Word: french
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...star restaurants are thriving as never before. "There was a downswing the first year," says Frangois Benoist, owner of Chez les Anges hi Paris. "But business recovered, and now is better than it's ever been." One possible reason: tighter currency export controls have prevented well-to-do French from spending their money abroad and compelled them, as it were, to eat it at home...
Businessmen have been affected in contradictory ways. They have been hit hard by higher labor costs, more union rights and severe constraints against layoffs. But, paradoxically, businessmen are suddenly starting to enjoy an unprecedented respectability, thanks largely to the Socialists. French people of all classes have traditionally looked askance at the pursuit of commerce and made businessmen feel socially inferior. Now, as part of its zealous austerity-minded campaign to revive investment and encourage new, advanced industries, the government has been extolling free enterprise. Mitterrand himself has formally endorsed "the right to make a fortune." Captains of industry like Schlumberger...
...World War II, the French decided to reassert their century-old economic and political influence in Viet Nam. But by the mid-1940s they found themselves battling the nationalist ambitions of the Communist Viet Minh and their French-educated leader Ho Chi Minh. By 1954, with Viet Minh control spreading across the countryside, the French chose the valley of Dien Bien Phu to make a decisive stand aimed at checking the Communists. Instead, the one set-piece battle of the seven-year Indochina war led to the slaughter of 1,500 Frenchmen and, at home, to the loss of political...
After two days on the road, with an overnight stop in the town of Son La, the bus rolls onto the hot, flat plain at Dien Bien Phu, 18 miles from the Laotian border. It is difficult to imagine the battlefield as it appeared 30 years ago. The French chose Dien Bien Phu because its strategic location seemed to make it the ideal place to cut Viet Minh supply lines and thus to harass Giap's troops into submission. Protected by mountains on all sides, it seemed impregnable. Against heavy odds, Ho's Viet Minh army laid siege...
...town of Dien Bien Phu, with a population of about 4,000, is bustling as workers put finishing touches on exhibits in the new war museum, a converted rice warehouse filled with battle memorabilia, including bullet-riddled French helmets. In the nearby hamlet of Thanh An, 120 women dressed in long black skirts and brightly colored blouses drill barefoot in preparation for the anniversary parade...