France’s highest court has inflicted an embarrassing blow to President Sarkozy by cutting the heart out of a law that was supposed to put France in the forefront of the fight against piracy on the internet. The Constitutional Council declared access to the internet to be a basic human right, directly opposing the key points of Mr Sarkozy’s law, passed in April, which created the first internet... 

The outspoken culture minister, Kim Howells, last night found himself at the centre of a race row after claiming that the time had come to stand up to the “idiots” of rap culture. Mr Howells, who previously attacked exhibits at the Turner Prize show as “cold, mechanical conceptual bullshit”, launched into an extraordinary attack on Rblack British music hours after the police...