Word: french
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Once the Wall fell, those chemical factories were among the first casualties of reunification. Investors such as Dow, Dell, French oil giant Total and Belgian chemical and pharmaceutical firm Solvay moved in, enticed in large part by the subsidies Germany was offering to companies willing to take the obsolete mammoths off its hands. But welcome as the newcomers were, they quickly shuttered the old plants and hired only a fraction of the workers - about 20% of those who had previously toiled at Buna and Leuna. Unemployment soared as high as 30%. People started to leave Halle to find work elsewhere...
...some French colonists, Indochina was an idyll of sun-dappled verandas, silent servants and long glasses of Pernod in the afternoon. For others, like the family of novelist and filmmaker Marguerite Duras, it was an exhausting ordeal. Their story, as told in Duras' semi-autobiographical novel Un Barrage Contre le Pacifique (1950), is the subject of Cambodian director Rithy Panh's most recent work, The Sea Wall...
...Paris Different Strokes for Different Folks According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the French spend twice as much time enjoying meals each day as do Americans, and they get an hour more of sleep per night than do most South Koreans. The group's report used government data and Gallup polls from 18 of the OECD's member countries to examine various social indicators--from education spending and fertility rates to leisure activities and "life satisfaction...
...French have 30 days of government-mandated paid leave per year. That compares with 20 in the U.K., 10 in Japan and zero...
...cork or not to cork: that is the question in the French winemaking region of Champagne, ever since the unveiling earlier this month of a gutsy new Champagne stopper prototype. The Maestro opening system, developed by Alcan Packaging Capsules, is composed of a concealed crown bottle cap fitted with an aluminum lever. It's far easier to use than a conventional stopper - no struggling to hold the heavy bottle as you twist, no worrying that you'll take someone's eye out with the cork - but it still delivers that satisfying pop upon opening. It's a minirevolution...