Like their counterparts in other first-world countries, French people know about the health benefits of exercise. And French culture has emphasized, even worshipped, good looks (which these days translates to “fit and trim”).

So it’s surprising that the French avoid fitness centers as vigorously as factory-produced croissants.
 
But they do. According to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, just 5.4% of French people were members of a fitness club in 2008. That’s substantially less than their counterparts in Italy (9.5%), the UK (11.9%) and Spain (16.6%).

“It appears that more people are sitting in cafes smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee than working out … the French don’t see fitness as a lifestyle,” American-born fitness consultant Fred Hoffman told MSNBC. Hoffman has lived in Paris for 2 decades.
 
The only part of the fitness market that is growing in France is the one for cut-rate, no-frills facilities. “It’s a lot simpler just to open a shoebox and throw in some machines,” explained Michel Parada, who directs operations for Fitness First in France.

However, Hoffman doubts these facilities will be able to sustain themselves, as the French folks who do join fitness centres aren’t savvy about work-out regimes and typically require a personal trainer to carry out a safe, effective work-out.

The problem, it seems, is that working-out has an image problem in France. Celebrities in particular seem to shun sweaty workouts, at least in public. And it’s unlikely that this will change even if the government began promoting fitness.

That became clear in 2007, when President Nicolas Sarkozy was observed jogging in the streets of Paris after his election. “I would rather see the president in his suit than in his sweat,” philosopher Alain Finkielkraut said at the time.

UK-based consumer-products giant Reckitt Benckiser Group has entered the bedroom by acquiring SSL International, the maker of Durex, for $3.9 billion. Durex is the world’s best-selling condom brand.

Before purchasing the condom-maker, Reckitt had accumulated a ménage of decidedly unsexy products including d-Con mousetraps, Clearasil acne cream, Veet hair remover, Mucinex decongestant, Lysol disinfectants and Harpic toilet-bowl cleaner.

In marketing Durex, SSL had recently moved from a “safe sex” message to “better sex.”  It introduced a line of lubricants and began selling vibrators in supermarkets and pharmacies. It also entered emerging markets like India and China. Durex sales rose nearly 5% last year, to $410 million.

In addition to condoms, the SSL deal allows Reckitt to market Scholl bunion pads outside the US (Merck has rights in the US), where they can enhance Reckitt’s already profitable line of OTC health care products including Gaviscon heartburn elixir and Strepsils cough drops. Even before the deal, health and personal care had been Reckitt’s largest market, accounting for about 40% of its $9.3 billion in sales.

In this market, shoppers will pay a premium for trusted brands, according to Julian Hardwick, a Royal Bank of Scotland analyst. “If you’ve got a sore throat, runny nose or splitting headache,” she explained to the Wall Street Journal, “You want something to sort that out for you. You really don’t care how much you pay for it.”

Reckitt’s offer of £11.71 per share was 45% above SSL’s average share price over the last 6 months. SSL shares traded below £5.50 just 9 months ago, suggesting the acquisition might have come a bit late for Reckitt.

The deal was prompted by pressure from consumer-goods colossus Procter & Gamble, which had been gaining market share vs. Reckitt in several categories in Western Europe over the last year.

Things aren’t so good these days in Sergiyev Posad, the small town in northeastern Russia that is generally considered to be the birthplace of the matryoshka, the iconic nesting dolls that represent Russian folk culture and a simpler time, generally.

The wooden, black lacquered dolls that come in sets with each one fitting just so inside the next have become an endangered species, squeezed as they have been off vendors’ shelves by cheap plastic knock-offs from Asia and now threatened by the global economic slowdown.

The dolls are produced by hand in small factories or in  workshops by artisans that have spent years learning to use a lathe.

“The matryoshka is our face” to the world, Galina Subbota, the town’s deputy mayor told the Washington Post. “Even if it is not economically profitable, we can’t allow it to disappear from our lives.”

But in the setting of the Great Economic Crisis, souvenir shops have slashed orders and the tourists have all but vanished. Recently, nesting doll producers approached Moscow for financial aid which is necessary, they say, to save the industry from extinction.

In response, the Kremlin pledged to buy nearly $30 million worth of the dolls and began requiring  officials to distribute them as gifts.

But the artisans view the largesse with skepticism and have indicated they would prefer that Moscow cut export taxes and make it easier for them to obtain existing subsidies.

“For 12 years, I’ve heard the government talking about support for folk crafts,” Oleg Korotkov told the Post. The director of Semyonovskaya Painting, a nesting doll manufacturer that has seen sales drop more than 90% added, “unfortunately, there’s never any real help.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has taken a page out of FDR’s playbook with weekly televised talks to his countrymen. Problem is, few of them are watching.

It seems they’ve tired of his message, which amounts to a remix of Albert King’s woeful lament, “if it wasn’t for bad news, I’d have no news at all.”

A recent poll revealed for example, that a third of Russians expected to lose their jobs in the immediate future.

February’s industrial output, including oil and minerals, was down 13.2% versus the same month last year, and manufacturing output shriveled a whopping 20%, according to the Economist.

Meanwhile wage arrears, the most visible symptom of Russia’s economic chaos in the 1990s, are creeping up again. State-approved reports suggest that more than 500,000 people had pay withheld temporarily last month, which is higher than at any point in 4 years.

Given these are state-approved reports, one can only imagine how bad the matter has actually become.

Medvedev has even taken the unusual step of appealing for help from the oligarchs. They have “a moral role” to preserve jobs, he stated while reminding them how easily they amassed wealth during different economic times.

“It’s time to repay debts, moral debts,” he said in his last chat.

“If a person really has become a businessman, he knows how to value his employees.”

Then he waded directly into the fray, calling it “unacceptable” that billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Bank was threatening to close down billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element, laying off tens of thousands in the process, if the latter didn’t repay an overdue $650m loan.

The oligarchs buried the hatchet the next day.

Thirty years after Chevy Chase kept telling the world what it already knew about the fate of Spain’s fascist dictator, the nation’s Socialist government wants to remove from public display hundreds of statues, monuments and emblems throughout the country that commemorate his rule.

In fact Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s government has passed a law mandating that they be expunged.

That doesn’t sit well with Sinforiano Bezanilla, a city employee who was 11 when Franco died, but who boned up on the man and liked what he read.

Franco saved Spain from communism and elevated the Catholic Church to an exalted status in daily life, he emphasizes. In today’s Spain abortion, divorce and gay marriage are all legal.

“A lot of people are afraid to express themselves,” Bezanilla wailed to the Wall Street Journal. “The left is attempting to rewrite our country’s history. They base it on a series of half-lies, half-truths and outright lies.” 

Never mind that Franco’s Nationalist thugs slaughtered tens of thousands of foes after prevailing in a civil war that itself cost 500,000 lives. Or that they sent tens of thousands more to forced labor camps while giving their children away to families who supported the regime.

When Franco died, Spain’s fledgling democracy didn’t put his generals on trial as Latin American nations did, nor did it organize Truth and Reconciliation Commissions like South Africa.

The passivity all but assured the bitter ideological divisions would fester for generations.

In fact Spain’s ambivalence can be heard every time Real Madrid takes the pitch.

Years ago, Spanish politicians decreed that a certain phrase in its national anthem that reminded many of the repressive dictator’s rule would be deleted: “Raise your arms, sons of the Spanish people.”

But the pols couldn’t decide on a suitable replacement, so nowadays Spaniards either roll their own lyrics or just hum along.

Last month the Big O sent a secret letter to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in which he offered to back off a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Russia stopped Iran from developing ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.

That’s the biggest trade since Wilt Chamberlain to the Lakers for Darrell Imhoff, Archie Clark and Jerry Chambers.

The Bear maintains commercial, diplomatic and military ties to Tehran so it can exert influence there.

And although Russia never seemes to care that Iran’s mullahs have nuclear ambitions, it vehemently objected when George W. Bush proposed deploying a US-built interceptor system to knock out Iranian missiles before they hit Western Europe.

Not a man of tact, Bush additionally proposed positioning the “defensive” missiles in Eastern European countries that were, along with Russia, part of the good old USS of R.

Setting aside the fact that these interceptor missile systems don’t work yet, Bush’s idea might have gone forward except that he rejected Moscow’s proposal to install part of the system on Russian territory and give the Russians access to the on-off switch.

 “It’s almost saying to them, put up or shut up,” a senior administration official said of the Big O’s overture. “It’s not that the Russians get to say, ‘We’ll try and therefore you have to suspend.’ It says the threat has to go away.”

Kommersant, a Moscow-based, state-run newspaper called the Big O’s a “sensational proposal,” and a day later Medvedev himself said he believed the Big O was serious about cooperation on missile defense.

“We have already received such signals from our American colleagues,” he said on the Kremlin Web site. “I expect that these signals will turn into concrete proposals…

I hope to discuss this issue of great importance for Europe during my first meeting with President Barack Obama.”

That’s scheduled for April 2, in London. A properly-labeled reset button will be available.

One day after UBS agreed to hand over the names of 250 wealthy US account holders as part of a $780 million settlement with US prosecutors on a tax-evasion probe, the Justice Department sued the Swiss banking giant to hand over 52,000 more.

The Feds have been on UBS’ tail since 2007 when a former executive told them the bank was representing to US customers that it didn’t have to disclose their identities to the IRS, according to the Wall Street Journal.

US prosecutors believe UBS has stashed a minimum of $20 billion and perhaps several times that, on behalf of US clients. The accounts generated a minimum of $200 million in annual revenues for the bank.

It was the first time in centuries that Swiss regulators permitted a bank to reveal account holders’ identities. Some Swiss lawmakers opposed the move on grounds it would destroy the Swiss banking industry.

“Client confidentiality, to which UBS remains committed, was never designed to protect fraudulent acts” such as violating the US tax code, UBS Chairman Peter Kurer told the Journal.

UBS acknowledged as part of the settlement that some of its managers knowingly cooked-up a scheme to assist US taxpayers looking to evade paying taxes.

The original 250 names had been identified in conjunction with a criminal investigation, but the larger roster is being sought by Justice as part of a separate civil probe.

The marked expansion in the number of names sought by US officials could be disastrous for the Swiss financial sector if large numbers of those 52,000 accounts turn out to involve tax evasion. Swiss banks generate 10% of the nation’s GNP and employ 5% of the work force.

Arnaud and Aurélie are in love. They’ve lived together for years and they just decided they want to be together forever.

So they trotted down to Marseille’s Palais de Justice and got PACSed by a clerk.

PACS is the French appellation for a perfunctory procedure authorized by the nation’s 10 year-old Civil Solidarity Pact that validates their togetherness legally and socially without the implication of permanence conveyed by marriage.
 
“It’s a first step toward marriage,” Arnaud told the Washington Post after the 15 minute procedure ended and he headed back to work.

France’s government had introduced PACS to legalize unions among gay couples since French law does not permit them to marry. But the law was not made specific for gay couples, and heterosexual couples have been leveraging PACS’ advantages ever since.

PACSed couples can file joint income tax returns and have an easier time navigating inheritance laws and establishing a legal residence, among other things.

PACS is also perceived to be a declaration of independence from calcified social traditions and best of all, it can be terminated by either party with a short written note.

And that’s it: no divorce proceedings, no claims to the other’s property and no alimony.

The number of PACS has exploded from 6,000 to 140,000 in the decade since the law passed. That’s half as many as the number of marriages taking place in France. Nearly 92% of PACSed couples are heterosexual.

Oh and in France nowadays, more than half of all babies are born out of wedlock. Last month, the unmarried Justice Minister had a baby, and Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party candidate that lost to Nicolas Sarkozy is an unmarried mother of 4.

The tiny village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, nestled at the base of a limestone promontory overlooking a valley not far from Montpellier, has become ground zero in a nasty spat precipitated by George W. Bush days before he packed up and headed for a spider hole in Crawford.

The pristine valley is honeycombed with cravasses and caves that provide a completely unique environment in which ewe’s milk can be fermented just so to become Roquefort cheese, a blue-veined delicacy that some say is lovely with a spot of rye toast and a full-bodied red.

On January 13, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab announced the Bush administration had leveled a 300% duty on Roquefort cheese, essentially nixing the entire US market.

She said it was in retaliation for the EU ban on imports of hormone-containing US beef.

She added that the administration targeted other scrumdiddly items like French truffles, Italian sparkling water and “fatty livers of ducks and geese,” which last time we checked was foie gras.

But only poor Roquefort got nailed with a duty so steep it might as well be a ban, according to the Washington Post.

“This measure is completely out of proportion,” Robert Glandières told the Post. He’s a sheep farmer and heads of the Regional Federation of Ewe Raisers’ Unions.

“It’s a…provocation.”

Maybe so, but the Roquefort Economy is probably going to be just fine. The US had imported only 450 tons of the stuff per year, or 3% of the amount produced.

Besides, the Big O’s in town now. He knows that Roquefort tastes great on an arugula salad.

Normally, getting Europeans to agree on anything is dicey but right now just about everybody over there is delighted the Big O made it all the way.

His strip-whitened smile blankets TV screens, celebrity magazines and newspapers all over Europe, and large majorities of people in the 5 largest EU countries, ranging from 77% in the UK to an otherworldly 92% in France believe he will have a favorable global impact.

Funny though, the Big O didn’t even mention the word “Europe” in his inaugural address.

And sacre-bleu! It took 3 days before he so much as pinged a European leader, placing every one of them behind those of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan, to name a few.

And then of all things he called Gordon Brown first.

Uh-oh! Did Obama catch Anglophilia from Bush when they shook hands at the swearing-in?

Come to think of it, the Big O dodged a chance to meet the top 5 EU leaders when they rolled in last November for the G20.

And we can only guess how many times he’s turned down requests to visit Germany’s beleaguered Angela Merckel, who is up for re-election and would love to catch some stardust from the man who drew 200K in Berlin last summer.

 “Everybody wants the first visit of the Messiah,” a French official wryly remarked to the Economist.

Alas the Big O probably already knows the Europeans will get jiggy when he starts asking for help.

They’re not exactly lining up to take Guantanamo Bay detainees off his hands, are they?  They’re not exactly rushing to outfit troops for a summer tour in Afghanistan, are they?

And as for cooperation on the economic crisis, Josef Braml, an officer in Germany’s Council on Foreign Relations managed to splutter that the matter will trigger a “heavy burden-sharing debate” between America and its European allies.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement there, either.