.A move by a French fast-food chain to offer halal menus at a handful of restaurants has some politicians fuming, in the latest row over France’s increasingly visible Muslim minority.
The Quick chain has taken pork off its menu in eateries in Roubaix, northern France, as well as in Marseille and in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil, to try to tap into the growing market of Muslim customers.
But politicians have complained that the switch to no-bacon hamburgers, launched three months ago, is depriving non-Muslims of their right to the standard menu.
“I’m not bothered by the fact that there is a halal menu,” he said.
Roubaix Mayor Rene Vandierendonck plans to file a complaint for discrimination, arguing that non-Muslims now have to trek to the suburbs to get a bacon burger, as Quick is the only fast-food place in the city centre.”
French far-right politician Marine Le Pen suggested the Halal menus were providing a financial boost to Muslim organisations that certify meat as having been slaughtered in accordance with Islamic practices.
“But this is going too far because it is the only menu on offer and it has become discrimination.
Ms Le Pen condemned the menu switch as “unacceptable” and denounced a form of “Islamisation”.
But in eight of Quick’s 350 restaurants, the “Strong Bacon” double cheese hamburger is not on offer, replaced by a halal version with smoked turkey.
In cities and towns across France, Quick’s red-and-white signs are as familiar a sight as McDonald’s golden arches, offering the usual array of hamburgers, french fries and soft drinks.
The government has frowned on Quick’s decision, suggesting that it was a form of “communautarisme”, a pejorative term suggesting that a group is exhibiting a ghetto attitude.
One customer was quoted in Le Parisien daily as saying that “it’s just not the same”.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government is drafting legislation to ban the wearing of the full Islamic veil and is sponsoring a debate on national identity that has exposed fears about immigration.
- Series of controversies -
Home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, estimated at between 5 and 6 million, France has been caught up in a series of controversies that have highlighted its unease with Islam in a strictly secular society.
Responding to the hubbub over the halal hamburgers, the head of France’s Muslim Council called for reason to prevail and announced that he planned to meet with Quick’s owners.
Responding to the hubbub over the halal hamburgers, the head of France’s Muslim Council called for reason to prevail and announced that he planned to meet with Quick’s owners.
“There are plenty of restaurants that do not offer halal meals and Muslims are not complaining of discrimination. .
Lionnel Lucca, a deputy from Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP party, has called for a boycott of Quick to press for “freedom of choice to be restored” at the fast-food outlets.”
Quick manager Luc Demain, who runs the outlet in Roubaix among others, said there had been a slight increase in business since the new halal menus had been introduced and that he had not received complaints from customers.
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.Canadian singer and poet Leonard Cohen has delayed his European tour by six months after the 75-year-old injured his back while exercising, his promoters said.
The musical and literary giant known for songs such as So Long, Marianne, Suzanne and First We Take Manhattan suffered a compression injury to his lower back, AEG Worldwide said.
Cohen, who returned to the stage in 2008 after a 15-year absence, will postpone a tour that was set to start in France on March 1 and undergo four to six months of physical therapy, the promoters said in a statement.
The rescheduled tour will start in the northern French city of Caen on September 15.
“Doctors have confirmed that Mr Cohen is otherwise in terrific shape, thanks to years of exercise and careful diet, and simply needs appropriate time to recover from the lower back injury,” Cohen’s manager Robert Kory said.
He will then play in Katowice, Poland, on October 4, Moscow on October 7 and the Slovak capital Bratislava on October 13, with four more dates to be announced later, AEG Worldwide said. He will continue on to the French cities of Grenoble, Strasbourg, Marseille, Tours and Lille through September 25. .
Last Sunday, Cohen was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Grammy music awards.
But he returned to the stage in May 2008 and has since performed 191 sold-out shows.E.
More than 1,000 renditions of Cohen’s work have been recorded by artists as diverse as R. Cohen is also a published novelist and poet.M, Elton John, Willie Nelson and Tori Amos.
In September last year, Cohen collapsed on stage while playing the eastern Spanish city of Valencia due to a suspected case of food poisoning.
In September last year, Cohen collapsed on stage while playing the eastern Spanish city of Valencia due to a suspected case of food poisoning
.A foreign national who forced his French wife to wear the full Islamic veil will be denied French citizenship, the immigration minister said.
Eric Besson says he signed a decree rejecting the man’s citizenship application after it emerged he had ordered his wife to cover herself with the head-to-toe veil.
The man’s name and nationality were not made public.
“It emerged during the inquiry and the interview process that this person forced his wife to wear the full veil, deprived her of freedom of movement with her face exposed, and rejected the principles of secularism and equality between men and women,” Mr Besson said in a statement.
The French Government is seeking legal advice before drafting legislation that would outlaw the burqa or niqab in as many areas as possible, Prime Minister Francois Fillon has said.
The decision came after a parliament report last week called for a ban on the full Islamic veil in all schools, hospitals, government offices and public transport.
Home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, France has been debating whether to ban the burqa that is worn by only about 1,900 women nationwide, according to interior ministry figures.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has proclaimed the burqa “not welcome” in secular France and come out in favour of legislation to outlaw the veil, but has warned against stigmatising Muslims.
A French court denied citizenship to a veiled Moroccan woman on the grounds that her “radical” practice of Islam was incompatible with French values. .
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.US airline Continental and five individuals have gone on trial in Paris accused of manslaughter over the crash of an Air France Concorde 10 years ago.
The French criminal court is examining conflicting explanations of why the supersonic jet smashed into a hotel in a ball of fire just after take-off from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on July 25, 2000.
A former French civil aviation official and two former Concorde engineers face the same charge in the trial that is expected to last four months. .
The court will decide whether to side with investigators and technical experts who say the crash was caused by a strip of metal that fell off a Continental jet which took off shortly before the Concorde.
Witnesses saw flames coming from the jet as it was taking off from the airport.
But lawyers for Continental say they will prove the ill-fated jet was already on fire before it hit the metal debris.
Investigators say the strip shredded one tyre on Concorde’s landing gear, resulting in a blow-out and sending debris flying into an engine and a fuel tank to spark the fire.
Continental faces a maximum fine of 375,000 euros ($592,800) if found guilty.
Some of the relatives of the victims are represented at the trial, but most have already accepted compensation from Air France. The individuals face up to five years in jail and a fine of up to 75,000 euros ($118,575).
.Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin has been acquitted on charges of plotting a smear campaign against long-time rival Nicolas Sarkozy in order to sabotage his presidential bid.
Mr Villepin immediately vowed to return to the political fray, criticising Mr Sarkozy’s policies for “not giving results” and saying he would challenge the president from within their ruling UMP party.
He is now believed to be considering a run for president in 2012. .
The court ruled there were no grounds to convict the 56-year-old politician of complicity to slander Mr Sarkozy in 2004 when the two men were angling to succeed president Jacques Chirac.
The silver-haired politician said he now looked forward to “serving the French people and contributing in a spirit of unity to the recovery of France”.
“After many years of ordeal, my innocence has been recognised,” Mr Villepin said after walking out of the Paris courtroom.
Speaking on French television later, Mr Villepin said: “I want to offer an alternative to policies that I believe are not giving results..”
“We need new ideas, new proposals… I think that there are other possible answers within the ruling majority. Nicolas Sarkozy has his way.
“I want to be above the traditional partisan divisions.
“I want to be above the traditional partisan divisions.
Mr Villepin and four other defendants were accused of using falsified bank accounts to discredit Mr Sarkozy ahead of his party’s nomination for the 2007 presidential vote.
The French leader is also struggling with poor approval ratings.
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Mr Sarkozy’s name was on the bogus list of hundreds of account holders at the Clearstream financial clearing house which allegedly took bribes from the sale of French warships to Taiwan
.The World Health Organisation and the pharmaceutical industry have been criticised for their handling of last year’s swine flu pandemic.
At a hearing of the Council of Europe - the European Union’s human rights body - the WHO faced accusations that it exaggerated the danger of the virus under pressure from drug companies.
When a pandemic was declared last June, most European countries changed their health priorities to accommodate thousands of expected patients. .
A number of European governments had signed contracts with the drug companies to buy back vaccines, believing a flu pandemic long predicted by health experts would be a virus-like bird flu with a very high death rate.
- BBC
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The organisation denies any conflict of interest
.Snow and icy weather has disrupted travel across Europe, closing Geneva airport on one of its busiest tourist weekends of the year and prompting a state of emergency on part of Germany’s Baltic coast.
Thousands of passengers were stranded at Geneva’s Cointrin airport after heavy overnight snow kept it closed until noon.
“It was the first time we had so much snow on the runway since 1985,” said airport spokesman Bertrand Staempfli as departures began at midday.
Many British, German and other European skiers use Geneva airport to reach popular Swiss and French ski resorts in the close toby Alpine region, including Verbier.
Delays were expected as frustrated passengers queued to re-book flights at the airport, where 100,000 people had been due to transit over the weekend.
Schools across the state will stay closed on Monday.
Hundreds of motorists had to abandon their cars in the north-eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where 25 centimetres of snow fell and the district of Ostvorpommern declared a state of emergency, local authorities said.
Levees in parts of the neighbouring state of Schleswig-Holstein showed cracks on Sunday, threatening low-lying areas with floods, police said.
In Poland, at least 200,000 households suffered a power outage and shoppers and workers were evacuated from a shopping centre in the western city of Leszno when its roof began to give way under 1. Coastal towns like Flensburg and Travemuende had suffered flooding by afternoon.
A police spokesman said that since the onset of cold weather in October, 152 people had been found frozen to death in Poland.5 metres of snow, rescue services said. .
- Cars trapped -
On Germany’s Baltic island of Fehmarn, some 5,000 residents were shut in by the blizzards, while scores were trapped in their cars for hours on the A20 autobahn because normal snow ploughs could not reach them, authorities said.
The weather had caused over 1,100 road accidents between Saturday and Sunday morning in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, according to the regional government.
The weather had caused over 1,100 road accidents between Saturday and Sunday morning in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, according to the regional government.
In the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, snow caused more than 900 road accidents between Friday and midday on Sunday, seriously injuring 15 people and causing 4 million euros of damage, the regional interior ministry said. At least 16 people have been badly injured in the state due to the snow since Saturday.
In Britain, chemical firm Ineos said it had diverted 12,000 tonnes of salt for use on British roads that had originally been destined for Germany.
Ninety-one flights were cancelled on Sunday at Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest, compared to 225 the day before.
The government told local authorities to reduce the amount of salt they put on roads by a quarter at the end of last week in a bid to conserve supplies.
“Because we’ve been inundated with calls from local authorities, we’ve decided to retain the supplies in the UK,” a spokesman said.
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.A work by French impressionist artist Edgar Degas was stolen from a museum on Wednesday night in Marseille in southern France, the city’s prosecutor said.
The pastel, named Les Choristes (The Chorus), was worth an estimated 800,000 euros ($1. .2 million), the prosecutor said.
“The disappearance of this very expensive painting was discovered when the museum opened on Thursday morning.
The work belonged to the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and had been loaned to Marseille’s Cantini museum for an exhibition that was due to close on January 3.
The Musee d’Orsay, which has been loaning out many works in recent months to raise funds, declined to comment on the theft. There do not seem to be any signs of breaking and entering,” Marseille public prosecutor Jacques Dallest said.
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.Two women have died and 47 others were hurt in a bus crash in the south of England as ice and snow continues to throw the UK’s transport systems into chaos.
Snow and ice on the runways caused many flights to be cancelled.
All 129 passengers were taken off the plane and no injuries were reported.
A Ryanair plane overshot the runway as it landed at Prestwick Airport in the west of Scotland.
Thousands of people left stranded by a three-day Eurostar service cancellation formed long queues at London’s Saint Pancras International Station in the hope of finally getting to the continent.
As snow turns to ice, traffic conditions have become treacherous.
All Eurostar’s trains for Wednesday filled up by lunchtime.
Tempers frayed amid confusion over who would get priority on the reduced number of trains that began running on Tuesday.
Passengers were urged to turn up an hour early. The operator said it would continue to run a modified timetable on Thursday.
Meanwhile, floodwaters drenched most of Venice, as a combination of wind, rain and the lagoon city’s periodic tidal phenomenon saw water levels rise by 143 centimetres, a record for the year, officials said.
Many online shoppers shoppers in the UK have been told not to expect their goods by Christmas after snow stalled deliveries.
Heavy rains closed motorways in southern Spain and Portugal, where power lines were also cut by heavy winds overnight. .
In northern Germany, a seven-year-old boy was stopped by police, driving back to a parking lot having ploughed the snow off the street with his parents’ front loader.
Snowfall also forced school closures in northern Spain.
- ABC/AFP
.Services have returned almost to normal after three days of chaos on the Eurostar rail link between the UK and France.
But many parts of Europe continue to face severe transport disruptions and there have been more deaths as a severe cold snap sweeps the continent.
More than 80 people have died across Europe, including 42 in Poland and another 27 in Ukraine who have frozen to death.
Air, rail and road transport has been severely disrupted across northern Europe where as much as 50 centimetres of snow has fallen with more expected in the coming days.
Another 13 people died in car accidents in Austria, Finland and Germany, where temperatures dropped well below zero.
More freezing fog was expected at Stansted, north of London, and forecasters from Britain’s Met Office also issued severe weather warnings across the country, warning of icy roads and thick snow in eastern Scotland.
But after three days of cancelled services, Eurostar trains began running again between Brussels, Paris and London: an investigation has been launched into the disruption of services.
Britain’s Automobile Association said Monday was their busiest night for 25 years, with about 700 calls received every hour.
“There was no way that I was going to throw customers out into that,” said store managing director Deborah Strazza.
In Buckinghamshire, west of London, about 100 people, including 20 children, spent the night in the John Lewis department store after being snowed in.”
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