This abolition” he wrote, “is at odds with our avowed goal of reducing unemployment in the EU.”Lionel Jospin, the French Prime Minister, is expected to back the German call for a rethink. The French Finance Minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, will use a meeting with EU colleagues in Brussels today to unveil a new report showing that 12,000 French transport jobs are at risk. The meeting is the first formal Franco- German summit since the end of the Kohl era.
In the first significant breakthrough for the campaign to save duty free, the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, has asked his Finance Minister, Oskar Lafontaine, to use the forthcoming German EU presidency to lobby both the European Commission and the 14 other EU finance ministers to review their decision.In a letter dated 25 November and obtained by The Independent, Mr Schroder warns that scrapping duty free will lead to “substantial job losses not just in Great Britain and in Germany but throughout the European Union. Kidman and her co-star Iain Glen left Broadway previews of David Hare’s play to attend the award ceremony.Sinead Cusack was named best actress for Our Lady Of Sligo. The best play was Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen and best musical was Trevor Nunn’s revival of Oklahoma!.. THE LEADERS of France and Germany floated the idea yesterday of a five-year stay of execution on plans to abolish duty free shopping next June.

At the start of the two-day meeting in Potsdam, Prussia’s – and subsequently Russia’s – former garrison town, both sides conceded the Franco-German political axis had ground to a halt recently. But they promised a “fresh wind” in their relationship and sought to hammer out a common front in the coming battles over European integration. Kidman’s famously raunchy role in The Blue Room at the Donmar Warehouse won her a special prize at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for her “unique contribution” to London theatre.
Spacey’s acclaimed run in Arthur Miller’s The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida Theatre in Islington brought him the best actor award. Both stars gained kudos from the London productions, which remained packed throughout, with audiences clamouring for tickets.The judges said they “felt it hard .. to overstate the contribution made to live theatre … when a star such as Ms Kidman not only takes the risk of doing live theatre, but does it so very well”. THE HOLLYWOOD stars Nicole Kidman and Kevin Spacey received the heartfelt gratitude of the theatre world yesterday for their part in reviving its fortunes in a film-dominated age.

I think it is certainly the most important day for the company since it was founded in 1976.”But it is also important for Manchester. The theatre was very close to where the bomb went off and it is the first of the major reconstruction projects to be completed in the city.”Many members of the original cast, including the actress Sue Johnson, returned yesterday to take their parts in the play, which was halted after only eight performances when the bomb exploded, causing damage estimated at pounds 200 million in central Manchester.During the refurbishment work, the company has been staging performances in a tented building across the city at Upper Campfield.. When the company performs King Lear with Tom Courtenay later in the season, it is planned that the new roof will be opened to the gods.”In one sense, the bomb has allowed us to refurbish in a way that would not have been possible otherwise,” said John Goodfellow, the theatre’s senior spokesman.”The atmosphere here today has been magical. At one point, engineers doubted whether it could be saved.But thanks to the largest award outside London from the National Lottery’s heritage fund, the building now boasts a new blue glass dome, rehearsal rooms and a separate studio with seating for 120 people.There is also a new roof that allows scenery to be hoisted more easily. “Not only could we hear the blast, we could actually see it,” added Mr Burrough, who remembers taking shelter from the explosion in a shop doorway.The bomb destroyed all three of the 19th-century building’s glass domes. The atmosphere here is great,” said Mr Burrough, who cleared people from the theatre on June 15, 1996, after police received a bomb warning.He helped direct up to 20 people to safety from the theatre and box-office a few minutes before the bomb exploded. AFTER WHAT must be one of the longest intervals in theatre history, Manchester’s Royal Exchange reopened last night, more than two years after it was devastated by an IRA bomb.

After a pounds 31m refit, the theatre opened its doors to a performance of Stanley Houghton’s turn-of-the-century potboiler Hindle Wakes – the play whose run was halted by the bomb.
As a sell-out audience started to pour into the theatre, Alan Burrough, a security guard, said: “Over the past two-and-a-half years it is the ordinary public we have missed.”Today we have had people coming in saying, `Hello again, Alan.’ That’s what we’ve been missing. He has been suspended from the party pending the police inquiry.Hackney is still trying to repair its image after the revelation two years ago that one of its social workers, Mark Trotter, had sexually abused six children in his care before he died of Aids.. A GREEN PARTY councillor has resigned from a London council after a police raid on his home in which indecent images of children were seized. Paul Thomas, 38, stepped down when the chief executive at Hackney council demanded his resignation from the social services committee, which supervises children’s homes.
Police raided Mr Thomas’s home in Stoke Newington, north London, last Wednesday and took away computer equipment and photographs of children. He resigned his seat last Friday.A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said a man had been released on police bail until April in connection with the distribution and possession of indecent photographs of children.It is understood detectives were acting on a tip-off.