"Sea algae raises health, economic problems in France" by Matthew Saltmarsh, International Herald Tribune | August 29, 2010
DOUARNENEZ, France — The main culprit, scientists say, is agriculture, which has also grown in scale and importance as fishing fades. Brittany is now home to more than half the hogs in France, and the nitrate-rich manure from all those pigs runs into the sea via rivers, forming green tides, or macroalgic blooms, in shallow coastal inlets.
With one economic pillar pitted against another, solving the problem is proving to be complicated....
I'd rather the pig shit not make it into the water.
The algae, when decomposing, can emit hydrogen sulfide, which is potentially deadly if inhaled. Last year, several incidents brought the issue to national and even European prominence. A horse died on a Brittany beach after apparently inhaling noxious gases emitted by rotting algae that was left behind by receding tides. The rider fainted, but recovered.
Then a truck driver collapsed and subsequently died while transporting algae that had been cleared from a beach. A coroner’s report did not link his death to the algae, but his family has filed a judicial complaint seeking a reexamination. The Paris prosecutor is now examining a raft of related cases.
The resulting publicity has raised health anxieties and depressed tourist numbers in Douarnenez and other towns along the more than 1,700 miles, of Brittany’s coastline....
--more--"A different kind of gusher:
"EU panel raps France’s treatment of Roma" by Associated Press | August 25, 2010
STRASBOURG, France — Europe’s top human rights watchdog accused France yesterday of stigmatizing Roma people by blaming them for crime and expelling them from the country.
The panel, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, has repeatedly cautioned France about racism against Roma, also known as Gypsies, and urged the country to respect the rights of migrants from the minority.
In a report in June, the commission urged Paris “to combat the racist attitudes and hostility harbored by the majority population vis-à-vis this community.’’
It's directed at Muslims over here in AmeriKa.
In 2005, the panel asked France to ensure “Roma migrants’ social rights to housing, health, and education.’’ But matters have only worsened, the panel said in a statement.
This summer President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a crackdown on Roma as part of a larger “war’’ on delinquency.
Oh, great, ANOTHER WAR!
In recent weeks, French police have dismantled dozens of illegally installed Gypsy camps and flown the dwellers to Romania....
Where they got off the plane and started making their way back.
FLASHBACKS:
"Crackdown on illegal Gypsies stirs French Roma" by Associated Press | July 29, 2010
SAINT OUEN, France — President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered authorities yesterday to expel Gypsy illegal immigrants and dismantle their camps, amid accusations that his government is acting racist in its treatment of the group known as Roma.
Sarkozy called the government meeting after Gypsies clashed with police this month following the shooting death of a youth fleeing officers in Loire Valley.
France isn't all wine and protests, is it?
He said those responsible for the clashes would be “severely punished,’’ and he ordered the government to expel all illegal Roma immigrants, almost all of whom come from Eastern Europe....
Romania and Bulgaria are members of the European Union, and their citizens can enter France without a visa...
Sarkozy pushed for a change in France’s immigration law to make such expulsion easier “for reasons of public order.’’ He said illegal Gypsy camps “will be systematically evacuated,’’ calling them sources of trafficking, exploitation of children, and prostitution.
Can you now give Nico a hearty sig heil, readers?
The language has chilling undertones in a country where authorities rounded up Gypsies and sent them to concentration camps during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Jacques Chirac, the former president who was the first French leader to acknowledge the state’s role in the Holocaust, condemned “the Nazi madness that wanted to eliminate the Gypsies.’’
You mean someone else was included besides the Jews?
No way!
Around Europe, some 250,000 to 1.5 million Roma were killed during World War II.
Woah!
Accurate figures are difficult to find because many Roma were rounded up away from public view, executed, and dumped into mass graves....
Yeah, and because any that are found are claimed to be Jewish not Gypsy.
--more--"
"France sends nearly 100 Gypsies back to Romania" by Julien Proult, Associated Press | August 20, 2010
PARIS — France expelled nearly 100 Gypsies, or Roma, to their native Romania yesterday as part of a very public effort by conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy to dismantle Roma camps and sweep them out of the country, the Immigration Ministry said.
Isn't that racism?
France chartered a flight to Bucharest, which left from the southeastern city of Lyon with 79 Roma aboard, Immigration Ministry officials said. However, Romanian border police official Cristian Ene, at Bucharest’s Aurel Vlaicu airport, said only 61 people were aboard. The French Immigration Ministry was unable to explain the discrepancy.
Did they get an in-flight meal?
Fourteen other people were repatriated to Romania aboard a commercial flight from the Paris region earlier in the day, the French officials said, adding that another Romania-bound repatriation flight was expected today. Additional flights were scheduled for later this month and September, Romania’s Foreign Ministry said.
Those repatriated yesterday left on a voluntary basis and were given small sums of money — $386 for each adult and $128 for children — to help them get back on their feet in their home country, a standard French practice, officials said.
As if they were criminals!
Roma advocates countered the repatriations were hardly voluntary, claiming that those who refused the deal would end up in holding centers and eventually be sent home without funds.
Then give me the cash, sigh!!!!
Alexandre Le Cleve, a spokesman for Rom Europe, said the expulsions were pointless because nothing prevented those sent back from returning to France, as many have done in the past.
Yes, but it makes a POLITICAL POINT!
