Get a Receipt for Those Candlesticks

Carla Bruni has not yet become Mrs. Nicolas Sarkozy. In an interview with Liberation, the French president's ex-model girlfriend also made life easier for Indian officials by saying she won't accompany Sarkozy on his upcoming official trip there. Protocol-meisters in the conservative country, where unmarried couples are unusual, weren't sure how to treat the First Girlfriend.

"I cannot take part in an official trip," Bruni said. Speculation had swirled that if the unmarried couple traveled to India, the president might announce their engagement at the Taj Mahal. Romantic as that is, a recent poll shows that Sarkozy's popularity in France is waning, and ex-PM Francois Fillon is better liked, reports the London Times. (More Carla Bruni stories.)