Word: french
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...villa up the hill from Cannes. She still places phone orders with the most expensive shops in Paris, but life is more idle than idyllic for Michele Duvalier and exiled Haitian Dictator Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier. For starters, the couple is forbidden to leave the area by the French government, which has also frozen $124 million in cash and property pending litigation of a suit by the Haitian government. And since fleeing Haiti last February, they have been shunned by locals, attacked by the international press and, even worse, become plain bored. "In truth, I do find my days...
...foie gras to fine wines. "Each wine has a numeric code," explains Mayaux, as if buying a Burgundy electronically were the most natural thing in the world. "We punch it into the Minitel, and ten days later the wine arrives." The Mayauxs are not alone. Today some 4.5 million French men and women are shopping, banking, reading and, yes, flirting via Minitel, the state-run experiment in computer-to-computer communications that has grown into the world's largest home videotext network. Begun with a flourish in 1981 when the French Postes Telephones Telecommunications seeded a village in Brittany with...
Eager to find new markets for its burgeoning electronics industry, the French government has set up a state agency, Intelmatique, to sell the system overseas. Minitel pilot programs are already under way in Switzerland and the Ivory Coast, while sales efforts have been launched in Belgium and Canada...
...Minitel will face problems considerably different from those in France, where a state-owned monopoly set standards, handled billing and gave away thousands of free terminals to get the ball rolling. For one thing, American subscribers will initially see on their screens stories, lists and instructions written only in French (English text will be provided later). Then, too, they will have to pay $650 for a Minitel terminal or rent one for $35 a month. For those subscribers who already own personal computers, Baseline will provide the necessary software for the IBM PC (free) and the Macintosh ($50). But more...
Besse's death followed a series of murders of well-known European military and industrial leaders by indigenous terrorist organizations. In January 1985 Action Directe claimed responsibility for the death of General Rene Audran, a prominent French Ministry of Defense official. Days later, members of the West German Red Army Faction murdered Ernst Zimmermann, a Munich defense industrialist. Some experts believe the atrocities are linked, and point to a communique the two groups issued last year declaring they would form a "West European guerrilla movement." Last week French authorities were investigating a possible West German connection to the Besse slaying...