Two a penny

.Sudanese journalist Lubna Ahmed Hussein says she has donned a full Islamic veil to sneak out of Sudan and travel to France, two months after she was freed from jail for wearing trousers.
On a visit to Paris to promote her new book, Ms Hussein accused Khartoum of trying to block her departure and said she was determined to exercise her right to travel freely.
“They wanted to prevent me from leaving; I resorted to the niqab and managed to leave,” said Ms Hussein, who was jailed for a day in September for violating Sudan’s clothing decency laws by wearing trousers.
“I did not flee Sudan.
“I requested documents to be able to leave, to be able to travel, and this is the only means I found to be able to leave Sudan,” she said. . I am a Sudanese citizen.
Ms Hussein faced a punishment of 40 lashes when she was convicted in July for wearing her green trousers in public.
After she refused to pay the fine, Ms Hussein served a one-day jail sentence.
But a Sudanese court in September ordered her to pay a fine instead, while 10 of the 12 other women arrested with her at a Khartoum restaurant on July 3 were lashed.
The Paris welcome for Ms Hussein came as France was debating measures to prohibit women from wearing the full Islamic veil, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has said is a symbol of women’s subservience.
More than 43,000 women were arrested last year in the Khartoum region by police tasked with enforcing Sudan’s laws on indecent clothing for women.
-

.
French postal unions called on Monday for indefinite strike action at Paris post offices ahead of a nationwide protest against proposed reforms to the country’s state-owned postal service.

The strike action, affecting 185 branches of La Poste in Paris, is a reaction to cost-saving measures that have involved shedding 140 jobs in the last six months.

Why change its status if the aim is not to prepare for a change in its ownership structure? Olivier Besancenot, a postal worker and spokesman of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), told France Inter radio.

Bythem Postal reform in France, Face off aired on 22 September 2009
Unions are fearful that a government plan to change La Poste into a public-limited company may eventually lead to the company’s privatisation. There’s no question of a privatisation, the service will remain 100 percent public, no private funds will enter its capital, he told France Info radio.

French Labour Minister Xavier Darcos denied that any such plans were afoot. .

I perfectly understand the concern of La Poste employees, he added.

La Poste says it needs the government cash injection of 2.

The French government approved the proposals earlier this year, saying the change in status was necessary to prepare for the sector’s liberalisation in 2011 under EU rules. The government plans to inject the funds directly and via state-owned bank Caisse des Depots (CDC).7 billion euros to be in a competitive postion. In the first six months of 2009, profits fell 19% while revenues slipped 2%.

The French postal service is taking steps to streamline its operations and stem the decline in its profits.

France – strike

.
French philosopher Francis Jeanson, an intellectual known for his often controversial political engagement, died at 87 on Saturday close to Bordeaux, his family has said.

Jeanson was the author of around twenty works — some on Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom he was very close &ndash and contributed to the French political, literary and philosophical journal Les Temps modernes (French for Modern Times).

But it was the Algerian War of Independence that seemed to awaken the political conscience that would become a driving force of Jeanson career as a writer and thinker.

In his 1960 work Notre guerre (Our War), Jeanson defended this initiative against those who accused him of supporting his country enemies, saying he was only upholding the French values that France itself was betraying. After the start of the war, Jeanson created a network called Porteurs de valises (Suitcase Carriers) that collected funds and obtained false identity papers for National Liberation Front militants.

Born on July 7, 1922, in Bordeaux, Jeanson did graduate studies in Philosophy and in 1943 joined the French forces in North Africa. . Two years later, while in Algiers, he met Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.

In 1955, Jeanson published L’Algerie hors la loi (French for Outlaw Algeria), in which he defended the legitimacy of the National Liberation Front outlawed militants.

It was Sartre who would hand Jeanson the prestigious responsibility of overseeing the journal Les Temps modernes from 1951 to 1956.

After being granted amnesty, Jeanson stepped back into the spotlight, this time to direct the cultural centre in the Saone-et-Loire region of France from 1967 to 1971. His intellectual engagement gave way to a more concrete political involvement two years later, when Jeanson created the National Liberation Front support network that brought him both notoriety and a prison sentence that forced him underground for a few years.

But the fervent political passion that was a catalyst for some of his most well-known writing, as well as his life more dramatic turns, remained aflame until the end of his career.

Jeanson later became active in issues of mental health, participating in psychiatric experiments and urging open discussion of mental illness outside of psychiatric hospitals. In 1992, he became president of France Sarajevo Association, a position he would hold until his death. In 1992, he became president of France Sarajevo Association, a position he would hold until his death

.
Laptops, barbecues and industrial action made an unlikely mix at a Nortel France plant close to Paris Wednesday as striking executives and engineers, used to perks and smart offices, threatened to blow up their plant with gas canisters.

A total of 480 jobs are set to be axed at the plant in Ch&acircteaufort, close to Paris, after the Canadian telecommunications manufacturer filed for bankruptcy protection in a Toronto court in January. But as the strike entered its ninth day, employees were acutely aware that they had little time to act. The threat to blow up the plant however turned out to be a ploy to attract government and media attention as striking employees admitted that the gas canisters were empty. Striking workers are demanding 100,000 euros each in compensation for lost jobs.

On Wednesday, the threats of violence attracted a swarm of cameras, journalists and anchors, and to top the day off, a visit from Industry Minister Christian Estrosi , who promised to relaunch talks with partners, including administrator Ernst and Young UK.

A wave of threats

We placed the gas canisters symbolically, we weren&rsquot going to blow the place up, but we knew we had to do something exceptional, said operations manager Charles-Henri Descours, sitting under a tree in the site lush gardens.

No breakthrough in talks had been obtained so far, workers said, and on Thursday, strikers met Estrosi for talks in Paris.

That was until Nortel Networks put the Ch&acircteaufort plant into liquidation following bankruptcy protection. We&rsquore executives and senior executives, used to working 15 hours a day, he said, we knew the rules of the game and never imagined we would need to go on strike to get our demands heard. CaulcuttWe want our money back, says a banner at the entrance to the Nortel plant in Chateaufort.

© C.The research and development department built a cemetery to symbolise job losses.It&#039s a record for executives, nine days of strikes, says engineer Lies Chouiter.Striking Nortel employees scribble nasty insults on photos of their CEO Michel Clement.I had to fire people and it was disgusting, especially after giving ten years of one&#039s life to Nortel, says operations manager Charles-Henri Descours.Start the slideshow
// Ride the carousel. The financial crisis is an alibi, the company has been mismanaged since 2001, says research and development manager Frederic Ploneis…ready(function() {
$(‘#em_carousel_4757403′).
$(document).cssBefore = opts.cycle({
fx: ‘custom’,
before: function(curr, next, opts, fwd) {
opts.cssBefore.cssBefore.zIndex = 1
opts.cssBefore.display = ‘block’ if (opts.currSlide img.width)
size=’ height=”60″‘
else
size=’ width=”60″‘
return ‘ ‘ }
})
//Pause right now
$(‘#em_carousel_4757403′).cycle(‘pause’)
$(‘#em_carousel_play_button_4757403′).click(function() {
var diapo = $(‘#em_carousel_4757403′)
if(diapo.attr(‘em_diapo_play’) == “true”)
{
diapo.cycle(‘pause’, true)
diapo.removeAttr(‘em_diapo_play’)
$(‘#em_carousel_play_button_4757403 img’).attr(‘src’, ‘/en/sites/all/modules/france24/france24_cck_carousel/imgs/play.gif’)
$(‘#em_carousel_play_button_4757403 .em_carousel_play_button_txt’).text(‘Start the slideshow’)
}
else
{
diapo.cycle(‘resume’, true)
diapo.attr(‘em_diapo_play’, ‘true’)
$(‘#em_carousel_play_button_4757403 img’).attr(‘src’, ‘/en/sites/all/modules/france24/france24_cck_carousel/imgs/stop.gif’)
$(‘#em_carousel_play_button_4757403 .em_carousel_play_button_txt’).text(‘Stop the slideshow’)
}
return false
})
})

Nortel France employees are not the first to threaten to blow up their offices. On Sunday, workers at New Fabris, a failed auto parts maker in Chatellerault, a town southwest of Paris, made similar threats. Workers at the Chatellerault factory threatened to detonate gas canisters if the carmakers Renault and PSA Peugeot Citr&oumlen failed to compensate them for their lost jobs.

On Wednesday, striking workers at aerial work platform manufacturer JLG also threatened to blow up their plant close to Bordeaux if they did not obtain compensation for lost jobs.

At the Nortel France plant, striking employees said they took their cue from blue collar workers, underlining the increasing levels of labour tension in the wake of the global economic downturn.

The latest attention-seeking measures come in the wake of a series of bossnapping incidents in France, when striking workers took their bosses hostage and succeeded in grabbing the national headlines.

A learning experience

At the Nortel plant in Ch&acircteaufort, striking was a learning experience for the executives and engineers who knew little about trade unions and industrial action. After a couple of days of hesitation, the research and development department turned into a do-it-yourself zone, churning out posters, demonstration props and even a small coffin to commemorate Nortel France. Employees claim they have set a national record, the longest strike among executives to date .

Striking employees demonstrate in front of Ernst and Young offices in Paris.

It something unusual, executives striking for over seven days, it a record, a first, it shows how bad things have got, says 29-year-old engineer Lies Chouiter, standing close to a barbecue stand set up close to the plant entrance.

Senior management has also been stunned by the methods employed by Nortel staff. On the first day of the strike, our CEO [Michel Cl&eacutement] laughed, says Descours, on the second day, when he saw me distributing flyers, he was not laughing quite so much.

Team spirit

Nortel employees know their fate is sealed and that there is little they can do to save their plant. However, staff say they want decent compensation for their years spent working for Nortel. And they are ready to fight for it &ndash some have even set up tents to stay overnight.

Administrators however, say the company coffers are empty. The main difficulty is that employees demand a high redundancy package and the problem is that the accounts of the firm don&rsquot allow this, said the French judiciary administrator Franck Michel in an interview with the last week. On November 10, 2008, Nortel announced 1,300 layoffs after posting a $3.4 billion quarterly loss .

But the feeling at Nortel is that workers have been deceived for years. Nortel Networks drained the funds of Nortel France before they filed for bankruptcy, denying our branch the means to give us decent redundancy packages, said a striking employee.

We believed in the Nortel team spirit, in their mottos, integrity and ethics, says Nortel Descours, but when integrity doesn&rsquot suit them, they simply sit on it.

On July 20, the company works council is set to discuss the plant liquidation and, after a local court decision, employees could soon be joining the dole queues.

economy – financial crisis – France – telecommunication

.One of the black box flight recorders from the Yemenia jet which crashed off the Comoros has been located, a French official says.
Efforts to retrieve the recorder will begin later today, the official added, quoted by the news agency.
A Yemenia-run Airbus A310-300 carrying 153 people plunged into the Indian Ocean close to the Comoros islands on Tuesday.
“The black box’s signal was located yesterday at 4:30pm local time by an aerial patrol, 40 kilometres from Grande Comore,” a spokeswoman for Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet said.
French and US aircraft have now joined the hunt for possible survivors.
One survivor – a 14-year-old Franco-Comoran girl – was plucked alive from a sea of debris and dead bodies.
The airliner went down as it came in to land at Moroni, the Comoran capital.
“Up to now we haven’t found any other survivors, but we haven’t given up hope,” Comoran vice-president Idi Nadhoim said.
The survivor from the doomed flight, identified as Bakari Bahia, had cuts to her face and a fractured collar-bone.
It was flying the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen.
“Her health is not in danger.
She was picked up during rescue efforts on Tuesday.
Sixty-six French nationals were aboard the flight, Paris officials said. She is very calm given the shock she suffered,” local surgeon Ben Imani told at Moroni’s El Marouf hospital.
Comoran officials said France had sent a plane, and was also moving two ships into the area while the United States had sent a helicopter to help, and a plane with supplies.
Though a full list has not yet been published, a Yemeni official said there were also nationals from Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, the Philippines and Yemen on board.
The crashed plane was the second Airbus to plunge into the sea within a month.
With a population of about 800,000, the formerly French-ruled Comoros archipelago comprises three islands off mainland east Africa and just north-west of Madagascar.
– AFP/

.
An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1

.
AFP – Prosecutors called Tuesday for a life sentence for the leader of a Paris gang known as The Barbarians accused of the kidnap, torture and murder of a young Jewish man.

The call came as the two-month trial wound down of gang leader Youssouf Fofana who admittted in court to carrying out the crime that shocked France for its sheer brutality.

He called for sentences ranging from five to 13 years for several others of Fofana’s 26 alleged accomplices.

Prosecutor Philippe Bilger called for 20-year sentences for two of Fofana’s alleged closest accomplices in the crime committed in February 2006, and for 12 years for a young woman allegedly used to lure the victim to his doom.

Ilan Halimi was kidnapped and subjected to torture for 24 days before he was found naked and handcuffed to a tree near a railway track on February 13, 2006.

The court’s verdict is due on July 11.

anti-Semitism – justice – Paris
. He died on the way to hospital

.The United States has released a Guantanamo detainee whose landmark appeal to the Supreme Court secured inmates at the military prison the right to challenge their confinement.
The Algerian man, Lakhdar Boumediene, flew to France after being freed from seven years’ custody at the Guantanamo naval base.
Mr Boumediene was one of six Algerian men arrested in October 2001 in Bosnia.
“Henceforth a free man, we hope that Lakhdar Boumediene can regain a normal life,” Mr Chevallier said.
A spokesperson from the French foreign ministry, Eric Chevallier, confirmed Mr Boumediene’s arrival in France but would not reveal his current location.”
Mr Boumediene, who was detained in late 2001 when he was living in Bosnia, had been on hunger strike since December 2006 and was force-fed two times a day through a nose-drip.
“The Government has put in place a plan for his medical supervision if his state of health warrants it.
France becomes the first European Union country to take in a former Guantanamo inmate with neither residency nor citizenship.
Mr Chevallier stressed that links with the reception country were a key part of any European state’s decision to accept released detainees, with members of Mr Boumediene’s family already resident in France.
It confirmed on May 6 that it had agreed to accept Mr Boumediene, 42, who was cleared of any wrongdoing in November.
“He has been cleared of all charges relative to participation in eventual terrorist activities, by the decisions of the judiciaries of various countries including the US which ordered his release,” Mr Chevallier underlined.
His wife and two daughters, who went to Algeria after his arrest, were also due to be taken in by France. .
According to his American lawyer, Robert Kirsch, Mr Boumediene would be taken to a hospital for several days of medical tests after months on hunger strike.
-

.
REUTERS – Thousands of French medical workers took to the streets of major cities on Thursday to protest against a hospital reform plan, dismissing government concessions earlier this week aimed at easing tensions.

Students likewise staged rallies across France, continuing their 15-week battle against a shake up of the university system that has also been watered down by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Although the government is anxious to prevent the disputes from spilling over into other sectors, Prime Minister Francois Fillon ruled out any further changes to the two reforms that are central planks of Sarkozy bid to modernise France.

At the heart of both pieces of legislation is a move by Sarkozy to give more executive powers to the managers who run individual universities and hospitals, giving them more autonomy from centralised administrative bodies.

The protests have underlined both the difficulty Sarkozy faces to revise French institutions and his willingness to dilute plans to try to prevent social conflict.

Hoping to deflate the health protest, Sarkozy announced this week that hospital directors would have to consult medical staff over management issues, but this was not enough to convince doctors and nurses to end the dispute.

Critics say this will turn both institutions into businesses, with decisions made purely on financial grounds.

We want a law that re-organises the hospital system, that tackles all the problems.

France public health system is regularly held up as one of the best in the world, but its accumulated debts totalled 20 billion euros ($27 billion) in 2008 and hospital workers are convinced the government has a secret agenda to cut staff. It is not worthy of France just to have a debate on the powers of a director and the doctors, said Andre Grimaldi, a departmental head at a major Paris hospital. .

Fillon denies this, but says chronic deficit problems must be tackled and is refusing to revisit the law, which is going before parliament.

Everyone must now realise that we will never, never go back on the question of autonomy for universities, Fillon said.

He also ruled out conceding more ground to students who are demanding that he goes back on a reform that handed universities greater autonomy.

At least a dozen universities remain paralysed by the dispute, despite concessions over parts of the reform, and many students risk being set back an academic year with end of term exams likely to be delayed in some departments.

At least a dozen universities remain paralysed by the dispute, despite concessions over parts of the reform, and many students risk being set back an academic year with end of term exams likely to be delayed in some departments

.
REUTERS – The Cannes film festival opens on Wednesday with 3D
animation comedy Up, but with studios cutting back due
to the recession the feel good factor at the famously
extravagant cinema showcase may quickly fade.

&raquo France 24/ RFI special Cannes coverage

Vanity Fair’s exclusive party has been cancelled, luxury
yachts moored at the picturesque harbour remain unchartered and
movie executives are sounding a note of caution on the eve of
the world’s biggest film festival.

Like every business now, we really have to be very
careful, said Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Pictures
Classics.

The opening ceremony, underlining 3D’s growing importance,
kicks off 12 days of screenings, interviews, red carpets and
late-night revelry in the palm-lined resort, which attracts many
of the most glamorous and powerful figures in the business. Everyone has concerns, he added, before noting that
deals would still be made.

The competition also includes by Pedro Almodovar’s Broken
Embraces starring Penelope Cruz, Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric
featuring former French soccer star Eric Cantona and Lars von
Trier’s horror Antichrist.

Brad Pitt is expected in Cannes with Quentin Tarantino’s
World War Two drama Inglourious Basterds, one of 20 films
showing in the main competition and vying for the coveted Palme
d’Or for best picture when Cannes winds up on May 24.

Jane Campion, who won the Palme d’Or with The Piano in
1993, brings Bright Star based on the romance between 19th
century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne.

Out of competition, Terry Gilliam has arguably the biggest
movie in Cannes.

Ledger’s final role

Other highlights include Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock about
the rock festival and Lou Ye’s Spring Fever, made in defiance
of a five-year ban from film making imposed by China for his
previous movie Summer Palace, also in Cannes.

Hundreds more movies are shown outside the main competition,
many of them on the market which runs throughout the festival
and reinforces Cannes’ importance in the world of cinema. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is the
late Australian actor Heath Ledger’s final screen role, which
had to be completed by Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law.

On the plus side, Hollywood studios are enjoying a bumper
box office in 2009 despite the global recession and the dollar’s
relative strength will boost purchasing power.

The deal making will go on, as will the parties, but market
players expect the mood to be more subdued than recent years.

But the prospect of a protracted credit crunch, added to
slowing DVD sales and depressed advertising will cast a shadow
over Cannes, both its business and pleasure.

But the prospect of a protracted credit crunch, added to
slowing DVD sales and depressed advertising will cast a shadow
over Cannes, both its business and pleasure.

Cannes Film Festival – celebrity – cinema – entertainment – financial crisis
.

Critics say that may be a good thing, with the media at a
pared-down Cannes more likely to concentrate on the promising
movie line-up than on what the stars get up to

.

AFP – French bank Caisse d’Epargne said Thursday it had named Francois Perol, a senior aide to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, as chief executive of the group which is merging with rival Banque Populaire.

Perol was also named as head of Banque Populaire on Thursday, but will begin as head of the new merged giant only when legislation covering the two institutions is changed sometime between now and the middle of the year.

The merger of Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Epargne, which reported a loss for the first time in its history on Thursday, is expected to create France’s second-biggest bank.

Perol, whose appointment has caused controversy in political circles because of his relationship wth Sarkozy, is to take over from outgoing head Bernard Comolet on March 2. .0 billion euros (2.

Also Thursday, Caisse d’Epargne said it had made a loss of 2.6 billion dollars) in 2008, largely because of its investment banking unit Natixis which was hit by the global financial crisis.

banking – France – merger
.

Perol left the civil service to join investment bank Rothschild in 2005 before returning to be Sarkozy’s deputy chief of staff after the French leader won the presidential election of that year