdoing.
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A British broadcaster on Monday defended a documentary featuring graphic images of the Paris car crash that killed Princess Diana, including one showing a French doctor giving her oxygen through a mask, after critics demanded the program not be aired.
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The French president defends his plan to make pupils honour Jewish child victims of the Holocaust amid uproar.
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This object reflects the barbaric trafficking in body parts, the belief that another race was inferior to ours - Rouen deputy mayor Catherine Morin-Desailly PARIS (New York Times) - Since 1875, the mummified, tattooed head of a Maori warrior has been part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Natural History at Rouen in Normandy. But when Rouen's mayor arranged recently to return it to New Zealand as an act of "atonement" for colonial-era trafficking in human remains, the national Ministry of Culture stepped in to block him. The ministry contends that the head is a work of art that belongs to France and that its return could set an unfortunate precedent for a huge swath of national museum collections - from Egyptian mummies in the Louvre to Asian treasures in the MusÃ©e Guimet and African and Oceanic artifacts in the MusÃ©e du Quai Branly. "The mayor of Rouen made his decision without any consultation, and his decision is against the law," Olivier Henrard, the legal adviser for the Ministry of Culture, said.  "There are other Maori heads, there are mummies, there are religious relics in France," he said. "If we don't respect the law today, tomorrow other museums or elected officials might decide to send them back, too." Rouen officials insist that the Maori head is a body part, not artwork, and that due to France's bioethics law it must be returned to its place of origin. "This object reflects the barbaric trafficking in body parts, the belief that another race was inferior to ours," said Catherine Morin-Desailly, Rouen's deputy mayor, who proposed the return. "It belongs to the heritage of humanity, not in storage somewhere in a museum."  The Maoris traditionally preserved the tattooed heads of warriors killed in battle to keep their memory alive. Trade in body parts flourished in the 19th century, as contact with outsiders increased. Europeans collected Maori remains. Some Maori slaves were forcibly tattooed, then decapitated.  Morin-Desailly cites French precedent concerning the return of human remains: Those of Saartjie Baartman - the "Hottentot Venus" as she was labeled in her day. A farmer's slave born in 1789, she was sold to a British Marine surgeon and presented in public in London and later in Paris as a freak because of her oversized buttocks and genitalia.
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PARIS -- French critics and defenders of a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools united in support of the law yesterday, pledging to stand firm against militants holding two French journalists hostage in Iraq who want the law revoked.
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Comment is free: Pankaj Mishra:  France's shrinking power drives the president to talk of a new civilisation, but risks exposing a habit of intellectual deception
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Author Bernard-Henri LÃ©vy rejects French President Nicolas Sarkozyâs contention that his countrymen think too much.
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David Hockney's controversial theory that early Renaissance painters used cameralike devices has been challenged by researchers using digital techniques.
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The world's oldest Semitic passages&#8212;spells found deep within an ancient pyramid&#8212;show that the Egyptians turned to neighboring Canaanites for help fending off venomous snakes.
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Some scholars are questioning a Shiite governmentÂs interest in pre-Islamic history.
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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has cast doubt on whether he will run for a fifth term this year, triggering a fresh battle between the old guard and the young reformers in his ruling party.
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Months after Egypt boldly announced that archaeologists had identified a mummy as the most powerful queen of her time, scientists in a museum basement are still analyzing DNA from the bald, 3,500-year-old corpse to try to back up the claim aired on TV.