Word: french
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...territories could drag the alliance into conflict with Moscow. While hawkish voices in the U.S. suggest that Russia would have been deterred from attacking Georgia had it and Ukraine been on track for NATO membership, France and Germany see things quite differently. "The current events vindicated the German and French position," Techau says. If Georgia had been a NATO member, the alliance would have been obligated to send troops to back it against Russia. "It would have been disastrous," says Techau...
...Intelligence agencies in other parts of the world drew similar conclusions awhile ago. The CIA hosted a gay-pride celebration for its staff and colleagues from the National Security Agency back in 2000. A French counterintelligence official says that "in nearly 20 years in this business, I've never heard sexual orientation mentioned at all in discussing recruitment policies or individuals, including people whose homosexuality is a matter of virtual public record...
...defense. Another 40,000 people sent letters of support to the teacher's school in Maubeuge, near the Belgian border. Posts on the issue to the website of the leftist daily Libération ran 95% in favor of Laboureur's slap. Then the politicians got involved: French Prime Minister François Fillon said he wished the case had been left in the hand of education officials rather than dragged before the courts. Education Minister Xavier Darcos ordered Laboureur's school to discipline the slapped student, who was was promptly suspended from classes for three days...
...Some education experts say the loud support for Laboureur reflects wider changes in French society. Primary among those are rising concerns, even on the left, that progressiveness has only encouraged worse behavior among young people. Fears are also growing that some of the brazen insubordination - and even violence - witnessed among youths in France's notorious suburban housing projects may now be cropping up as growing student assertiveness in classrooms in the nation's affluent city centers, and even sleepy burghs like Maubeuge. Polls show that a majority of French citizens back the use of limited corporal punishment to combat unruliness...
...there is some evidence that such get-tough logic doesn't stand up to facts. French education experts who oppose corporal punishment cite official U.S. statistics showing the number of students reporting physical punishment from teachers fell by 42% between 1994 and 2004. During that same period, the percentage of American educators claiming they'd be verbally or physically abused by students halved, from 13% to 7%. That data is difficult for French supporters of the rod to dismiss as more weak-willed American PC - suggesting as it does that clashes in classrooms generally decrease when both sides show...