Reims and Rennes moved alongside idle Paris Saint-Germain on nine points at the top of Ligue 1 on Saturday.
Champagne-region Reims, who won the last of their six French titles in 1962, were too strong for winless Lorient as they triumphed 4-1, while Rennes scored two second-half goals thanks to Sylvain Armand and Giovanni Sio to defeat Toulouse 3-1.
Reims top the table on goals scored ahead of PSG with Rennes just behind on goal difference.
Earlier, French international Nabil Fekir scored a hat-trick as Lyon rumbled to a 4-0 win at Caen and climbed to a tie for fifth with Bastia and Nantes, who both play on Sunday away to Saint-Etienne and Bordeaux respectively.
In other matches Saturday, promoted Angers maintained their unbeaten start to the season with a 1-1 draw at home to Nice and lie fourth while Troyes and Montpellier finished scoreless.
In the only other match of the day, former Zambia and Ivory Coast handler Herve Renard enjoyed his first win as Lille coach where a 23rd minute goal from Sofiane Boufal was enough to see off Gazelec-Ajaccio 1-0 in the north of the country.
At Caen, Lyon’s Corentin Tolisso helped set up two of Fekir’s goals on a day when new signing Mathieu Valbuena was also on display.
Guadaloupe-born 27-year-old Claudio Beauvue was also on the scoresheet as Hubert Fournier’s side got back to winning ways following a 2-1 home loss to Rennes last time out.
“The win was important because we are Olympique Lyonnais and to lose twice would already be the beginning of a small crisis, so it was good to find some serenity and especially with our offensive players who were great today,” said Fournier.
“We messed up against Rennes at home in a situation when we were not quite up to our level, but tonight we scored four goals which doesn’t happen to everyone. Things are not yet perfect and we realise that but to win 4-0 is good for our morale.”
Fekir’s first came on 18 minutes as he took a pass from Tolisso, beat Damien Da Silva and then shot past goalkeeper Remy Vercoutre.
His second came a minute before the break after he turned Chaker Alhadhur inside out.
Valbuena set up the third on 57 minutes and four minutes from time Beauvue hit a cross-shot from the corner of the area that gave Vercoutre no chance.
Lyon now trail defending champions Paris Saint-Germain by two points, although Laurent Blanc's undefeated capital outfit can restore their lead when they travel to AS Monaco in the weekend's final match on Sunday.
Caen remain in the top eight, three points behind PSG after two wins and two defeats from four games.
On Friday night, Sloan Privat and Nicolas Benezet gave Guingamp their first goals of the season in a 2-0 win which sent Marseille crashing back to earth.
Marseille had been riding a tide of euphoria since the arrival of new coach Michel with a 6-0 rout of Troyes last weekend following losses in their opening two games, but cold reality hit again in Brittany.
“The rhythm of the game was very fast and the opposition very strong,” said Spaniard Michel, who took over after Argentine Marcelo Bielsa quit after the first game of the season.
The 26-year-old Privat had missed a penalty early on but made up by getting his team’s first goal after 72 minutes at the Stade du Roudourou with Benezet scoring the second with one minute to go.
Their first points of the season lifted Guingamp off the bottom of the table just behind Marseille who are 13th, also with three points from four games.
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Another way to earn air miles
In addition to the Emirates and Etihad programmes, there is the Air Miles Middle East card, which offers members the ability to choose any airline, has no black-out dates and no restrictions on seat availability. Air Miles is linked up to HSBC credit cards and can also be earned through retail partners such as Spinneys, Sharaf DG and The Toy Store.
An Emirates Dubai-London round-trip ticket costs 180,000 miles on the Air Miles website. But customers earn these ‘miles’ at a much faster rate than airline miles. Adidas offers two air miles per Dh1 spent. Air Miles has partnerships with websites as well, so booking.com and agoda.com offer three miles per Dh1 spent.
“If you use your HSBC credit card when shopping at our partners, you are able to earn Air Miles twice which will mean you can get that flight reward faster and for less spend,” says Paul Lacey, the managing director for Europe, Middle East and India for Aimia, which owns and operates Air Miles Middle East.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Company%20profile
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match info
Southampton 2 (Ings 32' & pen 89') Tottenham Hotspur 5 (Son 45', 47', 64', & 73', Kane 82')
Man of the match Son Heung-min (Tottenham)
MATCH DETAILS
Juventus 2 (Bonucci 36, Ronaldo 90 6)
Genoa 1 (Kouame 40)
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
