France’s Guignols are like a cross between Saturday Night Live and the Muppets: all satire and latex.

In a recent video parody of Spanish athletes, disgraced cyclist Alberto Contador sings that he’s got bull’s blood in his veins. Tennis superstar Rafael Nadal croons about his stash of clean blood hidden in his fridge.

This is daily fare on French TV, but here on the south side of the Pyrenees its touched a nerve. Nadal has been among the most outspoken. Maybe because of this second Guignols video which shows him urinating in the gas tank of his own car, then speeding off at 200 miles an hour.

“This isn’t an attack against me,” Nadal told reporters during training this week, “but an attack against Spanish sports and the Spanish people.”

As such, Spain’s foreign minister has duly chimed in. Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said official complaints had been sent to French media outlets, and especially to Canal Plus, which hosts the Guignols.

But why the doping parody to begin with? The cyclist Contador was recently busted. But generally speaking Spanish athletes don’t get caught more than others. The crux of the matter seems to be Spain’s athletic success. It makes some French suspicious. In recent years Spain has come to dominate soccer, basketball, tennis and cycling. Impossible, goes the innuendo, without a little synthetic pick-me-up. For the Spanish, the French are just jealous.

One recent news report on Spanish public television pointed out how France hasn’t won a Tour de France since the 1980s, or even the French Open for that matter. Then the reporter rattles off a long list of Spanish victories.

Missing in this uproar is just how funny the Guignols’ rubber puppets are. Not to mention that they’re rubber puppets. Instead, Spaniards today are gloating over a damning piece of news next door.

A French prosecutor announced he was opening an investigation into Patrice Ciprelli, the husband and coach of legendary French cyclist Jeannie Longo. Ciprelli has admitted to purchasing the banned performance-booster EPO.

In Paris, both Starck and Jarre are considered celebrities by birth.

Jarre’s father is French composer Jean Michel Jarre whose albums of electronica in the 70s and 80s became quite popular.

Starck is the daughter of modernist designer Philippe Starck who has crafted chairs with stiletto heels and orange juicers that seem to defy gravity.

There is a lot of 60s British folk and acoustic pop influences in the music of “The Two” : Donovan, Nick Drake and a bit of Vashti Bunyan.

Starck and Jarre are darlings in France, but they are hoping to find the same sort of love in the US.

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The legislation calls for up to one year in prison — and a fine of more than $50,000 — for anyone in France found guilty of denying a “recognized genocide.”

It doesn’t mention the Turks or Armenians by name. But in 2001, the French government officially declared that the death of more than a million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War I was genocide.

Turkey has long maintained that the actual number of those killed was much lower, and that the deaths came in the course of war time. It’s a crime in Turkey to refer to those deaths as genocide.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking before Turkey’s parliament today, condemned the French vote.

“This is the awakening of the values of the Middle Ages, which totally undermines European values and common sense,” Erdogan said. “You can’t judge or re-write history in parliaments.”

The French Senate’s approval of the measure came after a lengthy debate. Armenia’s foreign minister, Edward Nalbandian, applauded the vote.

“This day will be written in gold not only in the history of friendship between the Armenian and French peoples, but also in the annals of the history of the protection of human rights worldwide,” Nalbandian said. “France reaffirmed its pivotal role as a genuine defender of universal human values.”

The vote puts French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a tricky spot. A deputy from his own party originally sponsored the bill. Sarkozy is facing re-election this year, and some have accused him of using the genocide legislation to court electoral favor with the nearly 600,000 people of Armenian descent living in France.

There are also wider implications for France’s position in Europe and beyond.
Sarkozy’s own foreign minister, Alain Juppe, opposed the bill.

“I think this initiative is untimely,” Juppe said. “What I would like to do today is to call on our Turkish friends to keep a cool head. Turkey is a big economic power, and we need to have good relations with it.”

France is Turkey’s fifth largest export market. The two countries do more than $13 billion in trade a year.

Now, Turkey is threatening a host of military, political and economic sanctions. Turkey’s ambassador to France said today that he expected to be recalled. A spokesman for the Turkish embassy in Paris said that “relations in every field have been stopped for the moment.”

But even before the passage of the genocide legislation, there was some friction between France and Turkey.

President Sarkozy has been lukewarm when it comes to Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.

Soli Özel, a columnist with the Turkish newspaper Haber Turk, said it seems that French president is not especially concerned about having good relations with Turkey.

“In the Mediterranean, France considers Turkey a rival power, and would like to cut it down to size. That’s how it’s seen in Turkey anyway,” Özel said.

Turkish officials have said they would lobby to have France’s constitutional court rule on the genocide legislation. They’ve also said they wouldn’t impose any sanctions until Sarkozy signs the bill into law.

Sarkozy’s office said on Tuesday that that would happen within two weeks.

Another 16 French soldiers were injured, some seriously, in the incident in Kapisa province.

An official told the BBC that an Afghan non-commissioned officer got into a “verbal clash” and opened fire.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said France was suspending its training programs in Afghanistan following the attack.

Marco Werman talks with the BBC’s Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. There was an incident today in Afghanistan that highlights a growing problem for US troops and their allies there. A soldier of the Afghan National Army opened fire on a group of French military trainers. Four French soldiers were killed and at least 16 more were injured. In Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy reacted by saying French troops are not in Afghanistan to be shot at by their allies.

Nicolas Sarkozy: [Speaking French] We are the Afghan people’s friend and we are the Afghan people’s allies, but I can’t accept that Afghan soldiers could fire on French soldiers. If the security conditions are not clearly established then the question of an anticipated withdrawal of the French Army will be raised.

Werman: This is not the first time an Afghan soldier has fired on allied foreign troops. The BBC’s Bilal Sarwary is in Kabul. What’s known about this soldier, this Afghan soldier and his motives, Bilal, and the circumstances under which his attack on the French soldiers took place?

Bilal Sarwary: Well, we do know that he is a noncommissioned officer with the Afghan National Army, and that he had a verbal clash. Soon afterwards he fired at the French, killing 4 and injuring 17 others. The Afghan Minister of Defense here in Kabul has sent a delegation to find out more, but we do understand that the Afghan National Security Forces, the French soldiers serving with NATO, the International Security Assistance Force, were conducting a huge clearance operation in what is known as a volatile region.

Werman: This is not the first time this has happened where an Afghan soldier or policeman kills foreign troops inside Afghanistan. Do you know how many coalition troops have been killed by Afghan forces in this manner?

Sarwary: I don’t have an exact number, but I know enough to say that this is a very grave problem, one which has created deep mistrust between the Afghans and the international forces.

Werman: Any sense of why it’s happening now?

Sarwary: Well, it’s very difficult to say why, but I’ve followed the case of one Afghan rogue soldier who killed six US Special Forces. In this case he was recruited for 3-1/2 years by the Taliban. His uncles were leading the insurgency in that region, and the Afghan government totally failed in terms of counter intelligence to really understand that this was no more an Afghan border policeman, but a Taliban infiltrator. And it’s really difficult to have intelligence on people who come from areas where the Afghan government is simply not there. What is really ironic is that a lot of the Afghan National Army and police soldiers have Taliban hypnotic chants as their ringtones on their mobile phones…

Werman: Really.

Sarwary: including those serving on joint Afghan international bases I have come cross in the eastern province of Nangarhar, I saw it in Kandahar last week. If you listen to those hypnotic chants, if you listen to those Taliban songs with their music, they really prey on the most basic emotion of an Afghan. And a lot of those people who come to the Afghan Security Forces come from the country’s royal areas with no education and with areas where the Afghan government has never been there. The second big problem that seems to be there is the issue of cultural differences. For example, when I was in the eastern province of Nangarhar I went to an Afghan border police training center where the Americans were training the Afghans. And the problem there was that the Americans were absolutely disgusted in their own words, tired and frustrated that the Afghans were taking hours for their lunch, prayer and tea breaks. And according to the Americans the Afghans there were simply lazy, they were not working hard. Now, if you went to the Afghans in the same camp they would have told you the Americans are using the F-word, they’re not allowing us to pray, they’re not allowing us to eat, so both sides were involved in a tit for tat sort of war.

Werman: Well, thanks very much for the update. The BBC’s Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Private clinics have a “moral duty” to remove banned PIP breast implants from women they operated on, the UK says.

Czech and German health authorities both recommended on Friday that women in those countries with PIP implants should have them removed.

France banned the PIP implants, found to be made with industrial silicone, in 2010 and 30,000 women were advised to have them removed.

The World’s Laura Lynch reports from London.

They believe the world will end in 2012 because of now-famous glyphs on the ancient Mayan calendar said to herald the end of this age.

But there may be a glitch in the glyph: German experts in Mayan doodle-work now tell us that though an age may indeed be ending, the world will absolutely not. Everyone who thought the lights would go out on the next winter Solstice must now unpack their astral suitcases, go home, repaint their houses, figure out how to talk to their kids, look for jobs.

The world is not ending. For a small few the news is no doubt disappointing. It’s more complicated to continue on, on this loony bin of a planet. No doubt there’ll be some resentment toward the ancient Mayans for getting our hopes up. Even though, for all we know, the after-life could be decidedly worse than what we’ve cooked up here.

It’s not the Mayans’ fault that we misread their runes. That we penciled in our escapist desires on their pin-up calendar. They had every right to construct ages and eras out of the infinite spinning of the stars. We do the same thing. Our latest millennium even ended with a misinterpretation of its own: Y2K. When computers were supposed to stop computing.

It may be that we owe the Mayans an apology. Who are we to think we can dodge the thorny issues of our time by just going up in easy smoke in some wintery apocalypse? We are going to wake up on December 22, 2012 to the same problems that will hound us when we go to bed the night before: poverty, injustice, war, famine, and environmental degradation. Much of it stirred up in the fear-shackled minds of men.

Just as we’ll all wake up this Sunday, New Year’s Day, 2012. As a species, we’ll be steering this ship for a while longer yet. How long depends on our courage to face our shared problems… rather than kicking them down the road for the next generation. If we pass the buck I’m afraid we won’t go out with a big, easy Mayan bang, but via a slow, torturous process of self-annihilation…involving a scarcity of food and water for growing populations, the spread of war, a total breakdown in civility. If we let things come to that, we’ll look back on next year’s Mayan opt-out with nostalgia, and even longing.

There is cause for hope in the ancient Mayan prediction, though. It says that all systems based on fear will be transformed. If that’s true, if someone were to really pull that one off, then the Problem behind all of our problems would dissolve away.  Then, a new age truly would be beginning.

Members of the OK Country Music Club in St. James, France give a line dance demonstration at a local country fair. (Photo: Liam Moriarty)

Country line dancing was all the rage here in the U-S in the 90s.

Line dancers are still struttin’ their stuff today…not so much in America, but in, of all places, France.

Reporter Liam Moriarty witnessed some high steppin’ at a club in Normandy.

Club members make and sell to other members western-style clothes.(Photo: Liam Moriarty)

Also featured in the interview: “The Extraordinary Voyage–A trip to The Moon” is a documentary about the lost and found, then restored hand-painted version of Georges Méliès’ 1902 film “A Trip to the Moon.” This version also include a soundtrack by Air. It will be released in early 2012 by Flicker Alley and in select theaters.

Rings of lights adorn 200 hundred trees.

The lights are programmed to cycle through 67 colors — from red and green to blue and ten shades of white.

Now if that all sounds a bit excessive in these troubled times – well, don’t fret.

Organizers say a solar farm in southern France will “offset” all of the electricity needed to brighten up one of the world’s most remarkable avenues.

Marco Werman gets details from Koert Vermeulen, one of the lighting designers.

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Marco Werman: I am Marco Werman. This is The World. Paris’s famed Avenue des Champs-Élysées is all lit up for the holiday season. Rings of lights adorn 200 hundred trees. The lights are programmed to cycle through 67 colors from red and green to blue and ten shades of white. Now if that all sounds a bit excessive in these troubled times don’t fret. Organizers say a solar farm in southern France will “offset” all of the electricity needed to brighten up one of the world’s most remarkable streets. Koert Vermeulen is one of the lighting designers. Koert, give us a snapshot. What would I see if I took a stroll down the Champs-Élysées tonight?

Koert Vermeulen: I think you would be dazzled. The installation that we’ve put there is called “Tree Rings”. We start with 3 rings, hula hoops if you want to, that we’ve placed around each tree – not all the trees because there are 588 of them, but 200 of them have this structure around them. We have an LED strip that goes around each of these rings, on the inside and on the outside. We control them all separately so that means that we can give a lot of colors, dynamic movement into this installation.

Werman: And I got to say, it’s very futuristic. This isn’t your conventional lights outlining tree branches motif. I mean, this is more like neon skirt hoops wrapping the trees. What do Parisians think about it?

Vermeulen: One out of 50 was negative and 49 were very good and very positive about it, which is kind of noble because we are doing something quite innovative, a real break with the past. That we got so much good reactions, actually, for us, is a very nice thing.

Werman: Yeah, and that ‘break with the past’, explain that. You’re getting all of the energy sourced from a solar farm in southern France?

Vermeulen: Yes indeed, we did. From the outset, we wanted to actually put our solar panels on the structure itself, but the technology that we were supposed to be using wasn’t far enough to be able to get to that point. So, in the end we looked into the compensation story where we have this farm who is doing 40 days generating the electricity that we need for the 49 days of the utilization that we have.

Werman: These hoops around the trees are illuminated with LED lights. I’m wondering if this more eco-friendly LED lights scheme can create the sort of intensity that Parisians are used to during the holidays. What are the capacities of LEDs to dazzle?

Vermeulen: At the moment we’re looking into the third generation of LED lights. So, when we say that we are 35% more efficient than last time, it’s due to that fact. We are still using the same LEDs that we also used last time with more static and just white lighting that we had. But, this third generation just gives us a lot more luminosity, efficiency for each electrical wattage that you put in there. The fact that we also control it dynamically, we can really create almost like a concert show that you see on the Champs-Élysées and that’s spread out over the 2.4 kilometers. That is quite amazing!

Werman: Now, some people say that LEDs are the wave of the future of lighting. Do you also see this as kind of a marketing ploy for your company?

Vermeulen: We use what we need to get our vision across. We still use incandescent lights for some things. We use a lot of LEDs because LEDs are really good and becoming very good and we use metal halides. It’s really just the tool to get your vision across for us.

Werman: Koert Vermeulen, one of the designers of the eco-friendly holiday lights on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, thanks a lot.

Vermeulen: Thank you very much.

Werman: We asked some folks in Paris what they thought of this year’s Christmas lights. They gave us mixed reviews.

Man 1: Oh, they’re very nice. I like them, absolutely.

Man 2: I’ve just seen it for now and I think they are quite ugly to me because of the [???].

Man 3: Oh, there’re very, very nice. Yeah.

Man 4: I was expecting a little bit more from him.

Man 5: They don’t look all that Christmassy, but they’re still very nice.

Woman 1: Despite the fact they use 40% less energy, they could change the color and the design.

Woman 2: Gorgeous. Beautiful as it usually is.

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Mrs Mitterrand had been admitted to Georges-Pompidou hospital in Paris after suffering from respiratory problems on Friday.

She was put in an artificial coma on Sunday and died in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Francois Mitterrand led the Socialist party and served two terms as president of France, from 1981 to 1995.

Marco Werman talks with French political journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet about the life of France’s former first lady.

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Marco Werman: Today, France lost a former first lady. Danielle Mitterrand died in a Paris hospital at the age of 87. She was the wife of the late Francois Mitterand, French president between 1981 and 1995. During WWII the future Mrs. Mitterrand was a member of the French Resistance. Later, she became a champion of human rights causes. Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is a political journalist and social commentator based in Paris. Anne-Elisabeth, I know you met Mrs. Mitterrand, how would you describe her?

Anne-Elisabeth Moutet: She was at the same time unassuming, direct and somewhat of an ideologue. She was somebody whose convictions were very left-wing and unwavering, and in many ways she was the left-wing conscious of her husband, whose political attitudes were much more ambiguous.

Werman: How much did her brave actions as a resistance fighter in WWII affect her later life?

Moutet: Well, she was a very young woman at the beginning of the war, but her family were schoolteachers who were resistant absolutely from the day go. Her father would not give up the names of his Jewish pupils, and again, that was in sharp opposition to someone like Francois Mitterrand, who was a war prisoner in Germany, but then managed to escape and get back to France, and had some responsibilities in the Vichy government. So again, when he married her in 1944 it was very useful for him to have this wife who came from the so obviously right family.

Werman: Now, Francois Mitterrand had a child out of wedlock and he kept that secret for many years, but when he died in 1996 his illegitimate child joined the funeral ceremony. Describe how Mrs. Mitterrand took this in at the funeral.

Moutet: Well, I mean as she did throughout her life, because of course, she knew about that daughter. There was a boy that she didn’t know about with a Swedish journalist, but she knew about the daughter. And she wasn’t very happy about it. There were many reasons where she wasn’t the [unintelligible 1:55], but also the fact that she had two sons who quite frankly, were not terribly bright. And Francois Mitterrand was much more sort of fond of his young daughter, who is an extremely bright young woman and in many ways has inherited her father’s intelligence. And so Mitterrand organized in the last few years of his life the publicization of his second family, and he made it clear in his testament that he wanted his companion and his daughter to be there at the funeral. So you had these strange sort of images of these women standing by the grave in black, two women, one daughter, two sons…everybody ignoring everybody else.

Werman: Finally, Mrs. Mitterrand was quoted as urging people anywhere to fight economic and financial dictatorship. I’m wondering if she commented on the Occupy Wall Street movement in her final days and if not, is it something she would’ve supported?

Moutet: I don’t know, but certainly she had been on the record many times as being against capitalism in a much more radical way than her husband was. She certainly would’ve supported Occupy Wall Street, I have absolutely no doubt about that.

Werman: Journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet in Paris, thanks so much.

Moutet: Thank you!

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Lisa Mullins: And in Paris, a French satirical newspaper’s offices were firebombed just one day after putting a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad on the cover of the paper’s latest issue. The World’s Carol Hills is our resident cartoon editor. Carol, when we hear the words Muhammad and cartoons in the same sentence usually there’s trouble. What happened this time?

Carol Hills: Well, this time this satirical newspaper, it’s a weekly, it’s called Charlie Hebdo, and it prides itself on being incredibly juvenile, incredibly in your face, and kind of na-na-na-na-na, beating up on powerful figures. It’s left leaning. They do this whole issue, which came out yesterday, about what it would be like with Sharia Law in certain countries. And the cover is an image, it’s a cartoon, it’s a man, presumably the prophet Muhammad, who you are not supposed to represent ever. And he is saying, the bubble above him is “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter.” And it continues inside with Muhammad being named the guest editor, a special section called Sharia Madam with cartoons featuring women in burkhas. And so they obviously knew this would create some sort of furor, or they got some internet threats. And then late last night when no one was there, so no one was injured, presumably someone threw in a Molotov cocktail and basically the offices are destroyed.

Mullins: So the editors have Charled Hebdo, which actually looks more like a comic book than a newspaper, what are they saying about why they even chose the topic of the prophet Muhammad for this issue?

Hills: Well, they say it was a joke. They say they’re responding to events in Tunisia and Libya, both countries that have had their Arab Spring. And Tunisia, the first election it holds, it elects a leader from the Islamist party. And Libya, the new leadership emerging in Libya is saying that Sharia Law may be okay and they might tolerate polygamy. So, Charlie Hebdo, those editors are saying well, they’re just kind of having fun with that. And again, this is just a really kind of raunchy, in your face juvenile kind of comic strip, so this is sort of what they do.

Mullins: And is that how other cartoonists in France now feel about what they’re doing? I mean is there any sympathy for their plight since they are clearly intending to be provocative?

Hills: There is. There is a lot of freedom of expression, freedom of the press, we can’t bow to pressure kind of stuff. And French officials are saying we’re going to investigate this, we’re gonna bring these people to justice, this is awful. And cartoonists around the world, some are drawing cartoons in solidarity with free expression. But there’s sort of a back story, I mean France has the largest number of Muslims in Europe. Many of them are poor and underrepresented in government. And this same satirical newspaper republished those famous Danish cartoons a number of years ago; those cartoons which caused protests in the Muslim world. Fifty people died in those protests, and so they already peaked the ire of a number of French Muslims.

Mullins: And some wonder what purpose it serves to offend believers of a mainstream religion. How about for those behind the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, themselves? Are they going to be publishing again?

Hills: They say that they are undeterred. They have been offered office space by a left leaning newspaper, Libernation, and that newspaper also says, Libernation says they will publish the cartoons that the staff of Charlie Hebdo have already produced about the upcoming G20 meeting, which is a big deal in Paris.

Mullins: Okay, The World’s Carol Hills is our cartoon editor. Thank you.

Hills: Thank you, Lisa.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

View Charlie Hebdo Muhammad Cover Here (Caution: image might be considered offensive)

Song: He Met Me in the Guest House
Artist: Bappi Lahiri
CD: Bollywood Bloodbath
Country: India

Song: L’alba Dei Morti Viventi
Artist: Goblin
CD: Zombie (Dawn of the Dead soundtrack)
Country: Italy

Song: Bis Baby Boum Boum
Artist: Brigitte Fontaine
CD: Kekeland
Country: France

Song: Agit
Artist: Yabancilar
CD: Hava Narghile
Country: Turkey

Song: Corridors of Blood
Artist: Anima Morte
CD: The Nightmare Becomes Reality
Country: Sweden

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One trio that played CMJ is considered very up-and-coming.

In fact, the group Revolver landed on an MTV list of top ten buzz-bands of the five-day festival.

The most surprising thing about that is that Revolver is from France, a country still not often associated with good pop music exports.

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Any tourist who’s ever strolled through the Île de la Cité – one of two river islands in the heart of the city – is familiar with one of those attractions.

No, we don’t mean the Eiffel Tower. The historical building we’re talking about was built in the Middle Ages.

The bells of this iconic cathedral chime every 15 minutes.

They have also been rung for major historical events, including the end of World War I and the liberation of Paris in 1944.

Some of the cathedral’s bells are soon to be silenced, though. Experts say they’re worn out and that’s raising a fuss among Parisians.

So name this cathedral..

It is of course Notre Dame de Paris, the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

It will turn 850 years old in 2013 and is undergoing a major facelift.

One of the improvements calls for melting down four old bells and replacing them with nine new ones.

The old bells are only about 150 years old but they’re apparently past their musical prime.

Lisa Mullins talks with Maia de la Baume who wrote about this in the New York Times.

Notre Dame de Paris (Photo: Wiki Commons)

The 42,000 plane trees lining France’s historic Canal du Midi are being felled because of a fungus brought to Europe by US soldiers in World War II. Will the planes that decorate the streets of cities such as Paris and London share the same fate?

It’s noon in the farmlands outside Toulouse, but the light on the Canal du Midi is dim, almost like twilight.

The deep shade is created by the leafy branches of huge plane trees that tower above both banks, and arch across the water creating a dense canopy.

It’s an exquisitely beautiful scene. And one that runs the length of the canal on its 240km (150-mile) course from Toulouse to the port of Sete on the Mediterranean.

It was five years ago that Jacques Noisette realised something was wrong.

“In the spring of 2006, I began to notice that some of the plane trees were dying,” says Mr Noisette, who works for the French government agency that manages the canal.

“Their new leaves should have been opening up, but they weren’t. We asked ourselves why.”

Specialists soon identified the deadly fungus, Ceratocystis platani, for which there is no apparent cure.

“Even a small scratch or cut on a plane tree is enough for the fungus to get inside and attack. It thrives deep in the tree trunk,” says Mr Noisette. “Within three to five years the tree is fully infected. There’s nothing we can do except cut the trees down, and burn them on the spot.”

Researchers say the trees must be felled before they die. Otherwise they could fall on holidaymakers, who travel along the canal in boats – spreading the fungus as they go.

“We know the fungus travels through the canal water,” says Mr Noisette. “The trees can get infected when boats scrape up against the roots. Or when uninformed boaters tie-off their boats to the plane trees themselves.”

French agronomist Andre Vigouroux, who has been studying the fungus for years, says it’s been traced to the munition boxes American soldiers brought over to Europe in World War II, which were made from North American plane trees.

It’s been spreading through Europe, from Italy, and Steve Woodward from the University of Aberdeen, says it is likely eventually to kill the planted planes that line the streets of cities such as London, Paris and Berlin.

“There really are millions of these trees planted in non-native areas.

“We are talking about a massive disaster if the disease continues to spread,” he says.

The plane trees on the left bank still show no signs of infection from the fungus. The trees on the right bank are visibly weak, losing their leaves, dying. (Photo: Gerry Hadden)

Along the canal tree-felling has begun – 1,000 trees were cut down last winter, 2,000 more will be felled in the coming months.

The ubiquitous London plane is a cross between the American and Eurasian varieties. It will take years to clear all 42,000 of them, but once the trees have gone, so may the two million tourists who visit the canal every year.

“It is so hot in the Midi that it would just change it totally without the trees,” says retired British tourist Graham Barley, who has been travelling up the canal from the Mediterranean in a wooden houseboat.

His wife Linda agrees. “In practical terms, it would make cruising between noon and 4pm unbearable,” she says, even in September.

The Canal du Midi wasn’t originally designed for pleasure boats.

Completed in 1681, it was designed to link up with another waterway further west – now known as the Canal de Garonne – to allow merchants to move between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, without having to sail around Spain and Portugal. The sea route was long and arduous, and ships could fall victim to storms and pirates.

The plane trees were a later addition, planted in the 1830s in part to provide shade to those using the waterway.

Unesco declared the canal a world heritage site in 1996, saying it had “provided the model for the flowering of technology that led directly to the Industrial Revolution and the modern technological age”. To retain this status, however, France will have to replant the trees it chops down.

So that’s the plan. To replant a variety of trees where the plane trees now stand. Trees with strong root systems to maintain the canal banks, and with thick leaves to create shade.

And ironically, given that American GIs brought the fungus to Europe in the first place, among the new trees to replace the old are 7,000 disease-resistant plane trees – all the way from Mississippi.

Whether colder parts of Europe will be able to use the Mississippi strain to replant any planes they lose in the future, is as yet unknown.

Additional reporting by Rob Hugh-Jones