The best of the web and the international press, collected for you by Frogsmoke. Happy reading!

Je t’aime: Sarkozy’s girlfriend to record love album. Far from giving up her guitar to play the discreet presidential consort, Nicolas Sarkozy’s girlfriend Carla Bruni is working on a new album of love songs to be released next year and is already booking dates for a world tour. A source at Bruni’s label: “Carla isn’t the kind to give up on her music career because she’s in love with Sarkozy or because of anything else. Singing is the biggest thing in her life now, private life excluded.” Full story (Times)

Left Bank fumes in a smoke-free zone. Without it, film noir would have lacked its noir. Existentialists might have got bored working out the absurd, and husky-voiced Simone Signoret would have lacked huskiness. Yet on Tuesday France is due to become the latest country to ban smoking in its 280,000 cafes, bars and restaurants. Full story (Guardian)

Champagne houses to move from France to UK. Leading Champagne houses are looking across the Channel in search of new vineyards to meet a boom in demand. Senior industry figures have toured south-east England with a view to buying up land, planting vines and producing fine sparkling wine. Climate change is also a factor. Full story (Telegraph)

Gore Milks Cash Cow: What France Is Reading. Climate-change skeptics are taking a beating these days even in France, where people long resisted the green creed. The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession. His new book doesn’t mince words. He calls Gore a “crook” presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. Full story (Bloomberg)

‘Drinking jacket’ required to see in the French New Year. Where New Year is concerned all pretence at moderation goes out of the window and the French embark on an orgy of eating, drinking and partying. For weeks beforehand, shops display posters advertising the local celebrations, all of which must be pre-booked, and supermarkets exhort their clients to plan their menus and pre-order accordingly. Full story (Telegraph)

‘Black Paris Tours’ looks at love affair between black Americans and City of Light. Black Paris Tours is offering a glimpse of the mutual love affair between black Americans and the City of Light. “In many ways, African-Americans came to France as a sort of privileged minority, a kind of model minority, if you will – a group that benefited not only from French fascination with blackness, but a French fascination about Americanness.” Full story (Canadian Press)

Bardot cannot stomach foie gras ice cream. France’s most famous ice cream maker has invoked the wrath of actress turned animal rights crusader Brigitte Bardot after creating a foie gras flavour, which contains 50 per cent foie gras of French origin. Miss Bardot accused Berthillon, which sells its famed glaces in the heart of Paris, of being an “accomplice to this industry of suffering and death“. Full story (Telegraph)

Chicago District closes books on French classes. The French language, taught for a decade at two of the five elementary schools in Park Ridge-Niles School District 64, will be bid au revoir next year. Administrators said they are responding to the wishes of parents, who question the value of French in a country that is becoming steadily more Spanish-speaking. Full story (Chicago Tribune)