Tag: france

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Horse-meat lasagna

imgres-3A meat processing firm in the south of France was named Thursday night as having a central role in the horsemeat lasagne scandal as a convicted Dutch fraudster who supplied the meat admitted close ties with the French firm, The Guardian reports today

“A French investigation suggested that meat wholesaler Spanghero was implicated in the scandal of ready-made frozen beef meals that contained horse flesh, affecting supermarkets across Europe. Benoît Hamon, the French consumer affairs minister, said the inquiry showed that Spanghero was the first ‘agent’ in the food chain to stamp the label beef on horsemeat. The investigation suggested the firm ‘knew that meat destined for ready meals was horse’.The French authorities found that Spanghero had profited to the tune of more than €500,000 (£430,000) over six months by marketing the cheap horsemeat as much more expensive beef. Continue reading “Horse-meat lasagna”

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France acts against slurs on Twitter

A French court on Thursday ordered Twitter Inc to help identify the authors of anti-Semitic posts or face fines of 1,000 euros ($1,300) per day, as the social network firm comes under renewed pressure to combat racist and extremist messages, reports the Jerusalem Post

“The order, requested by a Jewish student union and rights groups, concerned anti-Semitic material but could open the floodgates to legal pursuit of Twitter users who post a widerange of messages deemed illegal or offensive. ‘This is an excellent decision, which we hope will bring an end to the feeling of impunity that fuels the worst excesses,’ said Stephane Lilti, lawyer for the groups who sought the ruling. The anti-Semitic messages started appearing last October, and have since been deleted.imgres-2

“The Paris court gave privately-held Twitter, whose general policy is that it does not control content posted on its network, 15 days to hand over data identifying people who have published messages judged anti-Semitic. Continue reading “France acts against slurs on Twitter”

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France’s new male problem

French men are having problems these days, and Viagra isn’t going to help them, According to Al Jazeera “A new study has found that the sperm count of an average Frenchman fell by one-third between 1989 and 2005.

:The findings of the report, published by the Human Reproduction journal on Wednesday, found that the number of sperm in one millilitre of the average 35-year-old French man’s semen fell from about 74 million to about 50 million – a decrease of roughly 32 per cent. That’s certainly within the normal range, but if you think about it, if there continues to be a decrease, we would expect
that we’ll get into that infertile range,” said Grace Centola, president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology in
Birmingham, Alabama. Continue reading “France’s new male problem”

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World opinion on U.S. presidential election

Outside the United States, people favor Obama by a five-to-one margin in the upcoming American presidential election. A  BBC World Service opinion poll has found sharply higher overseas approval ratings for US President Barack Obama than Republican challenger Mitt Romney.An average of 50% favored Mr Obama, with 9% for Mr Romney, in the survey of 21,797 people in 21 countries.Only Pakistan’s respondents said they would prefer to see Mr Romney win November’s election. France was the most strongly pro-Obama (72%). The survey was conducted by GlobeScan/PIPA between 3 July and 3 September.