How to detect fraud and corruption under employees

In some instances fraud and corruption under employees, whether in the Private or Public Sector, have become endemic.

In some segments of the retail industry it is estimated that shoplifting by employees cost them more than shoplifting by members of the public. It is also a known fact that some of the big retail stores even hire store-detectives just to look after staff and their shenanigans.

But even the small businesses encounter the same problems with employees but unfortunately they cannot afford the same extremes the big industries can to counter fraud and corruption.

They can only minimize the risk with strong anti-fraud and anti-corruption control and vigilance and the following is some tips in assistance to this phenomenon:

1. Sudden change in life-style: A sudden change in life-style is the most telling symptom of fraud or corruption. It is easy to measure the life-style an employee is enjoying with his remuneration and other perks. Evidence to look out for may be fancy, expensive cars; luxury equipment and furniture; holidays in exotic, expensive destinations; etc.

2. Sudden workaholic: Be sure that something is wrong when the person who normally takes all his vacation leave suddenly turns into a workaholic who now refuses to take leave or to be absent from work for a longish period. Statistics show that a huge amount of fraud and corruption is normally detected when dishonest employees area way from work for some periods. First of all they are not there to cover up their misdoings and secondly normally a reliever has to be appointed who is the ideal candidate to unearth illegal activities of colleagues.

3. Identify the complainants: It is a fact that an employee who constantly complain about his meagre remuneration would be the first to take from the employer what they think is their right to take to make up for financial short-falls. It is those who would even in court on a charge of theft try to justify it. Remember, those type of employees are also the targets for unscrupulous rivals to sabotage the competition financially for a price.

4. Identify the compulsive gambler: The compulsive gambler always believe that he will win big one or the other time. Therefore it is easy to take the employer’s money with the believe that they will be able to pay back when the big win is there. Statistics also show this nearly never happens.

5. Watch out for close relationships with suppliers: Unscrupulous suppliers are always there to entice dishonest employees to inflate prices or steering tenders and contracts their way in exchange for kickbacks, free holidays, expensive gifts etc. Be careful, even unscrupulous clients can do the same for illegal marked-down specials.

The main thing is, be alert and try to be one step ahead of dishonest employees.

Hendrik DB de Villiers

You and cellulite

What is Pandora’s Box?

“Do not open Pandora’s Box”, or “to open Pandora’s Box is not good for you” has become a general cliché for something bad or even evil.

According to Greek myth, Pandora was the first woman. She was send to the rebellious Titans on earth by Zeus as a punishment for mankind.

She was given a box to take with her, with instructions not to open it. Because she was curious she disobeyed, opened the box and all the evils of the world flew out.

‘Pandora’s Box’ became the symbol and saying for any action whose consequences is dangerously unpredictable.

Jenny Love

How to Grow a Herb Lawn

As a keen gardener there is nothing more tranquil than a neatly kept or manicured lawn. I personally attend to my lawn which is of average size and can keep me quite busy during summer time. But the result and joy and pride are indescribable.

Unfortunately, due to the climate of the region where I am living the only real lawn that is suitable for my garden is Kikuyu grass. However, I have done some reading about different types of grass for a lawn and it is interesting that you can also grow a herb lawn.

There are especially three types of herbs that are mostly suitable for a lawn:

1. Camomile makes an excellent lawn but the variety Anthemis nobilis should be used. The reason is that it is a hardy type of plant that can be kept green and lively in hot weather. It is also hardy enough for the normal wear and tear any lawn should endure; meaning walking on it and even picnicking on it. Unfortunately it is not hardy enough for practicing sports on it. It is best for sandy soil but will grow in other types of soil too, except for clay soil.

2. Thyme is also suitable for lawn and here it is the variety Thymes serpyllum. This is the smallest and hardiest of the thyme family but it makes a nice fragrant carpet rather than a strong lawn to walk or picnic on. It is therefore only for the show and it is best to grow in a special corner of your garden with no traffic. It must be kept well watered and weeded.

3. The third herb that is suitable for a lawn is pennyroyal (Mentha requieni). Like the first part of its scientific name hints, it is one of the smallest of the mint family and like thyme, it is not that strong enough to bear much traffic but it can give you much joy and beauty.

The nitty-gritty of this type of lawn is that it is more for the aesthetic than a work-horse.

Hendrik DB de Villiers

Actions Are More Attractive Than Words

One of the most common mistakes that men make, that can literally kill attraction in women, is bragging:

"I am intelligent."

"I am smart."

"I am rich."

"I am honest."

"I am trustworthy."

"I am successful."

"I have a great sense of humour."

"I work out a lot."

"I like to play hard and work hard."

Avoid making such claims. You will probably come across as arrogant, and turn women off quicker than bad breath.

Instead, if you want to communicate certain good qualities of yours, do it INDIRECTLY. Do something that would make a woman infer that you have those great qualities:

- Instead of saying that you are funny -- tell her a joke.

- Instead of saying that you are smart -- share your view or opinion on some controversial political or philosophical issue.

- Instead of saying that you like to work hard and play hard -- take her out for a run/hike or to play tennis.

- Instead of telling her that you like classical music -- put your favourite CD on for her in your car or at your place.

Actions speak louder than words and they are sure more attractive to women than words.

Keep this in mind and you will get much further with the women you meet and like.

HDV

Rat race getting to you?

You're tired of the pavements, the car fumes and seeing that same old corner house in need of paint, right? Maybe it's time to take a hike. But make sure you make it back home all in one piece. The International Red Cross offers some suggestions.

Take action:

Review the equipment, supplies and skills that you'll need for your outing; consider the kinds of emergencies you may encounter and plan for them; make sure that you're in proper physical condition for your adventure; it's best to hike or camp with at least three other persons - if someone becomes injured or sick, one person can stay with the victim while the others can go for help; leave a copy of your itinerary with someone - it should include details about your vehicle, a list of equipment you have with you, and your scheduled date of return.

Acknowledgement: Health24.com

Fact File on Rooibos Tea

Rooibos tea is indigenous to South Africa. The plant from which rooibos tea is harvested is a leguminous shrub with needle-like leaves; native to the mountain slopes of the Western Cape.

Marketing of rooibos tea on a small scale started in about 1900. Seed selection and improved cultivation and processing began in the 1920’s and about 30 years later the industry was exporting to Australia, New Zeeland, Europe, the UK, Canada and the USA.

Rooibos tea is caffeine-free and contains some ascorbic acid and some minerals. In addition, it contains sufficient fluoride to have some value in combatting tooth decay. The low-tannin content of rooibos tea makes the addition of milk unnecessary. The tea also does not inhibit iron absorption as conventional tea does.

How to brew your tea

When brewing rooibos tea, only use boiling water. Try to maintain this temperature (boiling) until the tea is ready to be served. Ideally you should have a teapot which absorbs and radiates very little heat – a glass teapot is the most suitable for this purpose. Rinse the pot with boiling water before you add the tea bags or leaves. Pour the boiling water on to the bag or leaves and leave it on the stove to keep hot while steeping.

Rooibos tea can be enjoyed anytime with or without sugar, hot milk or lemon.

You can even marinate meat with it!

Although rooibos tea is traditionally consumed as a hot drink it can be just as refreshing and appetising served cold.

Try it yourself!

By Hendrik DB de Villiers

What is a Food Headache?

Headaches are as common as a cold and nobody is immune against getting headaches.

Headaches can, in lay-person’s terms be described as a pain in the region of the head or even the neck area. The brain tissue itself is not sensitive to pain as it does not have any pain receptors. The pain is caused by the disturbance of the pain-sensitive structures around the brain.

People get headaches for many reasons – sinus infection, a hangover, tension, etc. – but headaches are also caused by food or drinks.

Allergic headaches may be the mild kind that is often accompanied by a stuffy or running nose or a feeling of pressure in the sinuses. Or they may be pounding headaches that make you really want to get away from it all. At worst, food allergy can cause migraine, a particularly painful type of headache that usually affects only one side of the head and may be accompanied by dizziness, nausea and oversensitivity to light and sound.

Notorious headache foods include wine, nuts – and the big culprit chocolate. Some people can diagnose their chocolate headache easily. They eat a chocolate bar and within 20 minutes they begin to feel stuffed up and headachy.  

In other cases, the headache is not so easily connected with what was consumed and therefore triggered the headache. A new white wine may contain smaller quantities of allergenic products than an aged, red Cabernet with various other vintages of wine, sherries, ports, cordials, whiskeys and brandies. The same is true of nuts. 

A person may have white wine with salted almonds for cocktails and later feel on top of the world, but be felled with a splitting headache after an apparently similar cocktail menu of sherry and cashew nuts.

In some instances people do not even realise the headache is caused by some food allergy. The best is that when you are pestered by splitting headaches for no apparent reason shortly after consuming some food or drinks, consult with your doctor.

By Hendrik DB de Villiers

What Is An Organic Lifestyle?

More and more people are deciding to choose an organic lifestyle to counteract the imbalances of today’s fast-paced world.

An organic lifestyle consists of using products, eating food, and generally living a lifestyle which is free from the chemicals that are present in so much of the commodities that we used to live life in the 21st century developed world.

Some people are choosing to go wholly organic, others just partly, but it has been proven that an organic lifestyle is beneficial to health and well-being. Here are a few guidelines for leading an organic lifestyle:

• Eating organic food means that fruit, vegetables and grains have not been sprayed with chemicals and have been grown using traditional methods. Organic meat is free from the antibiotics that are fed to animals that are farmed intensively to make them prematurely fat. Ingesting these chemicals and unnatural substances has been proven to have a negative impact on health.

To source the very freshest organic produce many people order fruit and vegetable boxes from farms that are delivered to their door, some people use farmers markets where they can trust their food has been raised/sourced/grown responsibly, and are able to ask the sellers, who are very often the farmers any questions.

Growing vegetables and owning an allotment has increased in popularity in recent years, this is again a way that people are aware of where there food comes from, and its popularity indicates that people are becoming more aware and concerned about this.

• Using organic cosmetics, toiletries and household products eliminates the chemicals that tend to be present in conventional products, therefore protecting our bodies and immediate environment from chemical. Brands such as Ecover have been sold for many years but are finding that peoples increased awareness of the environment and their health has been beneficial to sales.

• Organic clothing is also becoming more and more popular. Natural fibres such as cotton, hemp and bamboo are grown organically and then made into clothing, which again ensures that skin does not come into contact with chemicals that can be used in clothes dye and manufacturing clothing. Many people who have children and babies will try to adopt some kind of an organic lifestyle, to give their child the purest and healthiest start as possible, and there are a variety of organic children’s clothing options available.

Eliminating unnecessary chemicals and preservatives from our lifestyle can only be a good thing for physical health, but there is also a certain sense of well-being that those who go organic adopt.

Organic meat is always free range, so to eat organic means that you have not contributed to cruelty to animals, pollution and general waste that a non-organic way of life is susceptible to. An organic lifestyle is also considered more sustainable and recyclable, and quite often fair trade products are organic.

An organic lifestyle can be more expensive, however this encourages moderation, as it is widely understood that society today is greedy in excess of what it requires.

So, the benefits of organic are huge and for physical, mental and spiritual well-being, it is certainly a choice to consider.

By: Rubel Zaman

Safety tips for walking the streets

World-wide our city streets are roamed by criminals. This article is about the opportunistic street criminal. They are those who take advantage of people on the streets who unwittingly or foolishly offer themselves as targets for this type of street criminal.

 Next time you are on the streets observe your fellow pedestrians how they make it obvious that there is a bulging wallet in the back pocket, or carry their handbags with the zippers or flaps open or the same handbags nonchalantly thrown loosely over their shoulders. Remember, there are career criminals whose job it is to see this could-not-care attitude of pedestrians and then capitalize on it. But it is the same could-not-care people who will cry foul when mugged or robbed or pick-pocketed – then they will blame the authorities for not ensuring sufficient police on the streets.

It is also our responsibility to look after our own safety. Be like the street criminals – always observant and aware of everything that is going on around us and keeping the following tips in mind:

1. When your wallet, handbag or anything else is grabbed, do not resist. The odds are that you can be injured, even seriously, or that your assailant will become more violent through anger, when he is challenged.

2. Do not advertise that you have a large amount of money on you when drawing cash at an ATM or when paying for goods at a shop.  The best is to pay by means of debit cards.

3. Try not to walk alone. Go with a companion and always stay away from deserted places, deserted bus stops, empty parking lots and unlit areas.

4. Be aware of your surroundings and always anticipate the worst. Do not get into an elevator if you do not like the look of a single occupant in the elevator. The same principle applies when you are in the elevator and a suspicious looking person enters on a floor. Without making a scene, get out as if it were your designated floor. When threatened in a moving elevator, do not press the emergency stop. You will be stuck between two floors with a potential attacker – best is to run your hand over the button panel and try to press as many buttons as allowed!

5. Be mentally alert. Visualise yourself in various situations and how you would react and practise this often.

6. Walk against the traffic flow. Should you perceive a threat from an approaching car you can run past it and it will not be possible for the car to speed after you.

7. In today’s world it will be wise to invest in a self-defence course.

In conclusion, it takes a thief to catch a thief. Therefore, become as streetwise as the opportunistic street criminal just waiting for you to open your defenses!

By Hendrik DB de Villiers

How Simple “Slipups” Are Seductive

Who is policing the police?

Barely a day goes by or you read, hear or see of in the Media of the Police overstepping the boundaries of their mission and vision - brutality in executing their duties, rudeness against the public, neglecting their duties in protecting the arrested in police cells, raping of suspects in custody, assaulting members of the public, accepting bribes, etc. And so the list continues.

It is actually frightful. The very people we entrust to safe guard us against all evil have become the perpetrators. Who is policing the police? Who can we trust?

But it is not only the reporting in the Media that let one shivers. The daily interaction with family, friends, colleagues, and people arrested by the same Police, posts on Blogs, you name them, some stories coming forth are mind boggling.

It is no use to give incidents or discuss it. Everyone knows about it. But what needs talking about is what is the public figures, voted by us to protect us, doing about it? Are they too afraid to act against those they appointed in positions of trust? Has it become a matter of the tail wagging the dog? Or is it the master who has become afraid that the dog will attack him?

Or, is it only the first significant steps towards, or preparation for a Police State?
But can we expect anything better from those that should serve and protect when those who are supposed to manage them, police them and lead by example are sometimes the opposite?

The honest and purpose driven police officers are fighting crime from both side. The true criminals on one side and their own corrupt and criminal minded colleagues on the other side. No wonder the real criminals are having a field day. Prisons are overcrowded but even here the joke is on the law abiding citizens’ expense. They say it is not due to the fact that the criminals behind bars could not afford a decent lawyer but that they could not afford the bribe money!

It is Government’s responsibility to protect us whether they like it or not. They should realize that in framing a democratic government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Policing is an on-going experiment, namely whether policing can promote security and serve liberty as the ultimate purpose of government. Justice and peace in a society rests on restraint, by government and by the citizenry. Laws provide both a guide and a motive for such restraint for the good of everyone.

It is a general perspective of Joe and Jane Citizen that criminals feel safe and happy because they know that the police are useless. Let the real government stand up and be counted. Please say no to corrupt police forces. Let they start serving the citizens as they should.

By Hendrik DB de Villiers

Light up your life – some interesting facts on colour and light

It is a proven fact that the colour scheme and lighting of your home can have an impact on the way you act and feel. Depending on each person’s inner feelings, some colours can make us smile whilst other colours can make us frown. Have you ever thought why the walls of children wards in hospitals, classrooms of pre-school children and even the walls of hospital nurseries wards are always so colourful and bright?

It is because of the important psychological impact colour and light have on the human being. So let us explain the impact of colour and lighting on our well-being practical:

1.       Light colours tend to open up a room – making it look and feel more spacious than it really is. It also opens up the airiness of a room. On the other side; darker colours make a room look smaller. For instance, look at the smallest room of a house – the ceiling is always painted white or a light colour – it gives the impression of openness.

2.       For rooms that rely mostly on artificial lighting, for instance offices in buildings or basement rooms of a house, light to pale colours are recommended for the walls. The reason is that these colours spread the artificial light more evenly around the room.

3.       Why are office buildings; especially Government institution buildings, mostly painted greyish or brownish? It is believed that these colour-schemes inspire efficiency!

4.       Relaxing colour schemes are blue or green. That is why these colours are mostly used in hospital wards – it is believed to establish a sense of calmness and it enhances recuperation.

5.       The sun is life and therefore sunlight plays a vital role in regulating our moods, hormone production and other body functions. Unfortunately, the average person spends more than 75% of daylight hours indoors. Therefore, full advantage must be taken of natural daylight; but protect yourself against the harmful elements of the sun!

6.       Light coloured blinds or curtains can be used to reflect the sun and to keep your house cool in hot weather.

7.       Before installing light fixtures make sure it will fit in with the purpose of the room – for instance the lighting needs of the kitchen will differ from that of the dining room. Fortunately energy-saving light bulbs have taken the world by storm and the correct type must also be chosen for each type of room of the house.

So, next time before you start re-painting your house or putting in new light fittings, also take into consideration the psychology of colour and light in our lives. 

By Hendrik DB de Villiers

My Beautiful World

How to save on your vehicle’s fuel consumption

Daily we complain about the sky-rocketing price of fuel. Unfortunately we are so dependable on our vehicles for whatever reasons that disposing of it won’t be an option!

The next best thing is that we have to look into those factors that influence the fuel consumption of our vehicles and try to save on fuel consumption.

Here are some useful tips:

1. Drive smoothly: Try to maintain a constant and steady speed for most of your journey which will result in fuel efficiency.

2. Using your brakes and changing of gears: Try to anticipate conditions and traffic patterns whilst driving in order to be alert for any occurrence to avoid constant or sudden braking and changing of gears. You will not only save fuel but also save on wear and tear of your brake pads.

3. Idling of engine: Try to avoid your engine to idle for long periods or after starting up your engine. Unnecessary idling wastes fuel. When driving off after a standstill for whatever reason, accelerate briskly through the gears to avoid spending time in the lower gears where fuel consumption is higher. And, do not chase through the gears either!

4. Revving of your engine: To over-rev your engine for whatever reason is wasteful of expensive fuel.

5. Try to avoid short distance trips: Remember when your engine is still cold, the fuel consumption is higher until the engine reaches operating temperature. So, try to avoid short distance trips where the engine in all probability will not reach operating temperature.

6. Maintain correct tyre inflation: Follow the manufacturers’ recommendations for inflating your tyres as over-inflated or under-inflated tyres have a definite impact on fuel economy.

7.  Correct wheel alignment: Check your wheel alignment regularly as incorrect alignment will damage your tyres and cause higher fuel consumption.

8. Service your car regularly: Ensure that your car’s engine is serviced and tuned as prescribed by the manufacturer. A poorly tuned engine affects fuel efficiency to a great degree.

9. Maintain average lower speed: Nobody wants to linger on at a low speed whilst their cars are powerful and able to maintain high speeds (within the law!).  But, remember, the lower your speed the lower the fuel consumption. So try to maintain an average speed when possible.

10. Monitor your fuel consumption: Keep a log book of fuel usage and should there be deviations you cannot explain, let a professional check your car.

Happy motoring!

Hendrik DB de Villiers

How to Make the Best of Time

Time is precious. Time is also measured in money – remember the famous words of Benjamin Franklin - “Remember that time is money”. No one can turn back the hands of time. Therefore, it is important to make the best of our time.

Most small chores can be accomplished in bits and pieces of time. What is meant here is that we can move mountains in the minute here or there we just sit idle and waiting – while waiting in the waiting room of the hospital for your appointment you can write a letter, whilst traveling to work by train your shopping list can be compiled, and think of many more examples.

1. What can be accomplished in 5 minutes?

·         Make an appointment with the dentist

·         Paint your nails

·         Water indoor plants

·         Write out a cheque for your electricity bill

·         Make a cup of tea

·         Pick up the phone and just say hello to your mother in the old age home

2. What can be accomplished in 10 minutes?

·         Write a short letter SMS  to your mother in the old age home

·         Buy a birthday card for your friend

·         Plant a tray of seedlings

·         Sort out your washing

·         Clean up your desk

·         Do some breathing exercises

3. What can be accomplished in 30 minutes?

·         Read the headline stories of your newspaper

·         Water your flower beds

·         Wash the piled-up dishes of the day

·         Bring a courtesy visit to your next door neighbour

·         Take your dog for a brisk walk.

·         Have a tea party with your daughter and her dolls

So, never say you do not have time for small chores or in your eyes, trivial matters; because for someone dear and near you, it may be important matters.

Hendrik DB de Villiers

Where does Father’s Day come from?

Sunday 19 June 2011 is Father’s Day. An event or day that is celebrated world-wide. But where does this come from?

My son and grandsons

The idea for an official Father’s Day celebration came to a married daughter, seated in a church in Spokane, Washington, attentive to a Sunday sermon on Mother’s Day in 1910-two years after the first Mother’s Day observance in West Virginia.

The daughter was Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd. During the sermon, which extolled maternal sacrifices made for children, Mrs. Dodd realized that in her own family it had been her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, who had sacrificed-raising herself and five sons alone, following the early death of his wife in childbirth. For Mrs. Dodd, the hardships her father had endured on their eastern Washington farm called to mind the unsung feats of fathers everywhere.

Her proposed local Father’s Day celebration received strong support from the town’s ministers and members of the Spokane YMCA. The date suggested for the festivities, June 5, Mrs. Dodd’s father’s birthdays were three weeks away-had to be moved back to the nineteenth when ministers claimed they need extra time to prepare sermons on such a new subject as Father.

Newspapers across the country, already endorsing the need for a national Mother’s Day, carried stories about the unique Spokane observance. Interest in Father’s Day increased. Among the first notables to support Mrs. Dodd’s idea nationally was the orator and political leader William Jennings Bryan, who also backed Mother’s Day. Believing that fathers must not be slighted, he wrote to Mrs. Dodd, "too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the relation between parent and child."

Father’s Day, however, was not so quickly accepted as Mother’s Day. Members of the all-male Congress felt that a move to proclaim the day official might be interpreted as a self-congratulatory pat on the back.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson and his family personally observed the day. And in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended that states, if they wished, should hold their own Father’s Day observances. He wrote to the nation’s governors that "the widespread observance of this occasion is calculated to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children, and also to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations."

Many people attempted to secure official recognition for Father’s Day. One of the most notable efforts was made in 1957, by Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who wrote forcefully to Congress that "Either we honor both our parents, mother and father, or let us desist from honoring either one. But to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable."

Eventually, in 1972-sixty-two years after it was proposed-Father’s Day was permanently established by President Richard Nixon. Historians seeking an ancient precedent for an official Father’s Day observance have come up with only one: The Romans, every February, honored fathers-but only those deceased.

In America today, Father’s Day is the fifth-largest card-sending occasion, with about 85 million greeting cards exchanged.

Hendrik DB de Villiers

How to Make Brandied Cherries

Legend has it that George Washington as a boy cut down a cherry tree. When his father saw the tree, he was angry. "George," he said. "Did you do that?"

"Yes, Father," he said, “I cannot tell a lie." George Washington's father was proud of George for telling the truth.

The cherry is a stone fruit related to the plum. There are three types of cherry – sweet and sour; both used in cooking and preserves; and decorative cherries, grown for their flowers.

Cherry trees flourish in regions with cold climates. The tree can reach about six metres at maturity. Its fruit is borne in clusters on long stalks.

This is a recipe for an easy-to-make cherry preserve:

Ingredients

·         500g ripe sweet cherries

·         150g caster sugar

·         Liqueur brandy (enough to cover the cherries in a jar)

·         Vanilla pod (Vanilla pods contain the seeds from the vanilla orchid plant.)

·         Cinnamon stick

Preparation

1.       Wash the cherries and dry gently

2.       Place into clean sterilized jar and add the caster sugar, vanilla pod and cinnamon stick.

3.       Seal tightly and leave to steep for 5-6 weeks.

Enjoy neat or over ice cream.

Hendrik DB de Villiers

My Beautiful World

Beautiful and radiant Françoise Dorléac

The beautiful and radiant Francoise Dorleac is better remembered today as the elder, ill-fated sister of French film star Catherine Deneuve. The Paris-born actress, however, was actually the first to become a star and had quite a formidable career of her own in the 1960s until it was cut short. Born into a theatrical family in 1942 (her father was actor Maurice Dorléac), Francoise first appeared on stage at the age of 10.

Entering the film industry with the movie short Mensonges (1957), she studied at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique (1959-1961) and had modeled for Christian Dior by the time she started making any kind of cinematic impact. Slim, gamine, pale-skinned and a real brunette stunner, Francoise graced a number of movies before hitting celebrity stardom with François Truffaut's melodrama The Soft Skin (1964) [The Soft Skin] and the classic James Bond-like spy spoof That Man from Rio (1964) [That Man from Rio], both released in 1964. The two films showed the polar sides of Francoise's incredible allure and talent. In the former she played an airline stewardess who falls into a tragic affair with a married businessman (Jean Desailly) and in the latter she played a fun and flaky heroine opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo. Unlike Catherine, Francoise proved a carefree, outgoing presence both on and off camera. Known for her chic, stylish ways and almost unbridled sense of joie-de-vivre, she continued making strong marks as the adulterous wife in Roman Polanski's black comedy Cul-de-sac (1966) and even joined Gene Kelly, George Chakiris, and her sister, who was now a cinematic star by this time too, in the rather candy-coated The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) [The Young Girls of Rochefort], a colorful movie which paid homage to the Hollywood musical. She and Catherine, who looked quite similar, played singing twins who dream about living in Paris.

Her fun and funny side was always an asset and often revealed as in the films as Arsène Lupin contre Arsène Lupin (1962) and Male Hunt (1964) [Male Hunt]. Branching out now in such non-French movies as Genghis Khan (1965), Where the Spies Are (1965), and Billion Dollar Brain (1967), the luminous Francoise was on the brink of international stardom when her sports car flipped and burned on a roadway in Nice, France on June 26, 1967. She was near completion of the last film mentioned at the time the accident occurred. Her part in the movie was left in tact. Her early death at age 25 most certainly robbed the cinema of a tried and true talent and incomparably beautiful mademoiselle who showed every sign of taking Hollywood by storm, as Catherine later did.

Beautiful Women

Woman to Woman

Beautiful and sensual Aitana Sánchez-Gijón

Best known for playing comic roles in Spain, actress Aitana Sanchez-Gijon is known in the U.S. for her dramatic portrayal of a pregnant and abandoned wine-grower's daughter who is helped by travelling salesman Keanu Reeves in A Walk in the Clouds (1995). 

Sanchez-Gijon has since built a reputation as an international star, in films such as Manuel Gomez Pereira's Boca a Boca (1996), Bigas Luna's La Camarera del Titanic (The Chambermaid on the Titanic [1997]), and Jaime Chavarri's Sus Ojos Se Cerraron (1998).