English Channel

It takes a certain kind of friend to reach out a hand when you are in need. It takes a completely different kind of friend to swim the English Channel for you. But for Tori DeLollo, Trista Felty, and Kiersten Rosenberg, tackling such a feat to help Lauren Schulman was natural. "Lauren was everybody's friend," DeLollo said. Next week, the three women plan to swim 21 miles across the English Channel - from Dover, England, to Calais, France - to raise money and awareness for multiple sclerosis, the disabling neurological disease that was diagnosed in Schulman in August 2007.

If salvage workers ever succeed in pulling the hapless Tricolor cargo ship out of the frigid depths of the English Channel, they may want to consider rechristening it the Calamity Jane. Three weeks ago, the Norwegian cargo ship, carrying 2,900 luxury cars to the United States, collided with a Bahamian-registered cargo ship in heavy fog. The Tricolor, on its way from Zeebrugge, Belgium, to Southampton, sank in 90 minutes, taking with it a brand-spanking new array of BMWs, Saabs and Volvos.

HE'S CHARGED WITH TAKING TO THE AIR TO CLEAR THE AIR Word out of France is that an electronics teacher annoyed by noise from a model-airplane club has been charged with using radio waves to crash more than 100 model planes. Rene Le Mancq, 62, has been feuding with the Marseille club over noise from the planes ever since he moved next door in 1977. In 1980, he won a court decree prohibiting the planes from flying over his property and limiting the number that could be flown at the same time.

When paraplegic Jim McGowan ventures overseas to train for his courageous attempt to swim the 22 miles from Dover, England, to Calais, France, on Sept. 20, Channel 6's "Prime Time" crew will be there. "Prime Time" will follow McGowan through his training period and also provide coverage of the actual event. In addition, McGowan has requested that two of the 12 passengers in his support boat be members of the Channel 6 team, making them the only local media representatives to have access to the boat during this historic event across the English Channel.

The joke among the workers digging the British half of the tunnel under the English Channel was that the tunnel's first passenger would be a whiff of French garlic. That whiff, whatever it was, made its historic journey last night. For the first time, the French and British halves of the $15 billion tunnel were linked in the middle of the channel, 14 miles out to sea, 150 feet under the ocean floor. The link itself consisted of a laser-guided bore hole about two inches across.

On Christmas Eve 1944, the troopship SS Leopoldville was sunk by a German U-boat as it transported U.S. Army reinforcements to support the Battle of the Bulge. It is one of the worst troopship disasters involving infantry during World War II. Yet for almost 50 years, it was a little-known episode, and the men who died and those who survived received little recognition. Allan Andrade, a retired New York City Transit Police lieutenant residing in southern Chester County, has spearheaded a drive for recognition and honor for those troops.

Once again, the British people have been reminded that theirs is a nation intimately, and sometimes painfully, connected to the sea. That relationship has often been overlooked, as modern air travel and sophisticated communications provide such an easy link between the British Isles and the rest of the world. But the disaster nine days ago off Zeebrugge, Belgium, when a British car ferry capsized in less than a minute and killed 134 people, forced Britain to acknowledge that the sea still is something to be feared.

It was March 14, 1944, two miles from the French village of Eu near the English Channel. Michel Gaudry, 15, halted his walk to a neighboring town, startled by the boom of flak and the smell of smoke that erupted in the sky as a host of German fighter planes bore down on what Gaudry called a flying fortress, a B-17 bomber. "I saw some German fighters, 10, maybe more," Gaudry said in a telephone interview from his home in France. As the FW-190s strafed the straggling plane, he said, it fell behind the rest of the 452d Bomb Group that was returning to England from a bombing run in Germany.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterrand yesterday agreed to link their two countries with a twin-bore rail tunnel beneath the English Channel. The announcement, made with great pomp and flourish, caps 200 years of discussion about one of the largest civil engineering projects undertaken in modern times. The two leaders seemed especially pleased to announce the go- ahead of a dream that their predecessors had failed to realize. "From today onward, our two countries . . . will have a new link, and one should not underestimate the symbolic importance of this," Mitterrand said before a sea of schoolchildren waving French and British flags.

Sure, France and Britain finally agreed last week to dig a tunnel between them, but let's skip all that official stuff and go right to the pop charts to find out how these two really feel about each other. Climbing swiftly up the French side is Miss Maggie, a less-than-warm portrait of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that notes: "There aren't many women mean enough to polish a gun or feel tough, except, of course, Miss Maggie. " And just out on the British side is Hop Off, You Frogs, which extols French President Francois Mitterrand with: "Over in Frogland he's reckoned a hit, but people in Britain think he's a twit.

It takes a certain kind of friend to reach out a hand when you are in need. It takes a completely different kind of friend to swim the English Channel for you. But for Tori DeLollo, Trista Felty, and Kiersten Rosenberg, tackling such a feat to help Lauren Schulman was natural. "Lauren was everybody's friend," DeLollo said. Next week, the three women plan to swim 21 miles across the English Channel - from Dover, England, to Calais, France - to raise money and awareness for multiple sclerosis, the disabling neurological disease that was diagnosed in Schulman in August 2007.

It takes a certain kind of friend to reach out a hand when you are in need. It takes a completely different kind of friend to swim the English Channel for you. But for Tori DeLollo, Trista Felty, and Kiersten Rosenberg, tackling such a feat to help Lauren Schulman was natural. "Lauren was everybody's friend," DeLollo said. Next week, the three women plan to swim 21 miles across the English Channel - from Dover, England, to Calais, France - to raise money and awareness for multiple sclerosis, the disabling neurological disease that was diagnosed in Schulman in August 2007.

On Christmas Eve 1944, the troopship SS Leopoldville was sunk by a German U-boat as it transported U.S. Army reinforcements to support the Battle of the Bulge. It is one of the worst troopship disasters involving infantry during World War II. Yet for almost 50 years, it was a little-known episode, and the men who died and those who survived received little recognition. Allan Andrade, a retired New York City Transit Police lieutenant residing in southern Chester County, has spearheaded a drive for recognition and honor for those troops.

If salvage workers ever succeed in pulling the hapless Tricolor cargo ship out of the frigid depths of the English Channel, they may want to consider rechristening it the Calamity Jane. Three weeks ago, the Norwegian cargo ship, carrying 2,900 luxury cars to the United States, collided with a Bahamian-registered cargo ship in heavy fog. The Tricolor, on its way from Zeebrugge, Belgium, to Southampton, sank in 90 minutes, taking with it a brand-spanking new array of BMWs, Saabs and Volvos.

It was March 14, 1944, two miles from the French village of Eu near the English Channel. Michel Gaudry, 15, halted his walk to a neighboring town, startled by the boom of flak and the smell of smoke that erupted in the sky as a host of German fighter planes bore down on what Gaudry called a flying fortress, a B-17 bomber. "I saw some German fighters, 10, maybe more," Gaudry said in a telephone interview from his home in France. As the FW-190s strafed the straggling plane, he said, it fell behind the rest of the 452d Bomb Group that was returning to England from a bombing run in Germany.

Pardon me, sir. What do you call that thing around your neck? Xavier Relmy, a university student rushing to catch the Metro, lurched to a halt. "This?" he said, touching his Sony earphones, clearly startled by the stupidity of the question. "It's a Walkman, of course. " But the French government says you shouldn't use an English word like Walkman, not when there's a perfectly good French word - balladeur. Relmy shrugged. "In everyday life, we all call it a Walkman. Nobody I know uses balladeur.

HE'S CHARGED WITH TAKING TO THE AIR TO CLEAR THE AIR Word out of France is that an electronics teacher annoyed by noise from a model-airplane club has been charged with using radio waves to crash more than 100 model planes. Rene Le Mancq, 62, has been feuding with the Marseille club over noise from the planes ever since he moved next door in 1977. In 1980, he won a court decree prohibiting the planes from flying over his property and limiting the number that could be flown at the same time.

After six years of cost overruns, construction snafus and acrimonious corporate infighting, the Channel Tunnel linking Britain and France will open to the motoring public on May 8, one year late, at round-trip prices ranging from $195 to $465. Eurotunnel, the operator, announced its first price schedule yesterday, pegging its fees to those charged by the ferries that ply the English Channel. Christopher Garnett, commercial director of Eurotunnel, said at a news briefing that, by 1996, "the first land connection between Britain and France since the Ice Age" would attract half the customers who cross the channel.

The joke among the workers digging the British half of the tunnel under the English Channel was that the tunnel's first passenger would be a whiff of French garlic. That whiff, whatever it was, made its historic journey last night. For the first time, the French and British halves of the $15 billion tunnel were linked in the middle of the channel, 14 miles out to sea, 150 feet under the ocean floor. The link itself consisted of a laser-guided bore hole about two inches across.

Once again, the British people have been reminded that theirs is a nation intimately, and sometimes painfully, connected to the sea. That relationship has often been overlooked, as modern air travel and sophisticated communications provide such an easy link between the British Isles and the rest of the world. But the disaster nine days ago off Zeebrugge, Belgium, when a British car ferry capsized in less than a minute and killed 134 people, forced Britain to acknowledge that the sea still is something to be feared.