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French 'haven of politeness' changing

The French government had a simple solution for any lack of respect among the young – send in the riot police.

Or at least that was the ambitious French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy’s solution.

Back in October last year, he announced plans to deploy hundreds of riot police in difficult neighbourhoods to crack down on crime, and offer reassurance to householders.

“Do you want us to get rid of this trash?” he asked a housewife as he toured the tower blocks of the Paris suburbs, referring to youths who had been causing trouble in the area.

A miscarriage of justice calls an entire system into question

IT HAS been a landmark case in French judicial history in more ways than one. Since mid-January, a parliamentary inquiry has been studying one of the country’s biggest post-war miscarriages of justice: how six innocent people, jailed for years in connection with a paedophile ring, were acquitted on appeal only last December, after it turned out that key evidence against them had been made up; and how seven other innocents spent months behind bars. The testimony of the acquitted has been televised live, gripping the public.

Chirac warns media over cartoons

Mr Chirac said any subject matter that could hurt other people’s convictions should be avoided.

But Denmark’s prime minister told the BBC that it was not for the government to censor the media.

Another French publication printed the controversial cartoons on Wednesday, as protests continue in the Muslim world.

Four people were killed and up to 20 injured in a protest by about 400 people in the Afghan town of Qalat.

The deaths bring to 11 the number of people killed in Afghan protests over the cartoons in recent days.

French weekly prints more cartoons

The latest edition of Charlie Hebdo, featuring all 12 Danish drawings together with several new religious cartoons by its own contributors, went on sale today after a Paris court rejected a legal bid by French Muslim organisations to prevent publication.

Charlie Hebdo’s cover shows Muhammad covering his eyes with his hands, saying: “It’s hard to be loved by idiots”. The illustration is by the magazine’s in-house cartoonist, Cabu, and the headline reads: “Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists.”

Several Muslim organisations, including the French Council of the Muslim Faith and the mosques of Paris and Lyon, had initiated court proceedings against Charlie Hebdo for alleged “racial and religious insult”.

France sets slavery memorial day

PARIS, Jan. 30 (Xinhuanet) — France is to make May 10 a memorial day to mark the abolition of slavery, French President Jacques Chirac announced on Monday.

“From this year I would like mainland France to honour the memory of slaves and commemorate the abolition of slavery,” the president said in an address to a government-appointed Committee for the Memory of Slavery.

“Slavery fed racism. When people tried to justify the unjustifiable, that was when the first racist theories were elaborated. Racism is a crime of the heart and the spirit … which is why the memory of slavery remains a living wound for someof our fellow citizens,” he said.