yes, i am aware that cyprus isn't technically a part of europe...but hey, its pretty close!!! i can't help if my fail-safe crazy germans haven't done anything too crazy in the past 24 hours...i'm working with nothing here people...
cypriot seeks to unravel curse with pants and egg
friday november 16, 3:22 am
nicosia (reuters) - having marital problems? have you tried putting egg in your underpants?
a woman in cyprus is on trial for sorcery after pledging to shake off a curse apparently plaguing a man's relationship with his wife and mother-in-law.
the suggested remedy consisted of an egg, a spoon, a nail, some pubic hairs and underpants, local media reported on friday.
"she cracked the egg into my underpants," the 37-year-old man told a district court in the capital nicosia.
the elderly woman wanted some 5,000 cyprus pounds (5,968 pounds) for her efforts, the man said, so he went to police.
sorcery is banned in cyprus though many people indulge in card readings and palmistry and read runes in coffee cups.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
inane and slightly ridiculous news from europe - a baker's dozen - take 2
and now an article found by justin:
pasta panic strikes italy
the price of wheat is up 60% this year, and in italy they're taking to the streets over the cost of tortellini, writes fortune's peter gumbel.
(fortune magazine) -- something unusual is going on in the pasta section of the largest supermarket in parma, italy, these days. all the pasta is still there, stacked on both sides of a tennis-court-length aisle in the center of the store. the dizzying choice, too, is the same as in many italian supermarkets: dozens of shapes, sizes, and colors, ranging from banal penne and rigatoni to lumachine, shaped like tiny snail shells.
what's new are the big signs fluttering above the aisle and affixed to the partitions at the ipercoop market, a short drive from parma's city center. in capital letters, they declare, WE ARE NOT MOVING.
the movement in question has to do with the price of pasta, which has jumped about 20% this year for some varieties, touching off a nationwide protest. but the story behind the price hike is a global saga involving agricultural policies, commodity-market speculation, the growing use of ethanol as an alternative fuel, and Australian drought.
italian pasta producers have taken great pains to justify the increase by pointing to the soaring cost of wheat, which has increased by 60% over the past year. that's an excuse the conspiracy-crazed italians aren't buying.
"yes, the price of wheat has risen, but it has simply gone back to 1985 levels. so who's been profiting from low prices these past 20 years?" asks rosario trefiletti, president of the federconsumatori consumers' association in rome.
trefiletti's association, along with three others, has been so incensed by the price hikes - according to their calculations, spaghetti is up by an average of 27% this year - that they called a pasta strike in september. for one day consumers were urged not to buy pasta (although in a country that consumes more than five times as much pasta per head as the u.s., nobody said anything about not eating it).
"it was a huge success," trefiletti says. it has certainly brought results. the government, which knows a good populist issue when it sees one, began holding talks with producers, farmers, and consumer lobbyists, who are calling for tougher controls and price safeguards for food staples. "the government can't impose lower prices," says carlo pileri, who heads another consumer group, "but it can do moral suasion."
then came the regulators. on october 23rd, italy's antitrust agency announced it was launching a formal investigation to determine whether italian pasta producers have been engaging in illegal price fixing. the producers vehemently deny the charge, but they and italian retailers are clearly on the defensive. hence the big signs at the parma ipercoop promising not to raise prices on the store-brand pasta, at least until the end of the year.
for guido barilla, chairman of the eponymous $3.4 billion parma-based family company that is the world's largest pasta producer, this italian melodrama is missing the point. barilla raised prices 15% this year, and for him it's self-evident that higher wheat prices have to feed through to consumers at some point. pasta is a low-margin business, and flour is one of just two principal ingredients, along with water.
"wheat makes up 60% of the price," he says, pointing to a box of penne on a table. what irks him is not so much the public fuss in italy, which he dismisses with a shrug, but one of the reasons prices are rising in the first place: the growing use of agricultural crops to make ethanol and other alternative fuels. "agriculture for energy is an extremely stupid thing," barilla says. "it's very inefficient."
italians aren't alone in this struggle. rising bread and flour prices have sparked protests across drought-stricken morocco, where the wheat crop dropped by 76% this year. public disturbances have also been reported in yemen, niger, and the ivory coast.
and it's not just wheat that's soaring. milk prices are at record highs, and rice is up too. jacques diouf, the senegalese head of the un's rome-based food and agriculture organization (fao), spoke last month about the risk of upheaval across the developing world. "if you combine the increase of oil prices and the increase of food prices," he said, "then you have the elements of a very serious crisis in the future."
governments from cairo to dhaka are looking to head off that prospect by offsetting higher wheat costs however they can. in september the egyptian government jacked up its bread subsidies by 50%, to $2.5 billion.
in richer countries, too, the hikes are spurring authorities to action. in Japan, where the government is the sole importer of wheat, bread prices have gone up for the first time in two decades. russia, ukraine, and kazakhstan have imposed restrictions on their wheat exports to ensure that their domestic markets don't lose out in the rush by traders to make money abroad.
and in september the european union reversed a 20-year-old policy that required farmers to leave 10% of their land fallow. the aim of abandoning the so-called set-aside policy is to spur a quick boost in production of wheat, oats, and barley.
the big winners in all this, at least for now: american wheat farmers. production is up about 14%, while exports, aided by the weakening dollar, are expected to rise more than 25% this year. stocks are at their lowest level since the late 1940s. best of all, prices have jumped to an average yearly price of $249 a metric ton for hard red winter wheat, more than double what it was in 2000.
"the early-season pace of wheat export sales and shipments has been blistering," reports the usda's october wheat outlook. at the washington, d.c., trade group u.s. wheat associates, spokesman ateve mercer points out that "we were the only ones who had wheat to sell for a while this year."
the boom could be short-lived. fao wheat expert abdolreza abbassian warns that a flurry of production increases by farmers trying to take advantage of the price rises may soon make itself felt. "it could all lead to a short-term glut," he says. indeed, wheat futures have eased since peaking in late september.
wheat experts point to four factors that have combined to propel prices higher. the first and most significant is to be found in australia, one of the world's biggest wheat producers, where two harvests in a row have been ravaged by drought at a time crops in other big exporting nations, such as argentina and canada, have been less than stellar.
second, stocks of wheat are at the lowest since 1983, a consequence of changing agricultural policy in both the u.s. and the eu, which no longer encourage excess production or subsidize exports as much as they used to. commodity market speculation is also rife, as hedge funds and others bet heavily on rising prices created by worldwide demand.
and finally there's barilla's gripe: the growing use of crops for fuel. wheat isn't directly affected; in the u.s. it's mainly corn that is used for ethanol, while in europe soy is converted into biodiesel. but there is an indirect effect on wheat as farmers switch to more lucrative crops. that's a stance actively encouraged by the bush administration and the eu.
barilla thinks that's crazy. for one thing, it requires a huge and expensive use of water. it will require a big increase in the amount of food produced in the future. and he worries that the quality of the crops will drop. "this policy will have a tremendous effect," he frets. his skepticism is shared by the international monetary fund, which took the u.s. and european biofuel policies to task in a recently published report, arguing that they are "sustaining inefficient production patterns."
sitting in his taxi outside parma's ipercoop, white-haired andrea pattacino doesn't quite know whom to believe. he talks darkly about "speculators" driving up pasta prices and worries that it will hurt poor families. but he also points out that a few pennies on a bag of pasta that costs less than $1 a pound isn't going to break the bank. "we italians are masters of subterfuge," he says. "there's always speculation."
walk into carmela ugo's pasta and bakery store on garibaldi street in the center of town, near the 12th-century pink-marble baptistery, and she'll give you a completely different take. she took over the store 32 years ago and caters to a steady stream of regulars who come in to buy the prosciutto- and parmesan-filled cappelletti it takes her four days to make, or the less laborious parma specialties such as tortelli stuffed with herbs, pumpkin, or potato.
"we're trying to resist raising prices," she says. "the danger is that the more they go up, the less people buy. but so far they're still buying." she stops to serve a customer a slice of focaccia for lunch before getting on to her pet peeve, the pasta strike.
"it was one of those stupid Italian things. just blown up by the media," she says. "if you're going to strike, you need to stage one like we had in the 1970s. back then, pasta stores and bakeries closed down altogether for the day." she beams. "now that was a real strike."
now thats a spicy meatball!!! perhaps i should look into adding 'wheat expert' in addition to 'sexual adviser' to my resume...hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
pasta panic strikes italy
the price of wheat is up 60% this year, and in italy they're taking to the streets over the cost of tortellini, writes fortune's peter gumbel.
(fortune magazine) -- something unusual is going on in the pasta section of the largest supermarket in parma, italy, these days. all the pasta is still there, stacked on both sides of a tennis-court-length aisle in the center of the store. the dizzying choice, too, is the same as in many italian supermarkets: dozens of shapes, sizes, and colors, ranging from banal penne and rigatoni to lumachine, shaped like tiny snail shells.
what's new are the big signs fluttering above the aisle and affixed to the partitions at the ipercoop market, a short drive from parma's city center. in capital letters, they declare, WE ARE NOT MOVING.
the movement in question has to do with the price of pasta, which has jumped about 20% this year for some varieties, touching off a nationwide protest. but the story behind the price hike is a global saga involving agricultural policies, commodity-market speculation, the growing use of ethanol as an alternative fuel, and Australian drought.
italian pasta producers have taken great pains to justify the increase by pointing to the soaring cost of wheat, which has increased by 60% over the past year. that's an excuse the conspiracy-crazed italians aren't buying.
"yes, the price of wheat has risen, but it has simply gone back to 1985 levels. so who's been profiting from low prices these past 20 years?" asks rosario trefiletti, president of the federconsumatori consumers' association in rome.
trefiletti's association, along with three others, has been so incensed by the price hikes - according to their calculations, spaghetti is up by an average of 27% this year - that they called a pasta strike in september. for one day consumers were urged not to buy pasta (although in a country that consumes more than five times as much pasta per head as the u.s., nobody said anything about not eating it).
"it was a huge success," trefiletti says. it has certainly brought results. the government, which knows a good populist issue when it sees one, began holding talks with producers, farmers, and consumer lobbyists, who are calling for tougher controls and price safeguards for food staples. "the government can't impose lower prices," says carlo pileri, who heads another consumer group, "but it can do moral suasion."
then came the regulators. on october 23rd, italy's antitrust agency announced it was launching a formal investigation to determine whether italian pasta producers have been engaging in illegal price fixing. the producers vehemently deny the charge, but they and italian retailers are clearly on the defensive. hence the big signs at the parma ipercoop promising not to raise prices on the store-brand pasta, at least until the end of the year.
for guido barilla, chairman of the eponymous $3.4 billion parma-based family company that is the world's largest pasta producer, this italian melodrama is missing the point. barilla raised prices 15% this year, and for him it's self-evident that higher wheat prices have to feed through to consumers at some point. pasta is a low-margin business, and flour is one of just two principal ingredients, along with water.
"wheat makes up 60% of the price," he says, pointing to a box of penne on a table. what irks him is not so much the public fuss in italy, which he dismisses with a shrug, but one of the reasons prices are rising in the first place: the growing use of agricultural crops to make ethanol and other alternative fuels. "agriculture for energy is an extremely stupid thing," barilla says. "it's very inefficient."
italians aren't alone in this struggle. rising bread and flour prices have sparked protests across drought-stricken morocco, where the wheat crop dropped by 76% this year. public disturbances have also been reported in yemen, niger, and the ivory coast.
and it's not just wheat that's soaring. milk prices are at record highs, and rice is up too. jacques diouf, the senegalese head of the un's rome-based food and agriculture organization (fao), spoke last month about the risk of upheaval across the developing world. "if you combine the increase of oil prices and the increase of food prices," he said, "then you have the elements of a very serious crisis in the future."
governments from cairo to dhaka are looking to head off that prospect by offsetting higher wheat costs however they can. in september the egyptian government jacked up its bread subsidies by 50%, to $2.5 billion.
in richer countries, too, the hikes are spurring authorities to action. in Japan, where the government is the sole importer of wheat, bread prices have gone up for the first time in two decades. russia, ukraine, and kazakhstan have imposed restrictions on their wheat exports to ensure that their domestic markets don't lose out in the rush by traders to make money abroad.
and in september the european union reversed a 20-year-old policy that required farmers to leave 10% of their land fallow. the aim of abandoning the so-called set-aside policy is to spur a quick boost in production of wheat, oats, and barley.
the big winners in all this, at least for now: american wheat farmers. production is up about 14%, while exports, aided by the weakening dollar, are expected to rise more than 25% this year. stocks are at their lowest level since the late 1940s. best of all, prices have jumped to an average yearly price of $249 a metric ton for hard red winter wheat, more than double what it was in 2000.
"the early-season pace of wheat export sales and shipments has been blistering," reports the usda's october wheat outlook. at the washington, d.c., trade group u.s. wheat associates, spokesman ateve mercer points out that "we were the only ones who had wheat to sell for a while this year."
the boom could be short-lived. fao wheat expert abdolreza abbassian warns that a flurry of production increases by farmers trying to take advantage of the price rises may soon make itself felt. "it could all lead to a short-term glut," he says. indeed, wheat futures have eased since peaking in late september.
wheat experts point to four factors that have combined to propel prices higher. the first and most significant is to be found in australia, one of the world's biggest wheat producers, where two harvests in a row have been ravaged by drought at a time crops in other big exporting nations, such as argentina and canada, have been less than stellar.
second, stocks of wheat are at the lowest since 1983, a consequence of changing agricultural policy in both the u.s. and the eu, which no longer encourage excess production or subsidize exports as much as they used to. commodity market speculation is also rife, as hedge funds and others bet heavily on rising prices created by worldwide demand.
and finally there's barilla's gripe: the growing use of crops for fuel. wheat isn't directly affected; in the u.s. it's mainly corn that is used for ethanol, while in europe soy is converted into biodiesel. but there is an indirect effect on wheat as farmers switch to more lucrative crops. that's a stance actively encouraged by the bush administration and the eu.
barilla thinks that's crazy. for one thing, it requires a huge and expensive use of water. it will require a big increase in the amount of food produced in the future. and he worries that the quality of the crops will drop. "this policy will have a tremendous effect," he frets. his skepticism is shared by the international monetary fund, which took the u.s. and european biofuel policies to task in a recently published report, arguing that they are "sustaining inefficient production patterns."
sitting in his taxi outside parma's ipercoop, white-haired andrea pattacino doesn't quite know whom to believe. he talks darkly about "speculators" driving up pasta prices and worries that it will hurt poor families. but he also points out that a few pennies on a bag of pasta that costs less than $1 a pound isn't going to break the bank. "we italians are masters of subterfuge," he says. "there's always speculation."
walk into carmela ugo's pasta and bakery store on garibaldi street in the center of town, near the 12th-century pink-marble baptistery, and she'll give you a completely different take. she took over the store 32 years ago and caters to a steady stream of regulars who come in to buy the prosciutto- and parmesan-filled cappelletti it takes her four days to make, or the less laborious parma specialties such as tortelli stuffed with herbs, pumpkin, or potato.
"we're trying to resist raising prices," she says. "the danger is that the more they go up, the less people buy. but so far they're still buying." she stops to serve a customer a slice of focaccia for lunch before getting on to her pet peeve, the pasta strike.
"it was one of those stupid Italian things. just blown up by the media," she says. "if you're going to strike, you need to stage one like we had in the 1970s. back then, pasta stores and bakeries closed down altogether for the day." she beams. "now that was a real strike."
now thats a spicy meatball!!! perhaps i should look into adding 'wheat expert' in addition to 'sexual adviser' to my resume...hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
inane and slightly ridiculous news from europe - a baker's dozen
oh those zany germans again!
pedophile allowed to work in kindergarten
thursday november 15, 2007 10:09 am
berlin (reuters) - a convicted pedophile sentenced to do community service in a german kindergarten will return to court next week to face charges of abusing two children there, a regional prosecutor's office said thursday.
the man was allowed to work as a janitor at the evangelical kindergarten st petri in melle, near the northern city of osnabrueck, because a court worker missed three prior pedophilia convictions on his record, said alexander retemeyer, spokesman for the osnabrueck prosecutor's office.
the man, identified only as a.b., had been sentenced to 720 hours of community service earlier this year for working on the sly while collecting welfare payments.
"the colleague didn't pay attention and didn't see he had a sexual conviction, so she allowed him to serve in a kindergarten," retemeyer said. "she didn't read the file."
the prior convictions date from 1988-1990, when the man was living in the former east germany, retemeyer said. though the convictions are listed in the man's criminal record, the details are unclear because prosecutors cannot access his east german police file.
police arrested the man in april after the head of the kindergarten reported he had fondled himself in front of two children.
so what your saying is that if we built a wall in the middle of america, our records could potentially not follow us??? its too damn bad o.j. didn't kidnap and hold hostages at gunpoint in miami...
pedophile allowed to work in kindergarten
thursday november 15, 2007 10:09 am
berlin (reuters) - a convicted pedophile sentenced to do community service in a german kindergarten will return to court next week to face charges of abusing two children there, a regional prosecutor's office said thursday.
the man was allowed to work as a janitor at the evangelical kindergarten st petri in melle, near the northern city of osnabrueck, because a court worker missed three prior pedophilia convictions on his record, said alexander retemeyer, spokesman for the osnabrueck prosecutor's office.
the man, identified only as a.b., had been sentenced to 720 hours of community service earlier this year for working on the sly while collecting welfare payments.
"the colleague didn't pay attention and didn't see he had a sexual conviction, so she allowed him to serve in a kindergarten," retemeyer said. "she didn't read the file."
the prior convictions date from 1988-1990, when the man was living in the former east germany, retemeyer said. though the convictions are listed in the man's criminal record, the details are unclear because prosecutors cannot access his east german police file.
police arrested the man in april after the head of the kindergarten reported he had fondled himself in front of two children.
so what your saying is that if we built a wall in the middle of america, our records could potentially not follow us??? its too damn bad o.j. didn't kidnap and hold hostages at gunpoint in miami...
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
inane and slightly ridiculous news from europe - one dozen
a 2-for-1 deal!
police arrest teenage online furniture thief
wednesday november 14, 2007 11:08 am
amsterdam (reuters) - dutch police have made their first arrest of an online thief -- a 17-year-old accused of stealing virtual furniture from rooms in the habbo hotel -- a popular teen-ager networking web site.
an amsterdam police spokeswoman confirmed a report that the teen-ager was accused of stealing 4,000 euros ($5,864) worth of virtual furniture by hacking into the accounts of other users.
four other 15-year-olds have also been questioned in the case, which was instigated by the web site. they are suspected of moving the stolen furniture into their own online hotel rooms.
habbo users can create their own characters, decorate their own rooms and play a number of games, paying with habbo credits, which they have to buy with real cash.
habbo hotel is owned by finnish internet company sulake which said last month it had reached 80 million registered users of its sites in 31 countries.
______________________________________________________________
swiss tell german guy to learn german
wednesday november 14, 2007 11:10 am
zurich (reuters) - a 70-year old german seeking swiss citizenship was told to go back to school to learn his own native tongue despite being proficient in german, a swiss newspaper said.
the swiss town of dielsdorf ordered ulrich kring -- who lived in switzerland his entire life but is only now applying for citizenship -- to take a german language course to the tune of 250 swiss francs ($222.6), the tages-anzeiger newspaper said.
the class was obligatory for all foreigners seeking a swiss passport and the town would not make an exception for the german national, the newspaper said.
kring had lodged an appeal against the decision with a higher local authority, but had not had a reply yet.
roughly two-thirds of switzerland's 7.5 million inhabitants are german speakers. many german nationals find the swiss spoken dialect hard to understand, although the official written language taught in schools is the same as in germany.
there is a hot debate about immigration in switzerland, where some 20 percent of the population are foreigners, and some newspapers have criticized the big influx of immigrants from neighboring germany.
at least now i know what happened to my virtual futon...damn thieves!!!
police arrest teenage online furniture thief
wednesday november 14, 2007 11:08 am
amsterdam (reuters) - dutch police have made their first arrest of an online thief -- a 17-year-old accused of stealing virtual furniture from rooms in the habbo hotel -- a popular teen-ager networking web site.
an amsterdam police spokeswoman confirmed a report that the teen-ager was accused of stealing 4,000 euros ($5,864) worth of virtual furniture by hacking into the accounts of other users.
four other 15-year-olds have also been questioned in the case, which was instigated by the web site. they are suspected of moving the stolen furniture into their own online hotel rooms.
habbo users can create their own characters, decorate their own rooms and play a number of games, paying with habbo credits, which they have to buy with real cash.
habbo hotel is owned by finnish internet company sulake which said last month it had reached 80 million registered users of its sites in 31 countries.
______________________________________________________________
swiss tell german guy to learn german
wednesday november 14, 2007 11:10 am
zurich (reuters) - a 70-year old german seeking swiss citizenship was told to go back to school to learn his own native tongue despite being proficient in german, a swiss newspaper said.
the swiss town of dielsdorf ordered ulrich kring -- who lived in switzerland his entire life but is only now applying for citizenship -- to take a german language course to the tune of 250 swiss francs ($222.6), the tages-anzeiger newspaper said.
the class was obligatory for all foreigners seeking a swiss passport and the town would not make an exception for the german national, the newspaper said.
kring had lodged an appeal against the decision with a higher local authority, but had not had a reply yet.
roughly two-thirds of switzerland's 7.5 million inhabitants are german speakers. many german nationals find the swiss spoken dialect hard to understand, although the official written language taught in schools is the same as in germany.
there is a hot debate about immigration in switzerland, where some 20 percent of the population are foreigners, and some newspapers have criticized the big influx of immigrants from neighboring germany.
at least now i know what happened to my virtual futon...damn thieves!!!
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
inane and slightly ridiculous news from europe - snake eyes
even erotic food has to follow the rules
tuesday november 13, 2007 9:58 am
oslo (reuters) - norway's largest erotic chain store was forced to change the labeling on products such as penis pasta, candy cuffs and chocolate body painting, to comply with norwegian food regulations.
the norwegian food safety authority, whose goal it is to make sure consumers have healthy and safe food, conducted a surprise inspection at one of the chain's stores and found that several products violated food labeling regulations, top-selling tabloid vg reported on tuesday.
"we were a bit surprised to have the food safety authority on inspection. food is not really our core product," kjersti antonsen, a sexual adviser in the store, told vg.
products containing food must be marked with a norwegian label, listing all ingredients.
"we have panties, bras, handcuffs and suspender belts made out of candy," antonsen said, adding that the store will comply with the regulations and label all its food products.
the food safety authority also said the store also breached rules of importing erotic candy, which should be reported to authorities at least 24 hours before arrival.
i think i would like to be a sexual adviser - its just the boost my resume is looking for...but i may have to do something about the suspender belts made out of candy...
tuesday november 13, 2007 9:58 am
oslo (reuters) - norway's largest erotic chain store was forced to change the labeling on products such as penis pasta, candy cuffs and chocolate body painting, to comply with norwegian food regulations.
the norwegian food safety authority, whose goal it is to make sure consumers have healthy and safe food, conducted a surprise inspection at one of the chain's stores and found that several products violated food labeling regulations, top-selling tabloid vg reported on tuesday.
"we were a bit surprised to have the food safety authority on inspection. food is not really our core product," kjersti antonsen, a sexual adviser in the store, told vg.
products containing food must be marked with a norwegian label, listing all ingredients.
"we have panties, bras, handcuffs and suspender belts made out of candy," antonsen said, adding that the store will comply with the regulations and label all its food products.
the food safety authority also said the store also breached rules of importing erotic candy, which should be reported to authorities at least 24 hours before arrival.
i think i would like to be a sexual adviser - its just the boost my resume is looking for...but i may have to do something about the suspender belts made out of candy...
Monday, November 12, 2007
inane and slightly ridiculous news from europe - dix
dammit! i forgot to blog yesterday...oh well, guess i'm out of the running...
regardless, the show must go on...unless you're a stage hand on broadway or a writer in hollywood.
it's official: you don't have to live in france
london (reuters) - ask most britons if they would rather live in france and they'd probably answer "oui." but british judges have ruled that two english boys who hate living there don't have to.
the boys, 11 and 16, who have a french mother and a british father, were taken to live in france after the parents' marriage broke down. but during a visit to england they asserted their "britishness" and refused to return to live with their mother.
the mother took the case to court, arguing that she had a right to decide where they should live and that the father had put the children up to it, the times newspaper reported.
but three of britain's most senior judges decided the boys had an inherent right to refuse to live in france, where nearly 300,000 britons have chosen to live.
describing the case as "not just exceptional but very exceptional," the chief judge said it was clear the children really disliked the country and hadn't settled in.
they preferred england because, apparently, they could "walk to school, could have their own key and would not have to do as much homework."
in his ruling the judge said he had "rarely, if ever, heard such strongly expressed views by children."
i would have moved to england too for less homework growing up, but some of us didn't have those options... when my parents divorce happened, i think i would have chosen to go live in bali, fiji, grand cayman...at least the location would have been AWESOME!!!
regardless, the show must go on...unless you're a stage hand on broadway or a writer in hollywood.
it's official: you don't have to live in france
london (reuters) - ask most britons if they would rather live in france and they'd probably answer "oui." but british judges have ruled that two english boys who hate living there don't have to.
the boys, 11 and 16, who have a french mother and a british father, were taken to live in france after the parents' marriage broke down. but during a visit to england they asserted their "britishness" and refused to return to live with their mother.
the mother took the case to court, arguing that she had a right to decide where they should live and that the father had put the children up to it, the times newspaper reported.
but three of britain's most senior judges decided the boys had an inherent right to refuse to live in france, where nearly 300,000 britons have chosen to live.
describing the case as "not just exceptional but very exceptional," the chief judge said it was clear the children really disliked the country and hadn't settled in.
they preferred england because, apparently, they could "walk to school, could have their own key and would not have to do as much homework."
in his ruling the judge said he had "rarely, if ever, heard such strongly expressed views by children."
i would have moved to england too for less homework growing up, but some of us didn't have those options... when my parents divorce happened, i think i would have chosen to go live in bali, fiji, grand cayman...at least the location would have been AWESOME!!!
Saturday, November 10, 2007
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