No offense intended to anyone celebrating their Irish heritage, but some of the international spotlight in South Carolina will shift to the state’s French connections early this week.
The reason is purely diplomatic: Gerard Araud, the new ambassador of France to the United States, will be touring Palmetto State businesses that hail from his homeland Monday and Tuesday. He will be joined by Denis Barbet, consul general of France to the U.S. Southeast.
U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson is scheduled to go with them on a tour of Michelin’s Midlands operations that will kick off the visit. The tiremaker’s North American headquarters and main production site are in the Upstate, and the company is the No. 1 source of French investment in South Carolina.
Later that day, Araud, who’s been his country’s U.S. ambassador since September and is a former ambassador to the United Nations, will speak at a Rotary Club luncheon in Columbia. He’ll then head up to the Aiken area to see the construction of the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility, which is involves French-owned AREVA.
Araud and Barbet will wrap up their economic fact-finding mission in the Charleston region on Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day. They’ll go to Berkeley County to drop in on Nexans, a French-owned maker of electrical high voltage cables that recently opened a manufacturing plant in Bushy Park Industrial Complex near Goose Creek.
About 30 French companies operate in South Carolina and support about 16,000 jobs, according to the Southeast consul general office in Atlanta. Among them: Air Liquide, Beneteau, Sagem, Rhodia, Plastic Omnium, Faurecia and Le Creuset.
Stop the music?
Did the West Coast ports shutdown play a role in last week’s Carlos Santana concert at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center?
That’s the scuttlebutt, anyway.
Cindy Blackman, Santana’s wife and the drummer for guitarist Lenny Kravitz, showed up at the PAC to play drums for her husband’s set. Talk at the PAC was that Blackman, who isn’t listed on Santana’s musician lineup for the current tour, was available for the gig only because Kravitz had to cancel his tour of Australia and Asia due to an inability to ship some of his equipment out of the Los Angeles port.
Erin Cook, who works with Blackman publicist Jensen Communications, wouldn’t confirm that.
“Please reach out to Lenny’s management team,” Cook said in an email to The Post and Courier. “We have no comment on his business.”
Kravitz’s management couldn’t be reached for comment. Kravitz has said the Australia and Asia tour was canceled “due to contractual scheduling conflicts beyond my control .”
Peter Noble, director of the Byron Bay Bluesfest in Australia, isn’t buying the West Coast ports story.
“I would have thought his freight would be shipped by air, given the distances and number of countries involved,” Noble said in an email to The Post and Courier. “It beggars belief that this tour was even part freighted by sea.”
Kravitz had been scheduled to headline the Bluesfest on April 2, and Noble is still noticeably irked by the cancellation.
“Whilst Lenny’s cancellation has been termed by Sydney’s Mirror Telegraph newspaper as one of the Top 10 lamest excuses ever for an artist to cancel in Australian concert history, I am unfortunately in the dark in terms of knowing what really happened,” Noble said.
The West Coast ports are up and running again following the settlement of a three-month labor dispute. No word from Kravitz’s camp on whether those tour dates will be rescheduled.
Sterling service
Air service to Florida and other sun-baked points south is about to get a lift.
On Thursday, Fort Lauderdale-based Silver Airways will join the lineup at Charleston International Airport by launching daily flights to Orlando and Tampa and onto South Florida. Among other destinations, the carrier offers connections from the Sunshine State to various points in the Bahamas.
The inaugural flight from Tampa is scheduled to touch down in North Charleston at 11:30 a.m. A ceremony markng the airlines’ arrival is in the works ahead of Charleston County Aviation Authority’s monthly board meeting.
Silver Airways follows Canada-based Porter Airlines, which launched Saturday flights in February to Toronto, giving the airport its first regularly scheduled international service in years.
Also, Southwest Airlines will launch Saturday-only air service April 11 to Love Field in Dallas before expanding that to a daily route Aug. 9.
School-to-work program
Get an MBA. Then get to work. Students who pick up a master’s in business administration from the College of Charleston apparently have learned the drill.
According to a newly released “U.S. News Short List,” which is separate from the magazine’s overall closely followed college rankings, 97.1 percent of CofC’s full-time MBA graduates last year had jobs within three months after getting their diplomas.
That earned it No. 3 spot among U.S. schools that submitted data to the publication, behind the University of Tulsa and the University of Chicago.
The college’s MBA program is relatively new. It’s offered as a one-year accelerated program.
“We are thrilled that our students are benefiting from the mentorship and networking opportunities that are the centerpiece of this innovative program, which is the only one of its kind in South Carolina,” College of Charleston President Glenn McConnell said in statement.
US News described its “Short List” as “a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas.”
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