Word: french
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...Just four days after a spectacular win in the first major mountain stage of this year's Tour, the 24-year-old climbing specialist tested positive for the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO), French anti-doping agency officials told reporters. French police immediately took Riccò into custody, as the now familiar scene of chaos erupted, with photographers and name-calling fans swarming around his Saunier Duval team's yellow bus. The entire Spanish team subsequently pulled out of the competition before Thursday's start of stage...
...Anywhere else, the collapse of the government would be treated with more alarm. In Belgium, it seems like a default mode. The country regularly plunges into periods of political chaos, with its Dutch- and French-speaking communities perpetually poised to pull it apart...
...after just four months in the job, Leterme has resigned after failing to meet his own deadline for tying up a package of institutional reforms aimed at giving more autonomy to Belgium's increasingly estranged constituent provinces, French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders. King Albert II has yet to accept Leterme's resignation, so he remains a caretaker prime minister...
...Leterme said in a statement that the divide between the country's Dutch and French speakers was too deep for a resolution to be reached. "The federal consensus model has reached its limits," he said. But critics on both sides of the linguistic divide pointed to Leterme's own failure to reconcile the parties in his fractious coalition of Conservatives, Socialists and Liberals...
...recent poll found that 49.7% of Flemish people are in favor of splitting Belgium in two. And many Flemish have become more openly hostile toward French speakers. On the linguistic border, the Flemish towns of Zaventem and Vilvoorde limit social housing to Dutch speakers, while in nearby Overijse, citizens are encouraged to denounce shopkeepers who advertise in languages other than Dutch...