NHL owners unanimously approve labor deal

NEW YORK (AP) — NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman felt all the anger directed toward him as the lockout dragged on and threatened to wipe out the entire hockey season.
So when he stood on a podium bearing the league shield on Wednesday and announced that the owners unanimously approved the labor deal reached over the weekend with the players' association, he also took the time to mend badly damaged fences.
"To the players who were very clear they wanted to be on the ice and not negotiating labor contracts, to our partners who support the league financially and personally, and most importantly to our fans, who love and have missed NHL hockey, I am sorry," Bettman said.
The league's board of governors met in a Manhattan hotel Wednesday and overwhelmingly approved the agreement that was hammered out early Sunday on the 113th day of the lockout.
Bettman was well aware of all the negative talk during the four-month dispute that kept hockey off the ice and was contrite in announcing the latest step by the owners. He said he wants to look forward and not back at the mess created by the work stoppage.
"We know that no words of apology or explanation will soften the disappointment," Bettman said. "I read the letters, I followed the tweets, I read the blogs. We have a lot of work to do.
"As commissioner of the National Hockey League it sometimes falls upon me to make tough decisions that disappoint and occasionally anger players and fans. This was a long and extremely difficult negotiation — one that took a lot longer than anybody wanted. I know it caused frustration, disappointment and even suffering to a lot of people who have supported the National Hockey League in many different ways."
In his nearly 20 years as commissioner, Bettman has presided over three lockouts. One caused the cancellation of the 2004-05 season, another led to a 48-game season in 1995 — much like is expected for this season.
The latest lockout forced the cancellation of 510 games. Overall, 2,208 games have been lost by labor disputes during his tenure. But Bettman was quick to call any speculation he might consider stepping down from his post as "unfounded."
"I am looking forward to continuing to grow this game, both on and off the ice, as we have over the last 20 years," he said. "I think the opportunities are great, and I am excited to be a part of them."
Players are expected to vote on the deal Friday and Saturday. If a majority of the more than 700 members in good standing agree to the terms, training camps can open Sunday. A 48-game season is likely to begin Jan. 19.
The NHL and the union are still drafting a memorandum of understanding that must be signed before training camps open. The players' association wants as much of the document as possible to be completed before voting begins.
The union is busy calling players and agents to educate them about the changes and additions to the agreement. The vote will be done electronically.
There will be no more than seven days between the opening of camps and the start of the season, and no preseason games will be played. Teams will be challenged to be ready right from the start.
"It's one thing to skate and check out their conditioning and everything else, but you don't get a chance to experiment much with lineups and lines and combinations," Washington Capitals general manager George McPhee said. "That's the hardest thing for managers right now. A lot of unknowns ... but we're excited nonetheless to get going."
Tampa Bay Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman, who forged a Hall of Fame playing career over 22 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, isn't concerned about getting adjusted to the new deal because the key issue of the salary cap isn't all that different.
"As things go along, every change you make, every rule you put in whether it's on ice or off ice, generally has unforeseen consequences that come up with it," said Yzerman, who retired one season after the 2004-05 lockout. "I don't see it being terribly difficult.
"Over the next year or two the market will readjust and that will sort itself out."
The agreement is for 10 years, but either side can opt out after eight. The previous deal was in effect for seven seasons.
"It's one that will stand the test of time with a system where all teams can be competitive and have a chance to make the playoffs and even win the Stanley Cup," Bettman said. "It guarantees that our attention from now on will stay where it belongs, on the ice."
After the players vote to ratify, clubs can begin the process of winning back fans. Bettman declined to give specifics because he didn't want to be presumptuous that the union would give its approval.
"The National Hockey League has the responsibility to earn back your trust and support, whether you watch one game or every game," Bettman said. "That effort begins today. The players are ready to play their hearts out for you, the teams are preparing to welcome you back with open arms, the wait is just about over.
"Like all of you, we can't wait to drop the puck."
The NHL won't release the new schedule until players ratify the deal. The regular season was supposed to begin Oct. 11, but the lockout wrecked those plans after it took effect Sept. 16.
The outdoor Winter Classic and the All-Star game won't be played this season.
Last season, the NHL generated $3.3 billion of revenue, and the new deal will lower the players' percentage from 57 to 50.
Players will receive $300 million in transition payments over three years to account for existing contracts, pushing their revenue share over 50 percent at the start of the deal. They also gained a defined benefit pension plan for the first time.
The salary cap for this season will be $70.2 million before prorating to adjust for the shortened season, and the cap will drop to $64.3 million in 2013-14 — the same amount as 2011-12. There will be a salary floor of $44 million in those years.
Free agents will be limited to contracts of seven years (eight for those re-signed with their former club).
Salaries within a contract may not vary by more than 35 percent year to year, and the lowest year must be at least 50 percent of the highest year.
The minimum salary will remain at $525,000, and there were no changes to eligibility for free agency and salary arbitration.
The threshold for teams to release players in salary arbitration will increase from $1.75 million to $3 million.
Each team may use two buyouts to terminate contracts before the 2013-14 or 2014-15 seasons for two-thirds of the remaining guaranteed income. The buyout will be included in the players' revenue share but not the salary cap.
Revenue sharing will increase to $200 million annually and rise with revenue.
An industry growth fund of $60 million will be funded by the sides over three years and be replenished as needed.
Issues such as whether NHL players will participate in the 2014 Olympics and realignment within the league will be addressed with the union down the line.
"Together our collective future is extremely bright," said Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, who is also the chairman of the board of governors. "Our only interest now is to look ahead and focus on what this great game can provide to the best sports fans in the world.

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NHL players to begin voting Thursday

NEW YORK (AP) — NHL players will have 36 hours from Thursday night until Saturday morning to vote on the new labor deal that would end the four-month lockout.
The players' association announced that electronic voting will begin Thursday at 8 p.m. EST and will last until Saturday at 8 a.m. The union said it will announce the result after voting is finished.
If a majority of the more than 700 players choose to accept the deal that NHL owners unanimously ratified on Wednesday, training camps will open Sunday, and a 48-game regular season will begin Jan. 19.
A tentative agreement was reached early Sunday, the 113th day of the lockout, after a 16-hour negotiating session in New York.
The new deal is for 10 years, but either side can opt out after eight. The previous collective bargaining agreement was in effect for seven seasons.
The lockout began on Sept. 16, and forced the cancellation of 510 games, beginning with opening day on Oct. 11. The outdoor Winter Classic and the All-Star game were also wiped out this season.
The NHL says it will release a new schedule once the ratification process is completed.
A memorandum of understanding that has been in the drafting process by the two sides this week must be signed before training camps open.
The players' association wanted as much of the document as possible to be completed before voting began.
Leading up to Thursday's start time for voting, the union has been busy calling players and agents to educate them about the changes and additions to the tentative agreement.
Assuming the deal is approved by the players, as expected, there will be only six days between the opening of camps and the start of the season. No preseason games will be played.

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Sabres G Miller calls NHL lockout 'waste of time'

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — After rejoining his Buffalo Sabres teammates on the ice for the first time in some nine months, goalie Ryan Miller had a few lingering frustrations to get off his chest regarding the NHL lockout.
"The best thing to do is acknowledge that it was stupid," Miller said Friday, before turning his attention to Sabres fans. "I appreciate their patience. I know it's a hard situation. I still don't even know the right message because it was just a stupid, useless waste of time."
Miller, who played a role in negotiations, called himself "embarrassed" that it took more than six months of negotiations to reach an agreement. At one point during talks, he gave up on the possibility of there being a season this year.
And he laid the blame on owners, specifically singling out Commissioner Gary Bettman, whom he accused of being the reason why the four-month lockout wasn't resolved sooner.
"In my mind, it always had to be January in Gary Bettman's mind," Miller said. "Obviously, he had something in his head and he was going to see how far he could take it. So there's really no going up against Gary, when he has something in his head."
For someone who hasn't played in a competitive game since April 5, the ever-outspoken Miller seems already in midseason form.
"It's exciting to be back. It's the way you that you're supposed to feel," he said. "It's not in the board room, so that's good. It's getting back on the ice, and that's the important part."
Spending much of his offseason in southern California, Miller arrived in Buffalo on Thursday, and was on the ice for what's expected to be the players' final informal practice at a suburban arena. Training camp is tentatively set to open Sunday, and a 48-game regular season to start a week later.
A seven-year veteran, Miller is the face of the franchise, and regarded as a team leader. His arrival was welcomed by the Sabres, and also by numerous fans. About 300 onlookers — the largest turnout this week — lined the boards to watch the open practice.
Aside from his frustrations regarding labor talks, Miller was in an upbeat mood. Walking out of the locker room with his mask perched above his head exposing a familiar patchy beard — "It's my lockout beard" — he then flashed a big smile and waved his glove hand before taking the ice.
Before taking any questions from reporters afterward, Miller first wanted to find out what's been happening in Buffalo, and then shook hands with each member of the media.
"There," he said. "We're reintroduced again, eight months later."
Now it's time to get to work in what will be a shortened season, and for a high-priced Sabres team that was among the NHL's biggest busts after missing the playoffs last season.
Buffalo (39-32-11) finished ninth in the Eastern Conference and was hampered by a rash of injuries, including Miller missing a nine-game stretch because of concussion-like symptoms. On the bright side, Miller hopes the team can pick up where it left off after closing last season on a 15-5-4 roll.
The challenge for Miller is getting himself ready to carry much of the load during a tightly packed stretch of games.
"Hockey-wise, I'm in a pretty good spot," he said. "Mentally, I always kind of knew it was going to be a short sprint kind of situation. It's not a surprise for anyone of us."
Coach Lindy Ruff has already projected that he's targeting Miller to play between 36 and 38 games.
Miller hasn't given any thought to how many games he'll play, but has been accustomed to being the Sabres workhorse.
He's appeared in 59 or more games in each of his past six seasons. That includes 2009-10, when he was the NHL's Vezina Trophy winner after going 41-18-8 in 69 NHL regular-season games, and six more games at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, where he led the United States to win a silver medal.
"I just want to be that guy, and we'll go by that," Miller said. "I think if I'm playing at a high enough level, I'd like to be in net."
Unlike some NHLers who spent part of the lockout playing overseas, Miller elected to stay home. He said the insurance premiums on his contract proved expensive. He also noted that he wanted to make sure there were no lingering effects from the head injury he sustained last year.
Miller spent much of his time working out in California, where he skated between three and four times a week. He mostly worked out with numerous members of the defending Stanley Cup-champion Los Angeles Kings such as Jarret Stoll, Brad Richardson, Justin Williams and Rob Scuderi. Several other NHLers, including Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby, spent a few months also working out with them.

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Patent trolls’ latest gambit: Sue businesses if they dare to use office scanners

We’ve seen a lot of ridiculous claims asserted by patent trolls over the past few years, but this one truly takes the cake: Ars Technica reports that an entity called “Project Paperless LLC” has been sending out letters to small and medium-sized businesses demanding licensing fees for using office scanners capable of sending PDFs via email. Steven Vicinanza, founder of Atlanta-based IT services provider BlueWave Computing, told Ars that both his company and several of its customers had received letters telling them that they needed to buy licenses for “distributed computer architecture” patents that cover basic networked scanning technology. At a cost of $1,000 per employee, Vicinanza said that the licenses would have cost his company a grand total of $130,000 just for the right to scan documents.
[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]
Vicinanza couldn’t believe that he was actually being threatened with a lawsuit for using office scanners, so he decided to contact the attorney for Project Paperless to get some clarification.
[More from BGR: Nokia predicted to abandon mobile business, sell assets to Microsoft and Huawei in 2013]
“[The attorney] said, if you hook up a scanner and e-mail a PDF document — we have a patent that covers that as a process,” Vicinanza told Ars. “So you’re claiming anyone on a network with a scanner owes you a license? He said, ‘Yes, that’s correct.’ And at that point, I just lost it.”
Vicinanza isn’t the only one “losing it” over patent suits, of course. Cisco (CSCO) late last year decided to go on the offense against patent trolls by flat-out accusing them of breaking the law. What’s more, we’ve heard rumblings that the United States Department of Justice’s antitrust division may be ready to do something to limit patent trolls’ ability to extract licensing fees, so there could be some relief for patent suit-stricken firms on the horizon.

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Typical American without a landline: A 27-year old Latino living in Columbus, Ohio

The statistical study compiled by NHIS about landline and mobile phone usage in American households is a pretty fascinating read. The number of U.S. adults with a mobile phone but no landline rose to 34% in the first half of 2012. That percentage is ticking up roughly two points every six months — a fairly rapid clip. The number of adults with a landline but no mobile phone plunged below 8% according to the study, which was picked up by GigaOm. These numbers may explain why some of the pollsters using landline-only calls in the last election ran off the rails so spectacularly. So many Americans can no longer be reached via a landline phone that polling methods simply must be adjusted.
[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]
Latinos are far more likely to have a mobile-only household (46%) than non-hispanic whites (30%) according to the study; this gap is surprisingly large. The number of 25- to 29-year-old adults living in a mobile-only household hit a remarkable 60% in the beginning of 2012. There is a sharp generational divide here: Fewer than 25% of 45- to 64-year-old Americans have dared to drop the landline.
[More from BGR: Nokia predicted to abandon mobile business, sell assets to Microsoft and Huawei in 2013]
Somewhat surprisingly, the Midwest is the region with the highest level of mobile-only households. Naturally, metropolitan households are more likely to depend solely on mobile phones than suburban or rural households. For the first time ever, women edged out men as the larger group of mobile-only adults.
Back in 2006, only 10% of adults lived in a mobile-only household. Americans are kicking their landline habit with remarkable alacrity considering that many homes with small children still feel that depending solely on a mobile phone is too risky.

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Microsoft lashes out at Google’s decision to spurn Windows Phone

Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel for Microsoft (MSFT), took aim at Google (GOOG) and the company’s unwillingness to develop for Windows Phone 8 in a blog post on Wednesday. Heiner claims that, “Google continues to prevent Microsoft from offering consumers a fully featured YouTube app [among other] for the Windows Phone.” Microsoft has been apparently been trying to get a full-feature YouTube app for its Windows Phone operating system for more than two years, however it has been unsuccessful.
[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]
Despite the fact that the Windows Phone Marketplace has doubled in the past year, Google has not yet produced any quality apps for the platform. The company previously said that it will not be launching a native Gmail or Google Drive app for Windows 8 or Windows Phone until people start using the operating systems.

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British soldier killed in latest 'insider attack' in Afghanistan

• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
A man wearing an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire on on fellow Afghan troops and British coalition forces in Helmand Province yesterday, killing at least one British soldier in the first insider attack of 2013. The shooting shines the spotlight once again on concerns about the Afghan National Army's ability to assume responsibility for security as international troops begin their drawdown.
A slew of such incidents, as international coalition troops have started shifting responsibility to the Afghan Army, prompted NATO to step up its screening of applicants to the Army, but the attacks have continued – 45 incidents in 2012 alone, up from 21 in 2011, according to the Associated Press.
BBC reports that all six of the British soldiers who have been killed in the past six months died in "green-on-blue" insider incidents, which accounted for the deaths of more than 60 NATO personnel overall in 2012.
Recommended: How well do you know Afghanistan? Take our quiz.
The attack comes just as Afghan President Hamid Karzai has arrived in Washington to talk with President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about the future of Afghanistan.
Although the Taliban claimed to be behind the attack, Afghan officials are skeptical of the group's involvement, telling the BBC that the Taliban often falsely claim responsibility for such attacks.
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The Telegraph reports that the another Army soldier said that the attacker joined up a year ago and came from the eastern province of Laghman. The soldier said that the attacker acted as an "imam" for the Afghan troops, leading prayers for them. He was killed after opening fire.
Almost all the British forces have been concentrated in the southern province of Helmand, where the attack took place, according to the Associated Press, which dubs it the country's most violent.
The Monitor's Tom Peter reported in September that the insider attacks – and the "insurgent infiltration they represent" – threaten Afghanistan's longterm stability as international troops prepare for the 2014 withdrawal.
“The issue of green on blue attacks is not only a tragic issue for international forces and Afghan forces right now, but post-2014 this could change into the collapse of one or many of government institutions in various districts and provinces,” says Waliullah Rahmani, executive director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies. “There might be a risk of many elements of the Taliban and insurgency or people who are loyal to them who spy for these groups inside the Afghan government.”
Mr. Peter also reported earlier in the year, after an Afghan police officer killed nine of his colleagues while they were sleeping, that the rapid expansion of the Afghan security forces may be partly to blame, as proper vetting fell off in the rush to fill out the Army's ranks.
Waheed Mujhda, an independent analyst in Kabul, says that one of the main problems may stem from the eagerness of the international community and the Afghan government to rapidly expand the size of Afghan security forces, without properly vetting candidates.
“During this process they never pay attention to the background of everyone who comes to the Afghan forces,” he says.
Recommended: How well do you know Afghanistan? Take our quiz.
The Pentagon released a report to Congress last month that indicated only 1 in 23 Afghan Army brigades was ready to operate on its own without support from the US, according to the Washington Post.

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France's 'boys will be boys' mentality challenges gender equality

The flip side of feminism in France is a very flip attitude that being macho is an excuse that rightly covers many sins.
The French may duly proclaim and agree with gender equality and modern feminist notions. But in practice, those ideas run up against a powerful, culturally sanctioned "old-boy mentality" in Paris – an attitude, often held among power elites of both sexes, that "boys will be boys."
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When French politician and former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in 2011 on charges of raping a New York hotel maid, he immediately benefited from a powerful media defense in France, with leading intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Levy speaking out on his behalf.
And the defense of Mr. Strauss-Kahn echoed that which filmmaker Roman Polanski received in 2009. When Mr. Polanski, a French citizen, was detained in Switzerland for possible extradition to California on sexual misconduct charges dating from the 1970s, French elites – including the foreign minister and the minister of culture – took up for him.
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Such defenses weren't exactly rational. But they were a very French response: an excuse roughly on the grounds that these things will happen and it's best not to make too much of them. Feminism may be fine and admirable in theory, but it isn't how life and nature work in reality.
In Washington, if a White House cabinet member or a major media figure made apologies for rape, that would likely end a career. But in Paris, things are not so cut and dried.
A cultural attitude rising out of French history suggests that taking license with the ladies is a harmless part of the French tradition of gallantry. And there is an instinctive use of a whole arsenal of cultural put-downs and withering comments about those with the temerity to too loudly raise issues of sexual harassment. If someone takes "feminism" too seriously, then maybe there is something irritating about them and they should lighten up!
Sexual harassment laws are on the books. But they are rarely enforced or prosecuted. One rarely hears of hefty fines, and cases don't get attention.

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Do French women need feminism?

When ex-model and former French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy made comments in the December issue of Paris Vogue declaring, "My generation doesn't need feminism," Anne-Cécile Mailfert, one of many French women catching the news on her iPhone, was aghast.
"What? No way! We have to do something," she characterizes the collective response of the organization she serves as spokesperson for, Osez Le Féminisme or "Dare to be a Feminist." They launched a Twitter barrage with the hashtag "#DearCarlaBruni, we need feminism because…" leaving French women to fill in the "why" for themselves.
Recommended: Think you know Europe? Take our geography quiz.
"#DearCarlaBruni, we need feminism because people always assume I'm the secretary," was one common tweet. The campaign got so much attention that it finally prompted an apology from Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy – and handed a win to French feminists.
From afar, many think French women don't need such victories, at least when it comes to the child/work balance that so eludes American women. When Anne-Marie Slaughter published her polemic article in The Atlantic titled "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," which was devoured and debated by working mothers across the United States, not a few pointed out that French women often can have it all, thanks to social welfare policies that are virtually unmatched around the world. The subhead of a Slate article from November read, "Maybe working moms can have it all – in France."
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But that's only half the story – the other half having been brought to the fore after Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and aspirant to the French presidency, was accused of sexually assaulting a New York City hotel maid in May 2011. The case shocked many with its frank discussion of certain commonly held French attitudes toward women.
In fact the Gallic nation, which spawned such strong feminist figures as Simone de Beauvoir, struggles to surpass its European neighbors in terms of gender equality, even as Christine Lagarde now runs the IMF and French President François Hollande introduced gender parity in his cabinet. French women sit in the bottom half of Europe's rankings on a slew of measures from the most recent 2012 World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index – even taking last place on the group's perceived wage-equality survey indicator – while sexism and even sexual harassment have been overlooked or disregarded as the necessary evil of an otherwise lovely cultural relationship between men and women. Just recently all the government's ministers were sent to 45-minute anti-sexism classes.
SIDEBAR: France's 'boys will be boys' mentality challenges gender equality
Marilyn Baldeck, a young feminist and head of the European Association Against Violence Toward Women at Work, says that she butts heads with deeply held social mores.
"There is cheese, bullfighting, and the French way of seduction," she says. "We are being accused of wanting to sanitize the relationships between men and women.... [It] is claimed to be a puritanical feminism ... an American type of feminism."
PRO-CHILDBEARING, NOT-SO-PRO-EQUALITY
On the brisk Parisian streets of winter, mothers dressed in stylish boots and overcoats roll narrow strollers, all covered with rain and wind flaps, down the sidewalks, en route to day-care centers and schools, many of them sponsored by the state. Such programs are one of several policies that help French parents balance work and family. Day-care centers, called crèches, are subsidized by the state. If mothers can't find places in the state-run crèches, they share nannies and receive generous tax refunds that make having a nanny affordable. Preschools are free, and all day, for children as young as 3.
"Having children and working is highly valued in France," says Hélène Périvier, codirector of the gender program at the SciencesPo university in Paris and mother of three young children. In Germany, for example, women are frowned upon – stigmatized as "crows" – for wanting to work, she says. "It has a deep impact on society."
Generous state support for working mothers is widely endorsed by French women, but many argue that, having hailed from a historic pro-childbearing effort, French women haven't really promoted gender or social equality.
"Domestic labor remains women's domain, crèche places are more accessible to those in wealthy urban areas, and career compromise after parenthood remains largely a female sacrifice," says Simon Jackson, an English historian at SciencesPo.
Still, many wouldn't wish it away. Stephanie Lumbers has a toddler and is expecting another child this month. She returned to work in marketing when her first child was 5 months old and now shares a nanny with another family. "We have it better than most mothers," she says. Unlike many American women, who commonly say they struggle to balance home and work, she says no one in her circle of friends – though she concedes she is among a privileged circle – lists that balance as their major concern.
That isn't the only aspect of being a French woman that is worthy of envy. Stereotypes abound in movies and literature about the sense of style and beauty of French women. The bestseller "French Women Don't Get Fat" is a testament to that global fascination.
French professor Anne Deneys-Tunney, at New York University, says that she finds the US, where she has spent the last 20 years, to be a more egalitarian society for gender relations. American women have certain protections such as clear sexual harassment policies that are strictly enforced, yet it comes at a social cost, including a cultural tone that many French would find distasteful and too politically correct. The French want legal equality that doesn't come bound up in the inability to compliment women at work.
"Women are freer here, but on the other hand, it has destroyed a certain charm, an innocence and lightness of life," she says.
But that freedom can, at its worst, have a social cost. In July in the wake of the Strauss-Kahn case, for example, the country's female housing minister, Cécile Duflot, was subject to shouts and wolf whistles from the right-wing opposition as she prepared to address the national Parliament in a flowery but professional dress. The speaker of the chamber had to ask the male representatives to stop hooting at her.
Yet Ms. Duflot didn't shy away from responding. As she began her address to the chamber amid taunting from the opposition, she said, "Ladies and gentlemen representatives, but mostly gentlemen, apparently."
STRAUSS-KAHN AFFAIR A TURNING POINT
These scenarios are not unheard of. Women in France have less access to justice when it comes to sexual harassment. According to the French Ministry of Justice, about 1,000 complaints for sexual harassment are filed every year, but only a few dozen lead to sentencing.
And overall, the World Economic Forum's index puts France at 57 of 135 countries in terms of gender equality, falling in ranking from the year before. It sits well behind the Scandinavian countries, all in the Top 10, as well as behind Germany, Ireland, Spain, and the US.
SIDEBAR: France's 'boys will be boys' mentality challenges gender equality
Yet the fallout from the Strauss-Kahn case, while a nadir, has also been a turning point. In August, the country passed a new sexual harassment law that raises fines to €30,000 (nearly $40,000, double the previous fine) and expands the definition of what constitutes harassment. Before, it was limited to an act "with the goal of obtaining favors of sexual nature."
Today, harassment is defined as "imposing on somebody, in a repeated way, words or behaviors with a sexual connotation that either undermine one's dignity because of their degrading or humiliating nature, or create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive situation."
In one case that Ms. Baldeck's group represented, a female employee accused a male colleague of repeated sexual harassment, including an attempt to tuck a pencil between her buttocks. The judge in the case, in 2008, ruled against her. "Even if the words, actions, and gesture of [the defendant] could be judged as inadmissible, crude, rude, seen as obscene, they do not constitute moral or sexual harassment," the presiding judge wrote. Baldeck won on appeal, but says that she'd never have lost in the first place in today's environment. In fact, she says the number of cases they deal with in any given year – 400 – is up from the average of 300 before the Strauss-Kahn case forced sexual harassment into the public consciousness.
Mr. Hollande, in addition to introducing gender parity in his cabinet, has also reopened a women's rights ministry – after it was shuttered for almost 30 years – and by sending his ministers to sexism-education class, he has underlined his commitment to equality, his administration says.
"It is simply to take some time to think about inequalities between men and women, their origins, the reason that it is sometimes difficult to change mentalities and thus behaviors," writes Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the minister for women's rights, in an e-mail. "It is about giving them the keys, the tools, for politicians to integrate women's rights as an automatic extension of their political work."
'LA BARBE' STRIKES A FEMINIST BLOW WITH WIT
But feminist groups say there is far more to be done. One group called La Barbe – meaning "The Beard" in English but also a pun as an old French expression that means "bummer" – was founded in 2008 after a French female candidate from a mainstream party was fielded for the 2007 presidential election, leading to a barrage of public chauvinism. "We want to fight men's monopoly in power places," says Clémentine Pirlot, a gender studies student and active member of the group.
While La Barbe's intentions are very serious, it carries out its activism with a dose of humor and sarcasm. In November, Ms. Pirlot attended an economic conference with a group of women, where 14 speakers were scheduled to talk and all 14 were men. As is La Barbe's routine, about 20 minutes into the conference, Pirlot stood up and put on a homemade beard – "always with dignity," she says – and read out sarcastic remarks like, "Congratulations! There are no women here."
Pirlot carries a beard or two in her purse always. "You never know when you'll need it," she says. Often the bearded women are treated with respect, but at times their targets are hostile, even as they become a more common fixture on the Parisian landscape. One waiter at a cafe in downtown Paris sees Pirlot with her beard on and says, "Yeah, La Barbe!"
Baldeck says that these days in Paris one can attend a feminist event any day of the week and that the movement has been renewed by thousands of young women.
At Osez le Féminisme, the group has grown in three years to 1,500 members with 11 committees around the country, taking on everything from sex education to abortion to wage equality. Ms. Mailfert measures success in the reaction her job description generates.
"I think one of our main achievements," she says, "is that it is now not that taboo to say you are a feminist."

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Armstrong to break silence in Oprah interview

(Reuters) - Lance Armstrong will break his silence about his lifetime ban from cycling and the doping charges made against him in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey next week, the television presenter announced on Tuesday.
The interview, to be broadcast on the Oprah Winfrey Network on January 17, will be the first the American cyclist has conducted since receiving his ban and being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.
"Armstrong will address the alleged doping scandal, years of accusations of cheating, and charges of lying about the use of performance-enhancing drugs throughout his storied cycling career," the network said in a statement.
On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Armstrong, 41, had told associates and anti-doping officials he was considering an admission of using banned drugs.
The Times said Armstrong hoped to persuade anti-doping officials to allow him to resume competition in athletic events that adhere to the World Anti-Doping Code, under which the Texan is currently subject to a lifetime ban.
However, Armstrong's lawyer Tim Herman later told USA Today that there had been no talks with anti-doping bodies about any admission.
Armstrong has always vehemently denied charges of doping and has never been proven to have tested positive.
An October 10 report from the U.S. anti-doping body USADA cited Armstrong's involvement in what it characterized as the "most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," involving anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, blood transfusions and other doping.
Less than two weeks later, Armstrong's seven Tour de France victories were nullified and he was banned from cycling for life after the International Cycling Union ratified the USADA's sanctions against him.
In November, Armstrong, a survivor of testicular cancer, stepped down as a board member of Livestrong, the cancer-support charity he founded in 1997.

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