Carla Bruni-Sarkozy

(Getty Images | Inset from the Simpsons) Thousands of French Internet users flooded video sharing websites Friday to enjoy a lampoon of their glamourous first couple, almost a week after they appeared on the US show the Simpsons. Carla and Carl on the Simpsons. (Video below) Cartoon caricatures of President Nicolas Sarkozy and first lady Carla Bruni starred in an episode of the Fox network animated show in the United States on November 15 in an episode entitled "The Devil Wears Nada". Their cameos passed largely unnoticed in France until Friday, when news websites started linking to pirated clips of the episode, creating a ... Read Full Story

A nude photo of French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, identical to one sold last year for 91,000 dollars, was Friday withdrawn from a Paris auction after bids failed to hit the reserve price. Bidding for the black and white shot, showing Bruni standing pigeon-toed and covering her crotch with her hands, began at 4,000 euros but reached only 5,800, less than the undisclosed reserve price, the Drouot auction house said. The agent for the German collector who owns the photo then decided to withdraw it, the house said. An identical picture was sold at Christie's auction house in New York in April last year ... Read Full Story

Carla Bruni, wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, visited Qatar on Wednesday to help efforts to persuade the emirate to set up branches of major French universities and research bodies, an aide said. France's first lady was to hand over a dossier showing that top French academic institutions such as the HEC school of management, the Pasteur medical research organisation and cancer research centre IRCAD are ready to open wings in the gas-rich Gulf state. The singer and former model has no official title under French law but has set up a foundation helping children from deprived French neighbourhoods prepare for application to university. ... Read Full Story

PARIS (Reuters) - France's first lady, model-turned-singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, has rejected accusations of influencing the President Nicolas Sarkozy's political decisions, saying he was "not a yes-man." After French media published anonymous comments from members of Sarkozy's center-right UMP party criticizing her for supposedly passing on her left-leaning views, she retorted that she had no interest in politics. "How can anyone imagine that my husband is a yes-man who lets himself be influenced!" the Italian-born Bruni-Sarkozy said in an interview with Friday's edition of Elle magazine. "In a couple, each partner has personal influence over the other but I don't have any political influence on ... Read Full Story

During her years as a top model, French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy gave psychoanalysis nary a thought. But after her father died, the then-28-year-old model dove into therapy "body and soul," and has since spent many years in analysis, she told the makers of a French documentary broadcast Saturday. The documentary "La premiere seance" ("The First Session") features people talking about the reasons that pushed them to go into analysis and their experiences on the psychiatrist's couch. Other celebrities featured on the program included Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld and filmmaker Claude Chabrol. "I didn't know anything about psychoanalysis and didn't think I needed it. ... Read Full Story