Word: petit
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...commentator on Radio Luxembourg called it a "black day" for the European Common Market and "the end of Europe." Never one to disguise her convictions, Newswoman Liliane Thorn-Petit attacked the nine Common Market Foreign Ministers for what she considered a pro-Arab policy. The officials, she said, lacked the courage to stand up to Arab oil producers. None of her targets had reason to be pleased with Mme. Thorn-Petit's assault, but the least happy victim last week was Luxembourg Foreign Minister Gaston Thorn, who happens to be her husband...
...professional clashes between Gaston and Liliane have entertained tiny Luxembourg (pop. 340,000) since he took office in 1969. A member of both the Common Market and NATO, Luxembourg is a close-knit center of Continental gossip. Mme. Thorn-Petit's privileged access to diplomatic parties, plus her intimacy with one of the Grand Duchy's top news sources, has certainly not hindered the journalism career she began after her graduation from the Sorbonne in 1957. A specialist in financial and foreign news, she writes for the Associated Press, does a weekly column for the French paper...
...Thorn-Petit says that her husband's occupation has actually made her work more difficult: "The A.P. complains that they have become the last to get any information since my husband was appointed Foreign Minister." For one thing, covering her husband's press conferences can be a trying experience. Though he often gives her a buss on the cheek on his way to the podium, Thorn likes to answer his wife's queries with such teasing asides as, "If Madame had arrived on time, she would know that question has already been asked." At one briefing, Thorn...
...most determined assassin was the architect of the Petit-Clamart ambush (which the plotters called "Operation Charlotte Corday"*), an air force lieutenant colonel named Jean-Maria Bastien-Thiry. A brilliant engineer known as "the French von Braun" for his invention of the guided SSII missile, he masterminded both Petit-Clamart and an earlier attempt in which a napalm and plastique bomb was planted on the route to Colombey. De Gaulle commuted the death sentences of two other Petit-Clamart conspirators, Jacques Prévost and Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye. But he refused to grant clemency to Bastien-Thiry, reportedly...
...Petit-Clamart ambush-the factual starting point of Frederick Forsyth's otherwise fictional The Day of the Jackal-was De Gaulle's closest brush with assassins. It was, however, neither the first nor the last. According to a new book published in Paris, Objectif de Gaulle, there were at least 31 serious plots against the general's life, and dozens of others that never got beyond the talking stage. Indeed, even as the would-be killers of Petit-Clamart went on trial for their lives, police averted a sniper's attempt to shoot De Gaulle with...