Two a penny

.A French court has awarded first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy 40,000 euros ($82,000) in damages from a company that sold bags emblazoned with a picture of her in the nude.
The case is the latest in a series of legal actions over the presidential couple’s image, which have drawn accusations of frivolity from critics of the media-savvy Sarkozys. She had asked for 125,000 euros in damages from Pardon, a fashion chain in the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion which used it without her permission.
The nude photo of Bruni-Sarkozy was taken in 1993, when she was a professional model.
Bruni-Sarkozy’s lawyers had indicated that she would donate any damages awarded to charity.
“The unauthorised use of the image of Carla Bruni caused her moral and economic damage,” a court in the island capital Saint Denis de la Reunion said.
Mr Mertes said 10,000 of the bags had been made and about half of those sold before Bruni-Sarkozy took legal action.
The founder and manager of the Pardon chain, Peter Mertes, said he would appeal because 40,000 euros seemed expensive to him for “a small blunder”. Pardon does not trade in mainland France.
He promised to dispose of the remaining stock. Public interest in her has surged since her whirlwind romance with President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom she married in February less than three months after they met.
Bruni-Sarkozy, 40, rose to fame as a model before becoming a successful pop singer.
It shows the young Ms Bruni standing in a pigeon-toed pose, covering her private parts with her hands. . Customers were given a free bag if they spent more than 5 euros.
The Pardon bags were on sale last week for 3 euros each.
The Sarkozys have repeatedly gone to court over image issues and regularly grace the covers of glossy celebrity magazines, prompting endless satire from French critics who say they are too focused on trivial matters. They are now banned from being sold on penalty of 100 euros per bag.
An appeals court said the doll was an “offence against the personal dignity” of Mr Sarkozy but it would be disproportionate to ban it.
In the latest case to make headlines, Mr Sarkozy went to court in October demanding a ban of sales of a voodoo doll representing him.
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AFP – Top envoys from Afghanistan, neighbouring nations and the world’s great powers agreed Sunday at a Paris meeting boycotted by Iran to work more closely to try to restore stability in the war-torn state. They agreed that there can be no long-term security and peace in the region without a stable, secure, prosperous and democratic Afghanistan, according to a statement released at the end of the one-day conference.

But, apart from a vague agreement to work more closely to strengthen border security as a key component of counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism, no concrete measures were announced at the meeting.

The envoys expressed their support for existing initiatives to reinforce cooperation between Afghanistan and its neighbours (and) committed to the effective implementation of these initiatives.

No official reason was given for the no-show. .

The Paris conference was aimed at finding ways to bring Afghanistan out of its seemingly endless state of war, and to urge neighbouring states, in particular Pakistan and Iran, to play a more positive role.

But it came at the end of a week that saw French-Iranian relations strained after Tehran summoned the French ambassador to protest about remarks by President Nicolas Sarkozy condemning Iran’s threats against Israel. In recent weeks NATO convoys and even their supply depots have been attacked within Pakistan itself.

Pakistan has been accused of not doing enough to prevent cross-border operations by Taliban insurgents.

Since the US intervention in 2001, in which air strikes and special forces helped Afghan opposition troops overthrow the Taliban regime, the country has fallen back into the guerrilla conflict that so marred its recent history.

The conference hosts want to involve more Afghans in work to stabilise the country, where 70,000 foreign troops under NATO and US command are battling the resurgent Taliban and extremist forces for control.

French officials had played down expectations of rapid progress at the Paris meeting, noting that little new in the way of policy can be decided while the world waits for US president-elect Barack Obama to take office on January 20.

Many of the Taliban and extremist groups fighting against foreign and Afghan troops in the south and east of the country have rear bases in Pakistan, and US officials have also accused Iran of shipping arms to some groups.

The envoys held a full day of closed-door talks at French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner’s official out-of-town residence at La Celle-Saint-Cloud in the leafy western suburbs of Paris.

During the campaign, Obama argued that as the United States scaled back its presence in Iraq more troops could be moved to the frontline in Afghanistan, but his wider political policy has not yet been revealed.

Representatives of regional power India and UN Security Council heavyweights Britain, Russia and the United States also attended.

Despite Iran’s decision to stay away, Afghanistan and its other immediate neighbours China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were represented at the gathering.

The group was due to dine later Sunday at the foreign ministry, joined by representatives of Australia, the Netherlands, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

As G8 members with troops in Afghanistan, Italy and Germany were also present, as was UN Afghanistan envoy Kai Eide, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and external affairs commissioner Benita Ferrero-Walder.

Afghanistan – al Qaeda – arms trafficking – India – Iran – NATO – Pakistan – Taliban – terrorism

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In his report to the French parliament on December 2, Jean Leonetti, politician and doctor, refused to recognise the right to die.On the other hand, he reiterates the right to let die, established in a law passed on April 22, 2005.

In France, the law is no longer either applied or applicable, says Jean-Luc Romero, president of a French association promoting the right to die with dignity (ADMD).

A small variance in wording, but a big difference in semantics

The right to die opens a door to legislation for euthanasia, equivalent to helping a sick person to die the right to let die permits a patient to stop all treatment.

Jean Leonetti confirms this in his report: Justice is already able to use resources of criminal proceedings to absolve or judge with leniency the functions depending on the situation. All those who came before the tribunal for helping, on compassionate grounds, sick people to die, were not punished.

The legislation in effect in France, the law to let die, is widely practised in Europe, albeit with slight variations.

Notably, in 2007, a nurse and a doctor who injected a fatal dose of potassium chloride into a patient with terminal cancer, were given the minimum punishment for a criminal matter – a one-year suspended sentence.

Towards a European legislation for euthanasia

Only two countries, the Netherlands and Belgium, have legalised euthanasia, by way of laws enacted in 2001 and 2002.

In European countries, save for Greece and Poland, the law recognises a patient’s right to refuse treatment, even – as happens in Germany – the right to stop respirators and tube-feeding at the demand of the patient or those closest to them. In both countries, the practice of euthanasia is strictly controlled. Luxembourg is readying to pass a similar law. To make the practice legal, the doctors must ensure that the patient is suffering unacceptably,, that there is no chance they can survive the illness and that they have a desire to die. A principle of meticulous criteria is imposed on all doctors helping sick people to die.

Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark are have adopted laws authorising medically assisted suicide. It is the responsibility of regional commissions to ensure that these conditions are adhered to.

Outside of Europe, in the American state of Oregon, a text legalising medically assisted suicide – a law to authorise death with dignity – was adopted in 1997. . A similar text was adopted in Washington State in November 2008. Under certain conditions, doctors can provide patients in the final stages of life with fatal doses of drugs that they can administer themselves.

euthanasia

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Good samaritan returns stolen ashes

– Thursday, 04 December 2008

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RELIEF: Michelle Pritchard clutches the bag containing the urn with her mother Evelyn Mary Smith’s ashes inside. The ashes were handed in to Manurewa police station on Monday.

Ask and you shall receive – at least that’s how Michelle Pritchard got her mother’s ashes back after they were stolen in a burglary last week.
She called the thieves "despicable" and their deeds "sickening".
Michelle’s plight featured on the ’s front page on Friday.
Mr Smith says the small white box "stood out" on his front lawn not far from the Manurewa home they were stolen from.
But she has kinder words for Clinton Smith, the man who came forward with her mother’s ashes after he found them while collecting his mail.
"I didn’t see [anyone drop them off] and the dogs didn’t start barking or anything like that so they’ve done it pretty quietly.
But he says staff were unhelpful and he was at a loss as to what to do."
When he went to investigate he saw the Manukau Memorial Gardens emblem and called the gardens in hope of finding the family.
After a call to police, who eventually found Mr Smith’s correct number, Evelyn Mary Smith’s ashes were reunited with her family.
When his call for the ashes’ owner appeared in the New Zealand Herald’s Sideswipe column, the ’s phones ran hot with members of the public connecting the two stories.
"Thank you so much from everyone in the whole family," she says.
Mr Smith took the ashes to Manurewa police station on Monday and Michelle had them back in her safe hands not long after that
Although she hadn’t yet spoken to Mr Smith, she was to call him "the first chance I get".
"We’re just so happy there’s people like him out in the community. ."
The family can now move forward with plans to buy a plot and lay a plaque in Evelyn’s memory at Manukau Memorial Gardens.
"I wasn’t sure but I was trying to stay positive. Senior sergeant Michael Woods says 50 burglars have been arrested since the project began in early November.
Manurewa police have been targeting burglary with Operation Retribution.

.Search and rescue divers are still at the scene of Friday’s Air New Zealand plane crash off the south-east coast of France. .
Four of the men who died were Air New Zealand staff.
“The aircraft wreckage is in about 40 metres of water and the sea bed is about 30 centimetres of mud so it’s quite difficult to work in,” he said.
The airline’s chief executive Rob Fyfe says investigators are working in difficult conditions.
He says this sort of speculation is harmful to the investigation.
Mr Fyfe has dismissed a report by an eyewitness that the pilots steered the plane into the sea to avoid a French village.
The plane’s cockpit voice recorder is being analysed in Paris.