Word: libbed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That's exactly what happened this week when French daily Libération revealed that Sarkozy had delivered some astonishingly unflattering comments about several foreign officials - including American President Barack Obama. During a lunch with a group of French legislators Wednesday, Sarkozy reportedly described Obama as inexperienced, ill-prepared by advisers, and thus far "not always up to standard on decision-making and efficiency." And those turned out to be relatively kind words. Sarkozy said German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been reluctantly forced by economic realities to copy his own policies for dealing with the recession. Spanish Prime Minister Jose...
According to Libération, parliamentarians at the meeting said Sarkozy had described the new U.S. president as having "a subtle mind, very clever and very charismatic, but he was elected two months ago and had never run a ministry." On matters like Europe's efforts to fight global warming and in his call for a world free of nuclear arms, Sarkozy apparently said Obama...
...Nicolas Sarkozy, for one, has broken ancient taboos by suggesting France study American-style equal opportunity, quotas and the use of ethnic data within official statistics to get a more accurate picture of the nation's face. "There are two Frances," Arab-French businessman Yazid Sabeg told the daily Libération. "One wants to look things in the face - meaning the way demographics in this country have changed. The other is conservative France, which is prone to immobility in the name of largely artificial equality." (See pictures of France's Bastille Day celebrations...
...Accusations and countercharges over whether the Vélib' program has imperiled safety will probably continue for some time, especially since the criticism of Vélib' riders is partially based on the in-crowd snobbery of private-bike owners. Still, even Vélib' adepts admit they've earned some of their bad reputation...
...lib' either for fun or to get somewhere fast, so you're not thinking too much about rules, which most of us don't know anyway," says a Vélib' cyclist who gives his name only as Lolo after being stopped by a pedestrian for riding on the sidewalk - and in the wrong direction - on the one-way Rue des Archives in central Paris...