As the war of words over expulsions of Roma from France escalates, the leader of France’s Socialist Party (PS) has been accused of hypocrisy for herself demanding the dismantling of a gypsy camp at Lille where she is mayor.

Martine Aubry has been vocal in her opposition to French government policy, announced at the end of July, of dismantling illegal traveller camps and “repatriating” their non-French inhabitants, mainly to Romania and Bulgaria. Both countries are members of the European Union.

Last week, in a speech concluding the PS summer conference, Aubry accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of playing on “irrational fears” in his treatment of Roma, thereby “debasing the French Republic”.

Aubry believes the initiative poses a moral problem because it targets a community group, and says it is being used as a pretext by the ruling UMP party to divert attention from its economic problems.

On Wednesday, right-leaning daily Le Figaro published a letter written by Aubry’s lawyer on July 19 to the main court in Lille, asking for an order for police to evict forcibly a Roma encampment in the northern French city.

The letter, according to the Figaro, reads: “Over the last few days a number of vehicles and caravans have arrived [in the Villeneuve d'Ascq district of Lille], constituting a flagrant breach of property law and risking becoming a source of problems for neighbouring residents. There is an urgent need to order their expulsion.”

Aubry was quick to defend her actions and distance the “evacuation” of the Lille camp from the government’s more hard-line policy of repatriation.

She said that the dismantling of the Lille camps, which took place at the end of August, had been ordered well before Sarkozy’s speech in Grenoble at the end of July, where he outlined his policy against illegal Roma camps.

Read more here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why Sarkozy went to war on the Roma (independent.co.uk)
• EU critical of France over Roma (bbc.co.uk)
• Socialist leader makes early pitch to replace Sarkozy (independent.co.uk)

At a memorial ceremony attended for the first time ever by a U.N. secretary general and a U.S. representative, Hiroshima on Friday marked the 65th anniversary of its atomic bombing by calling on Japan to withdraw from the U.S. nuclear umbrella and accelerate the progress made over the past 18 months to eliminate nuclear arms.

On a sweltering morning, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, U.S. Ambassador John Roos, as well as representatives of nuclear states Great Britain and France were on hand for the ceremony. Some 55,000 people took part in the memorial, according to city officials.

This year’s ceremony took place three months after the Nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference in New York, which followed an April meeting hosted by the U.S. on nuclear disarmament.

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said in his message to the ceremony that Japan needs to do more to assure the world it is serious about remaining a nonnuclear state.

“The time is ripe for the Japanese government to take decisive action. It should begin to take the lead in the pursuit of the elimination of nuclear weapons by legislating the three nonnuclear principles, abandoning the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and implementing passionate, caring assistance measures for all of the aging hibakusha anywhere in the world,” Akiba said.

Earlier this week, Akiba said it is ridiculous for Japan to think about national security policies while still being dependent on America’s nuclear umbrella.

Akiba’s call to turn Japan’s long-standing three nonnuclear principles into law is something antinuclear groups have long desired.

Read more here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• You: U.S., nuclear powers join Hiroshima memorial (washingtonpost.com)
• John Roos is first US representative to attend Hiroshima memorial ceremony in Japan (guardian.co.uk)
• U.S. joins Hiroshima memorial for 1st time (abclocal.go.com)

According to a press release from The Institute of National Statistics, on January 1, 2010, the Romanian population was recorded as 21,462,000 inhabitants. The male population is represented by 48.7 percent and the female population is represented by 51.3 percent. Romania is the seventh country in the European Union on the largest population chart. It follows Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Poland.

The young population (0-15 years old) is about 15.2 percent, the adult population is 69.9 percent, and the seniors (65+) – 14.9 percent. By January 1, 2010, the average age of the Romanian population was about 39.6 years.

In the urban areas, there are over 11,819,000 dwellers, more than half of the Romania’s population (55.1 per cent). The cities with the largest population are: Bucharest (the capital) – 1,944,500 inhabitants, Timyshoara – 311,400 inhabitants, Iashi – 308,700 inhabitants, and Cluj – 307,200 inhabitants.

The population of Romania is decreasing because of the migration process that has increased after Romania joined the European Union in 2007, giving Romanians the possibility to travel and work without restrictions. The labor migration is a serious problem in Romania, while millions of people went to Italy, Spain, Greece, and other EU countries to work.

Read the full post here.

Rescuers combed wrecked cars and homes for bodies in France’s Cote d’Azur on Thursday after the worst floods in two centuries killed 25 people including a two-year-old, authorities said.

Authorities in the Var, a favourite holiday region, raised the death toll to 25 on Thursday from an earlier count of 22 after the floodwaters engulfed streets in torrents of mud and drove people onto the roofs of their homes.

A two-year-old child died after falling into the flood water as a family scrambled to escape their home in Roquebrune-sur-Argens, authorities said.

Officials warned other bodies might be found as the search continued with rescuers digging through mud-filled cars and wreckage looking for about a dozen people still reported missing as helicopters circled overhead.

“There are still flooded places which have yet to be inspected, such as the campsites on the coast,” said Laurent Robert, an official in the state prosecutor’s office in Draguignan, the town worst hit with at least 12 dead.

Another source said a one-month-old baby was missing.

Scores of cars were piled on top of each other and holiday homes and camp sites in the region were devastated.

“Everything is ruined, unusable,” said Edouard Gregoriou, who runs a restaurant and boating service in Roquebrune. “We have pedal-boats scattered for miles around, and mobile homes in trees.”

The swollen Nartuby river which runs through Draguignan also hit the village of Trans-en-Provence where five other bodies were found.

Read more here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Deadly flash floods hit southern France (telegraph.co.uk)
• French flood deaths ‘will rise’ (news.bbc.co.uk)

France will host Euro 2016 after finishing ahead of close rivals Turkey and rank outsiders Italy in a UEFA vote on Friday.

France President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared at the ceremony to support his country’s bid as the French, who have also hosted two World Cups, were awarded the tournament for the third time.

Turkey were bidding to host their first major football tournament while Italy’s chances had been written off after a critical review of their bid following UEFA’s inspection visits.

Problems and delays in Poland and Ukraine, who will jointly host Euro 2012, may have persuaded UEFA’s executive committee to avoid choosing Turkey, an untried country.

The Turkish government had promised to invest one billion euros ($1.23 billion) all in public money, in stadiums for the event. It would also need to spend an estimated 20 billion euros on national transport infrastructure, including high speed trains.

Read more here.

The first round of France’s regional elections was marked by huge voter apathy, with 53.65 percent of voters not bothering to cast their ballot. This far surpasses the previous record of 42.3 percent in the 1998 regional elections. Taking into account all elections in which French voters have taken part, only the 2009 European elections saw greater voter apathy, at 59.37 percent.

“The way French President Nicolas Sarkozy conducts his politics is not in tune with the demands of the electorate,” Jean-Daniel Lévy of polling group CSA told Agence France Presse, who said Sarkozy’s UMP party was the biggest victim of voter apathy. Frédéric Dabi, of pollster Ifop, said apathy was “spiralling” from one election to the next.

Jean-Marie Le Pen’s far-right National Front (FN) has reason to celebrate, getting sufficient votes (11.55 percent) in this first round to qualify for the second on March 21 in 12 out of a total 22 regions in mainland France. (There were no FN candidates in France’s four overseas departments.) Le Pen told television station TF1 on Sunday that his party, “which the president had declared beaten and buried, has shown it is still a force to be reckoned with in France.”

Read more here.

Many observers share the belief that very dangerous or, on the contrary, very positive, situations can be determined by minor accidents. For instance, that a war could finally follow a disruption of equilibriums between politicians and generals in Turkey. That in Italy severe strife, even the end of the Berlusconi era, might be the ultimate consequence of paradoxically light mishaps in the filing of candidacies to elected offices that are not important enough. That the emergence of a brilliant orator who makes capital of social discontent could torpedo the partitocratic regime the Allies installed 65 years ago (many surveys show that here derisory percentages approve the Italian institutions and their political ways).

The above fuses may or may not ignite large explosions. But, by a sort of counter-analogy it’s arguable that, if certain marginal or escapable events of the past had not occurred, the contemporary world would be incredibly different. Had the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, assessed a diplomatic slight by chancellor Bismarck for what factually was a simple discourtesy rather than a threat to the vital interests of France, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 would not have followed (no serious conflict existed then between Paris and Berlin). Just two battles annihilated the French armies and their prestige. The Emperor was deposed, France was occupied, Alsace-Lorraine lost. Then, thousands died in the Paris Commune insurrection.

In the following 44 years France was dominated by ‘revanche’, the obsession of vengeance. So, had it not been for the foolish choice of 1870, possibly in 1914 French president Poincaré wouldn’t pressure St.Petersburg, and even London, to fight Austria-Hungary and the German Reich. Without the Tsarist defeat, it is not proven that a Bolshevik revolution would triumph in Russia. Had WW1 and the Treaty of Versailles not humiliated Germany, probably Hitler would not become the Fuehrer, Germany would not resort to WW2, and our history would be entirely different.

There’s more.

If Hitler had a quirk different from antisemitism, millions of Jews would not be killed. Not dissimilar could have been the consequences had the Jewish world community decided to buy Hitler with (a lot of) money or otherwise instantly confronted him. For many centuries, Jews easily bought Christian sovereigns’ tolerance, namely in Castile, France, and England.

Nobody of course can demonstrate the above successions as inevitable. But as nobody can prove the contrary, the assumption is legitimate that the XXI century world would be almost the opposite of what we have, if only Napoleon the Third with his courtiers, diplomats and marshals had been wiser.

Academic historians traditionally decry this way of thinking. But in no way can they prove the superiority of their approach. They idolize just what is archived and recorded. Which is at the same time scientifically correct and devoid of human lessons. Things that do not happen can be more fateful than actual events.

Massimo Calderazzi is member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to which many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.

Dubai has identified 15 new suspects in the assassination last month of a Hamas official, and 10 of those suspects share the names of Israelis who hold dual citizenship, Haaretz has learned.

Dubai police said Wednesday the total number of people believed involved in the death stands at 26.

Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed last month in his hotel room in what Dubai police have said they are near certain was a hit by Israel’s Mossad spy agency. Police said the killers travelled to the Gulf Arab emirate using European passports.

Dubai authorities had earlier named 11 suspects, who they said travelled on fraudulent British, Irish, French and German passports to kill Mabhouh. Six were Britons living in Israel who deny involvement and say their identities were stolen.

“Dubai investigators are not ruling out the possibility of involvement of other people in the murder,” the statement said.

The suspected killers’ use of passports from countries including Britain and France has drawn criticism from the European Union that diplomats said was aimed at Israel. Some of governments involved have summoned their Israeli ambassadors.

“Friendly nations who have been assisting in this investigation have indicated to the police in Dubai that the passports were issued in an illegal and fraudulent manner,” the Dubai government statement said.

It said that pictures on the passports did not correspond to their original owners.

In a statement on Monday that European diplomats said was intended as a rebuke to Israel, EU foreign ministers said that the assassination was “profoundly disturbing.”

Read more here.

A strike by air traffic controllers will disrupt flights from French airports during this week’s school holidays, the civil aviation authority (DGAC) said on Monday.

The DGAC said services all over France would be affected, adding that it had asked airlines to cancel some flights at the two main Paris airports on Tuesday.

It had asked for half the flights at Orly to be cancelled and a quarter of those at the capital’s other main airport, Paris-Charles de Gaulle at Roissy, reports France 24.

Five air traffic unions have called for a strike from Feb.  23 to Feb. 27 to protest at Europe’s Single Sky Policy which partly aims to modernise air traffic control. Union members say their jobs and status are under threat.

EU Observer reports that the so-called ‘Single Sky Policy’ plans to merge the traffic control services of France with those of five European neighbours by 2012. The four unions believe that such a merger would result in significant deterioration of their ability to perform their job.

Related articles by Zemanta

• France’s air traffic controllers strike (cbc.ca)
• Lufthansa disruption continues despite early end to strike (telegraph.co.uk)

French wine-makers and dealers were convicted Wednesday of selling millions of bottles of fake Pinot Noir to the US firm E&J Gallo in one of the biggest scams ever to rattle the world of wine.

A court handed out suspended jail terms and hefty fines to 12 people for selling 18 million bottles (135,334 hectolitres) of wine they said was Pinot Noir but which was in fact made from far cheaper grape varieties.

The convicted included executives from wine estates, cooperatives, a broker, wine merchant Ducasse and the conglomerate Sieur d’Arques.

“The scale of the fraud caused severe damage for the wines of the Languedoc (region) for which the United States is an important outlet,” the judge told a packed courtroom in Carcassonne in southwestern France.

He said that the accused made seven million euros (9.8 million dollars) in profits from the scam, with Ducasse raking in 3.7 million euros and Sieur d’Arques 1.3 million euros.

The fines he imposed ranged from 1,500 to 180,000 euros, while the suspended jail sentences went from one to six months.

Millions of bottles were sold in the United States under Gallo’s popular “Red Bicyclette” Pinot Noir label, which in 2006 was marketed as having “aromas of dark fruit flavours” and whose palate was said to be like “black cherry and ripe plum.”

Gallo, which was neither a defendant nor a plaintiff in the case in Carcassonne, said after the verdict it was “deeply disappointed” at its supplier Sieur d’Arques.

“We believe that the only French Pinot Noir that was potentially misrepresented to us would have been the 2006 vintage and prior,” the firm’s vice-president of public relations, Susan Hensley, said in a statement.

Gallo also said that — based on details from the French trial — it imported less than 20 percent of the falsely-labelled Pinot Noir involved, “and is no longer selling any of this wine to customers.”

US authorities are investigating potential infractions.

Read more here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• French guilty in US wine scandal (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Fraud in Wine Sent to U.S. From France (nytimes.com)
• Court convicts 12 in Pinot Noir fraud scheme (seattletimes.nwsource.com)