Wednesday, June 1, 2011

1 June 2011: News of the day

Le Parisien leads with the new Socialist frontrunner, the formerly fat François Hollande. Le Parisien does these panel things where readers of the newspaper interview a news personality. It's dumb. In the local section, his first rally at La Bellevilloise is an opportunity to look at the fashion among politicians to use this venue just up the street for me for their meetings and events.


I hate to say it, but the loudmouth demagogue Lefebvrree is turning out to be a pretty good minister of consumer affairs. A new law will improve things for subscribers of mobile phones and internet, renters, etc.


Drought! Limited restrictions so far in Paris. We are told to avoid taking too many showers. So the Parisians will be stinking more than usual.


Time to stock up on veggies: everyone's afraid of the killer bacteria, originally thought to be from Spanish cucumbers. What's really scary, is that it appears not to be from the cukes, so where's it from???


The biggest news from me is the accusation on a TV show from Luc Ferry, former Sarkozy minister and "philosopher" and TV personality. He claims that a former minister was caught in Morocco in an orgy with young boys.  But he won't name names. He claims that he had confirmation of this story from a "prime minister". He says he won't name names, because he'll be the one sued. As it turns out, he may still be prosecuted: it is illegal in France to not denounce a crime. If he believed a crime had been committed, he had a duty to report it at the time. The penalty is three years in jail and 45,000 euros in fines. (BTW, there is a consensus on who it is... and if it weren't for the word "former", we could assume that he was talking about current culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand, who has written about his taste for minors.)


A curious story of a retired German teacher who was stabbed by a former student. The student's a bit of a loner, and a good student, but had horrible grades in his German class. He had accused the teacher of fondling him, but there was insufficient evidence to charge the teacher. Nowhere does anyone in the article suggest that this was a gesture aimed at getting justice where the justice system had failed.


Homemade bombs went off in Ikea stores in the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France...  So many reasons to hate, so many reasons to love.


We have yet another story on Borloo: will he or won't he run for president? Sarkozy is doing his best to dissuade him. Since he can't win, I don't get it. Everyone in France can be and wants to run for president.


We get a comment from Gérard Longuet, minister of defence, about his holiday in Tunisia. But interestingly, no mention that he was accompanied by a "journalist" who also paid nothing... Got to preserve the wall between politicians and journalists (that's the "wall" that prevents journalists from writing about how close journalists are to politicians).


Qatar has bought the PSG. I wonder if they will maintain the club's actions against homophobia?


A strange and revolting ending to the racism of the French Football Federation: the only significant punishment (a 6-day suspension) is for the official who received the secret audio recording of the meeting where ethnic quotas were discussed. No punishment for those who proposed the quotas...


Coverage in the local section on the event last night where the worst urban renovation project under Delanoe was chosen: the destruction of the Auteuil greenhouses and gardens to extend Rolland Garros. A good choice, but my favorite is still the destruction of the Grand Ecran cinema complex.

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