Tag Archives | France

A Quest For De-Baptism In France

Baptême Cathédrale de TroyesReports Eleanor Beardsley for NPR:

In France, an elderly man is fighting to make a formal break with the Catholic Church. He’s taken the church to court over its refusal to let him nullify his baptism, in a case that could have far-reaching effects.

Seventy-one-year-old Rene LeBouvier’s parents and his brother are buried in a churchyard in the tiny village of Fleury in northwest France. He himself was baptized in the Romanesque stone church and attended mass here as a boy.

LeBouvier says this rural area is still conservative and very Catholic, but nothing like it used to be. Back then, he says, you couldn’t even get credit at the bakery if you didn’t go to mass every Sunday.

LeBouvier grew up in that world and says his mother once hoped he’d become a priest. But his views began to change in the 1970s, when he was introduced to free thinkers.

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French Gunman Dies, Guns Blazing

MerahOne can only hope he doesn’t become some sort of perverse martyr. From AFP:

A self-proclaimed Al-Qaeda militant died in a hail of bullets on Thursday as he jumped out of an apartment window at the end of a 32-hour siege in southern France.

Mohamed Merah, the main suspect in a wave of shootings that killed seven people, had tried to blast his way out of the siege in the city of Toulouse after members of an elite force known as RAID entered his flat.

But Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the 23-year-old had been found dead on the ground in a dramatic end to the lengthy standoff.

“The killer came out from the bathroom shooting very violently. The bursts of gunfire were frequent and hard,” Gueant said. “A RAID officer who is used to this kind of thing told me that he had never seen such a violent assault.

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Jew Or Not Jew?

Still available in the good ole USofA … Jessica Ravitz and Saskya Vandoorne report on a bizarre iPhone app for CNN:

“Jew or not Jew?”: That is just part of the question.

An iPhone app bearing this name has been yanked from Apple’s App Store in France amid threats of a lawsuit and demands for its removal.

jew or not jew

The app, still available elsewhere, pulls together a database of thousands of famous Jews – including movie stars, musicians, Nobel Prize winners and more – and offers insights into their backgrounds. Jewish mother? Jewish father? A convert? For $1.99 in the United States, app owners can know.

In an iTunes store description, it says: “Hey, did you know that Bob Dylan is Jewish? Of course I did! But was Marilyn Monroe really Jewish? And what about Harrison Ford? How many times have we had this conversation without being able to know for sure?

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The First Science Fiction Film

Le_Voyage_dans_la_luneDreamy and surreal, it lives up to its name:

A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la lune) is a 1902 French black-and-white silent science fiction film. The film was written and directed by Georges Méliès, assisted by his brother Gaston. It is based loosely on two popular novels of the time: From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells.

It is the first science fiction film and uses innovative animation and special effects, including the well-known image of the spaceship landing in the moon’s eye.

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French Media Ban The Mention Of Specific Social Networks On Air

e1bd3437e3In an attempt to reduce the amount of ‘free publicity’ given to social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, the French have banned any mention of specific sites in their TV and radio broadcasts. One of the reasons for this ban is to allow a fair platform for smaller networking companies in the future. BBC News reports:

French TV and radio presenters have been banned from mentioning social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter on air.

The country’s broadcasting watchdog has ruled that doing so would break guidelines on advertising.

Stations can still talk about services without naming them, it said.

The French government is seen by many internet watchers as overly keen to regulate in relation to new media and the web.

In a ruling, published online, the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), said: “Referring viewers or listeners to the page of the social network without mentioning it has the character of information.

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Bombs Explode In IKEA Stores Across Europe

800px-Ikea_almhult

Photo: Sbotig (CC)

IKEA’s business has been booming. Although no one was significantly injured, this coordinated attack had alarm clocks exploding in three different European countries. Via Reuters:

French, Belgian and Dutch police have launched investigations after minor explosions struck IKEA [IKEA.UL] stores in each country late on Monday in what appears to have been a coordinated attack.

No one was seriously hurt in the blasts at the world’s biggest furniture retailer, although two workers in Belgium suffered minor injuries.

Rigged alarm clocks blew up in IKEA stores in Ghent in Belgium and Lille in France, and there was an explosion in a bin outside the IKEA store in Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

The alarm clocks were linked to small amounts of gunpowder, and prosecutors said they did not think that the bombers had intended to cause significant injury.

“Federal police with dogs did a sweep of other stores but there was nothing suspect that was found,” An Schoonjans, a Ghent prosecutor, told Reuters.

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French Press Publishes Dominique Strauss-Kahn Accuser’s Name & ‘Photos’

Flag of FranceVive la France! Wait, what? David Case writes on globalpost:

Here’s a story that illustrates the chasm between how France and America handle men, women and rape.

The French elite are outraged over what they see as American vulgarities surrounding the treatment of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief and putative 2012 presidential frontrunner, accused of raping a 32-year-old Sofitel chambermaid in Manhattan last weekend.

Among the “barbaric” American practices under critique by Parisians: showing photos of the accused in handcuffs; marching him through a scrum of photographers on the way to court; and pillorying him tabloid style — the NY Post called him “a horny toad,” for example. As GlobalPost has reported, French law restricts some media coverage of alleged perpetrators prior to conviction, including publication of images showing the accused in handcuffs, to preserve the dignity of the innocent.

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What?!? Men Really Can Make Their Penises Longer

Anyone who uses email is constantly bombarded with spam emails with subject lines like “Lengthen Your Man Snake,” which one assumes most recipients consider to be nonsense and quickly delete.

spam

However, AFP via France24 reports that in fact penis lengthening actually is possible:

Some non-surgical methods for increasing the length of the male sex organ do in fact work, while others are likely to result only in soreness and disappointment, a review of medical literature has shown.

Surgical procedures, however, can be dangerous and have an “unacceptably high rate of complications,” according to the study, published this week in the Journal of the British Association of Urological Surgeons.

“An increasing number of patients seek urological advice for the so-called ‘short penis’,” the researchers reported.

This is true despite the fact that “penile length is normal in most of these men, who tend to overestimate normal phallic dimension.”

A male member — measured on the dorsal, or upper, side — can be considered normal in length if it is at least four centimetres (1.6 inches) when limp, and 7.5 centimetres (three inches) when rigid, noted several of the studies evaluated…

I’m not sure the AFP reporter studied our infamous penis size map before writing that report though!… Read the rest

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French Doctors Announced Lung Cancer ‘Breakthrough’

LUNGThis may be a breakthrough in the treatment of lung cancer, but it doesn’t mean you should pick up smoking just yet. BBC reports:

French doctors say they have made a significant breakthrough in the treatment of lung cancer.

A medical team at Bobigny hospital in Paris removed a patient’s cancerous growth, and then gave him an artificial airway, or bronchus.

The bronchus was made from reconstituted aorta, the body’s largest artery.

The pioneering treatment in October 2009 avoided the complete removal of the patient’s lung.

In the later stages of lung cancer, only a third of patients survive a year.

The Paris patient, 78, is said be fit and well, some 16 months after surgery.

[Continues at BBC]… Read the rest

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