Michael Anderson

Amy Autuori

• Novelist

• Essayist

• Musician

• Music critic

• Radio host and producer

Left: painting of a garden in his home town of Saint Andresse, near Le Havre, France

Benoit Duteurtre

1985

2000

199219871985

19971995

2001 20042003

2005 2006 2007

• Satire

• Health Conscience Public

• Government Legislature

• The Protection of Children

• The News Media

• Reality Television

• Large Corporations

France to Ban Smoking in Public

France is to ban smoking in all public

places from next February, the prime

minister has announced.

October 8, 2006

Passive smoking kills about 13 people a day in France, Mr. Villepin said, calling the situation "unacceptable".

"We started on the basis of a simple observation - two figures: 60,000 deaths a year in our country linked directly to tobacco consumption and 5,000 deaths linked to passive smoking.

"It is an unacceptable reality in our country in terms of public health," he said.

“My idea at the beginning was inspired by the TV game show called “Star Academy” (American Idol in the US, I believe), because there is, I think, in the television reality shows, an obscene element based on cruelty, the humiliation of the contestants and the sadism of the audience. I wanted to push that logic to its most extreme (meaning the execution of the contestants) by imagining ‘Martyr Idol.”

- Benoit Duteurtre