PARIS, Jan 25 (Reuters) – Jean Paul Gaultier delivered an ode to Amy Winehouse at his spring/summer 2012 haute couture show in Paris on Wednesday. The late pop singer’s musical spirit and bad girl fashion sense were all over the runway.

“No, no, no,” sang the four male Afro-American acapella singers who kicked off the show, using Winehouse’s husky battle cry “Rehab” as a backdrop to 1950s and 60s-inspired looks.

Sporting pink, red, blonde and black beehives, the leggy models with thick cat-eye eyeliner sported lots of lace, sequins, peek-a-boo skin — and even cigarettes.

A shocking canary-yellow sequined blouson was paired with an equally bright turquoise slim sequined skirt in a sexy look worthy of 50s pin-up girl Betty Page.

Another seemed tailor-made for a gal with a hangover who doesn’t want to get out of bed: a satin peignoir in a printed marquetry fabric worn over a jewel-encrusted bustier.

Winehouse, who died in July from alcohol poisoning, was known for her rich voice, songs that recalled 1960s girl bands, her towering hairstyle and struggles with drugs and alcohol.

The singer’s voice on her best-selling hit “Back to Black” filled the vast room at the end of the show as models with veils covering their faces filed past guests such as Catherine Deneuve and burlesque star Dita Von Teese.

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s health minister called Saturday for the head of the breast implant maker accused of selling faulty prostheses to tens of thousands of women around the world to be found, calling the growing scandal a “shady business.”

Jean-Claude Mas, 72, the founder and CEO of French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) has not been seen or heard of in public since the scandal broke, potentially affecting 300,000 women around the world.

His company is accused of using sub-standard industrial silicone in some of its implants, which were sold globally before being taken off the market in 2010.

“It’s obvious we have to find him (Mas) and those who had an interest in this company,” French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand told Europe 1 radio Saturday. “They have to answer for their actions.”

“It’s a shady business with lots of money involved,” Bertrand said. “In not using the advertised product (silicone) they tried to make some money, that’s the worst of it, on the health of women.”

PIP’s lawyer has said Mas and the company’s chief financial officer were keeping silent “out of decency and discretion” but were still in the south of France.

Saturday, international police agency Interpol confirmed that it had issued a so-called “red notice” for Mas, but said it was unrelated to his activities at PIP.

PARIS, Dec 24 (Reuters) – France Telecom will sell its mobile phone operator Orange Switzerland to private equity group Apax Partners for about 1.6 billion euros ($2.09 billion), as Europe’s fourth-largest telecoms operator refocuses on its core markets.

The deal is a glimmer of hope in what has otherwise been a drought in European private equity deals as the region’s sovereign debt crisis has driven up the cost of borrowing money for such transactions.

Some bankers had voiced concern France Telecom might abandon the sale process if bids came below expectations due to the high price of financing. European buyout deals all but ground to a halt in the second half of the year, with many pulled or postponed.

Apax, which announced the deal late on Friday, said the transaction, subject to approval by regulators, will be submitted to France Telecom’s board in January.

As part of a broader portfolio review, France Telecom had been seeking to exit Switzerland where it is the third-largest player with about a 17 percent market share.

France Telecom, whose key markets aside from France are the U.K., Poland and Spain, is also trying to sell its Austrian unit. It is also reviewing operations in Africa and the Middle East as well as its enterprise unit.

The company, which received five offers in the auction of the unit, had said it hoped to reap 1.5-2 billion euros from the sale, pledging to return up to 800 million euros of the proceeds to investors via share buybacks.

PARIS (Reuters) – Signs of legal problems and financial losses surrounding the French breast implant manufacturer at the heart of a scandal affecting hundreds of thousands of women worldwide can be traced back as far back as 2003, regulatory filings show.

France’s Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) shut its doors in 2010 after declaring bankruptcy but financial documents filed by its Delaware-based holding company, Heritage Worldwide Inc., suggest the firm had been in disarray for years amid legal action and rising debt woes.

An examination of filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed that Heritage, a shell company controlled by the founder of PIP, had been swinging in and out of losses and facing multiple lawsuits from women around the world who had experienced health problems following their implants.

Heritage acquired PIP in 2003 and held over 90 percent of its stock, but it in turn was 79 percent controlled by PIP founder Jean-Claude Mas, who has dropped out of sight since the company shut its doors in 2010.

Incorporating in Delaware allowed the holding company to benefit from the U.S. state’s management-friendly laws.

A final quarterly report filed in February 2009 showed that Heritage was searching for loans to repay its debt and sustain its operations.

“There are no assurances that the company will have sufficient funds to execute its business plan, pay its obligations as they come due or generate positive operating results,” Heritage said in the February 2009 filing.

PARIS (Reuters) – A French court sentenced flamboyant Marxist militant Carlos the Jackal to another life prison term on Thursday for bomb attacks that killed 11 people nearly three decades ago.

The Venezuelan defendant, 62, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, has been locked up in France for almost 20 years serving a life sentence in a separate case for killing two police officers and an informant in Paris in 1975.

Sentencing Ramirez to an additional life term, the special terrorism court in Paris made up of seven magistrates said he should serve a minimum of 18 years in jail.

The verdict could push back the date on which he can apply for conditional release, currently set for 2012.

Defense lawyers called the decision a scandal and said their client would file an appeal.

Ramirez was accused of masterminding four separate attacks in France on two trains, a train station and a Paris street that killed 11 people and wounded nearly 200.

Prosecutors said the bombings were his answer to the police seizure of two of his gang, including his lover, and had argued that he remained a danger to the public.

PARIS (Reuters) – Calling himself a “living martyr,” Marxist militant Carlos the Jackal defended his innocence in a French courtroom on Thursday, seizing the limelight on the final day of his trial for a series of bombings in the early 1980s that killed 11 people.

Once one of the most wanted international criminals, the Venezuelan-born defendant, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, addressed the court in a five-hour monologue, alternately rambling, vitriolic and poignant, as he prepared to hear a verdict expected for later Thursday night.

Ramirez, 62 — a self-dubbed “elite gunman” who has been lingering in a French prison since his capture in 1994 serving a life sentence for murder in a separate case — appeared resigned to a likely guilty verdict.

Death in prison, he said at one point, “is the role of a revolutionary.”

“I am in prison … condemned in a pre-decided case,” he told the court, his voice rising in volume. “I am a living martyr.”

Ramirez, a colorful figure recognizable at the height of his notoriety by his Che Guevara-style beret, sunglasses and Havana cigars, sealed his renown in a bloody hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers in 1975.

During the Cold War he received backing from Soviet bloc and Middle Eastern countries, staging attacks throughout Europe for more than two decades before being captured in Sudan in 1994.

PARIS (Reuters) – Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known to the world as “Carlos the Jackal”, pleaded his innocence of terrorism charges on Thursday during what is expected to be the last day of a trial in France.

The Venezuelan-born Sanchez, once one of the most wanted of all international criminals, denied any involvement in four bloody bombings that wounded nearly 200 people and left 11 dead.

“There is nothing…to connect me with these four attacks,” he told the court, making a zero sign with his thumb and index finger.

Ramirez, 62, a self-dubbed “elite gunman” who has been lingering in a French prison since his capture in 1994, serving a life sentence for murder in a separate case, was calm and casual as he took the floor to poke holes in the case against him.

Rambling on for close to two hours, and only occasionally raising his voice, he spoke on a range of subjects, from prison life to Zionist strategy, the French state, hashish and even the death penalty.

During a discourse about one of the opposing lawyers, he said he assumed “political and military responsibility” for the actions committed by his revolutionary organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and for the Palestinian cause. But he made no connection with the four attacks of which he stands accused, and for which prosecutors have requested he be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Notorious for a bloody hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers in 1975, Ramirez has been called a gun-for-hire by his opponents, and a cold-blooded killer by a former cohort turned witness against him.

PARIS, Dec 6 (Reuters) – Europe’s politicians can drone on about solutions to the euro zone crisis as much as they like, but the popular sentiment is clearly spelled out on the streets of Paris: “DEATH TO BANKERS”.

That message scrawled on a mail box in the fashionable Marais district of the French capital is part of a growing commentary cropping up on walls and streets, revealing deep-seated distrust and simmering disquiet as a euro zone crisis threatens to wreak yet more havoc with France’s economy.

As France gets sucked deeper into the crisis, Paris is catching up with Athens, where bankruptcy woes and austerity measures have spurred waves of graffiti and the finger of blame is pointing firmly in one direction.

“Thanks, bankers, for the loss of a few more billions,” says another scrawl near the Paris stock exchange .

Anger at budget cuts, concern over violent swings in financial markets and fear that the euro zone could disintegrate have all trickled down to the street level.

“Did you elect your banker?” read a stencil spray-painted on the seat of a public bench near the Bastille, a key target of the 18th century revolutionaries who chopped off the heads of a French elite that spent too much and paid too little heed to trouble brewing among the lower orders.

“Because the masses aren’t productive enough, France will lose its triple-A,” reads a sarcastic message on the side of the church which provided the religious tools needed for Louis XVI’s last Mass before his execution at the guillotine in 1793.

PARIS (Reuters) – More than one out of three French voters would like to bid adieu to the euro and return to the franc, with a majority viewing the euro as a “handicap” for their country’s economy, according to a poll.

Disenchantment with the euro zone’s common currency has grown in France and other member countries as the European sovereign debt crisis and the high price of bailing out its more profligate members has continued to spook financial markets and raise doubts about the euro’s staying power.

Some 36 percent of voters in France said they would like to exit the euro zone and reinstate the franc, according to the Ipsos poll published on Monday in Le Monde newspaper. Sixty percent said France should stay within the common currency bloc.

“Since the crisis, this is something fairly common. This idea is gaining traction because now there are 36 percent telling us they want France to exit the euro,” said Ipsos’ Vincent Dusseaux.

“That remains a minority opinion, but within some subgroups it’s the majority view.”

The bulk of French voters saying they wanted a pull-out of the euro were from the far-right National Front, where reinstatement of the franc is a major party platform.

More blue-collar workers also supported a pull-out than did white-collar workers, the survey found.

PARIS (Reuters) – All the world’s a stage for Carlos the Jackal, the veteran Marxist militant who since last month has reigned with imperious bluster over his trial in France on terrorism charges.

But while theatrical antics have been a daily feature of a trial now in its fourth week, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, once the most wanted international criminal looks out at a steadily dwindling audience from his caged-in defendant’s box.

Charged with four bloody bomb attacks in France in 1982 and 83 that killed 11 people and wounded nearly 200, the 62-year-old Venezuelan has cast himself as a revolutionary fighter with contacts in high places who has suffered “inhumane” conditions in a French prison since his capture nearly two decades ago.

Asked by a judge to clarify his position on the attacks, Ramirez responded, “There are three possibilities: I am innocent, I am guilty, or I’m saying, ‘Go screw yourself.’”

Three co-defendants are being judged in abstentia, with two of them fugitives and another in prison in Germany.

Interrupting judges, correcting lawyers and talking over speakers, Ramirez carries himself like an unfairly deposed head of state, rather than a convicted killer already serving life sentences for previous lethal attacks in France.

On Friday, a former comrade in the witness stand described his former boss as a cold-blooded killer with no scruples, sending Ramirez into a rage and provoking a quasi-avowal.