This French Life

Calais: unaccompanied children living in remote, muddy ditches

Children are living in appalling conditions near Calais.

While many are familiar with the situation for migrants and refugees in Calais itself, few know about the smaller settlements out in the countryside, and the young unaccompanied children who are living in sodden trenches, far from any facilities.

“In fields near Saint-Omer I met half-a-dozen Syrian boys huddled together in a rain-sodden, muddy ditch under tarpaulins; one was just 10 years old and riddled with scabies,” says Leigh Daynes, Executive Director of Doctors of the World UK, who recently returned from a visit to the area. “With little more than summer jackets and sandals to fend off bad weather, these children are at very real risk.”

via doctorsoftheworld.org.uk

France says it will undertake airline passenger checks in Ebola fight

FRANCE has said it will undertake checks of passengers at airports who have come from countries hit by Ebola.

President Francois Hollande made the announcement after holding a video conference with Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Italian premier Matteo Renzi to discuss the virus.

No clear details were provided on which flights would see passenger checks, although with many Air France connections to west Africa, and other connecting flights from other airlines, the logistics of the decision appear very complex.

Ségolène Royal wants to see autoroute fees cut and free use on weekends

Ségolène Royal évoque la possibilité d'une... by rtl-fr

ECOLOGY minister, Ségolène Royal, wants to see a 10% cut in the price of autoroute fees, as well as making them free to use at weekends.

Speaking on RTL, the minister said that prices were too high and that autoroute companies could see an additional tax levied upon them.

Her demands come at a time when many business sectors in France are being targeted for charging too much, including many in the legal and medical professions.

Also it is interesting to see an ecology minister talk of measures that you would think would increase vehicle use, and possibly lead to increased pollution levels.

French inflation figure at its lowest in nearly five years

Consumer price index (IPC) and Core inflation (ISJ) – year-on-year changes
THE inflation rate in France is down to its lowest level in almost five years, with statistics body INSEE saying lower energy prices are behind the fall.

Consumer prices in the eurozone's second-largest economy fell 0.4% in September from August but were 0.3% higher than in September last year.

INSEE said that falling energy prices were the main factor, down 2.5% compared with a year ago. However, food prices overall increased, driven by a strong growth in fresh food prices in September 2014.

Police join locals in go slow protest around Calais as migrant troubles mount

Farmers turn out to support police in a protest against the migrant situation in Calais. pic.twitter.com/toa97sDsMh

— Simon Jones (@SimonJonesNews) October 13, 2014

THE roads around Calais were brought to a halt today as local people were joined by police in protesting about the number of migrants staying around the town.

With around 1,500 migrants living on the streets of Calais, the police say that they need more officers and support, while local people fear a rise in petty crime.

Fighting broke out a few weeks ago between rival groups of migrants, and there is a constant stream of people heading to Calais looking to cross the Channel to the UK.

En images. Avec les #migrants clandestins dans la jungle de #Calais http://t.co/YwRNOjOPqy @le_Parisien

— Elsa Mari (@elsa_marion) October 13, 2014

Natacha Bouchard, the right-wing mayor of Calais, has called for a new Sangatte-style centre, to move the migrants away from the city and out into the suburbs.

She has also said that Britain must do more to fund their operations, as the migrants were only there because of the magnetic pull of Britain.

Jean Tirole, of Toulouse University, wins Nobel prize for economics

61 years old, French Jean Tirole @UT1Capitole, 1/1 #nobelprize2014 in Economic Sciences pic.twitter.com/W7tQ002ngW

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 13, 2014

Jean Tirole has won the Nobel prize for economics 2014.

Staffan Normark, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced that the French economics professor had won the final prize of the 2014 Nobels at a ceremony on Monday.

“Jean Tirole is one of the most influential economists of our time,” the Academy said.

Tirole, of Toulouse University, won for his work on market power and regulation, and his work taming powerful firms.

via www.theguardian.com

More on Jean Tirole and his work:

The science of taming powerful firms

Jean Tirole is one of the most influential economists of our time. He has made important theoretical research contributions in a number of areas, but most of all he has clarified how to understand and regulate industries with a few powerful firms.

Many industries are dominated by a small number of large firms or a single monopoly. Left unregulated, such markets often produce socially undesirable results – prices higher than those motivated by costs, or unproductive firms that survive by blocking the entry of new and more productive ones.

From the mid-1980s and onwards, Jean Tirole has breathed new life into research on such market failures. His analysis of firms with market power provides a unified theory with a strong bearing on central policy questions: how should the government deal with mergers or cartels, and how should it regulate monopolies?

Before Tirole, researchers and policymakers sought general principles for all industries. They advocated simple policy rules, such as capping prices for monopolists and prohibiting cooperation between competitors, while permitting cooperation between firms with different positions in the value chain.

Tirole showed theoretically that such rules may work well in certain conditions, but do more harm than good in others. Price caps can provide dominant firms with strong motives to reduce costs – a good thing for society – but may also permit excessive profits – a bad thing for society.

Cooperation on price setting within a market is usually harmful, but cooperation regarding patent pools can benefit everyone. The merger of a firm and its supplier may encourage innovation, but may also distort competition.

The best regulation or competition policy should therefore be carefully adapted to every industry’s specific conditions. In a series of articles and books, Jean Tirole has presented a general framework for designing such policies and applied it to a number of industries, ranging from telecommunications to banking.

Drawing on these new insights, governments can better encourage powerful firms to become more productive and, at the same time, prevent them from harming competitors and customers.

French economy minister says 'New Deal' plan required

THE recently appointed French economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, has outlined his plans for a 'New Deal' style investment project for Europe.

Speaking to the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, the minister said a 300 billion euro pot should be created that would allow France and others to undertake spending projects.

Emmanuel Macron went on to say that he recognised France had its own problems at that the country and Europe had six months to offer up a solution.

He said that he would outline his own plans for France stressing that 'the solution lies within our capacity to move, to modernise the country, to unblock, to free up the economy, to provide the opportunity to those who want to work to create, produce, to operate much more easily'.

UK government to sell Eurostar stake before general election

George Osborne is to announce on Monday that the government is selling its 40% stake in Eurostar before the election.

The chancellor will say he is looking for bids by the end of the month and is hopeful the privatisation of the Channel tunnel train operator will raise up to £300m.

Britain has part-owned Eurostar for the past 20 years, but according to Osborne the sale is part of the Treasury’s plan to reduce the national debt by offloading state assets.

via www.theguardian.com

France makes most requests of Google under ‘right to be forgotten’ law

FRENCH people have requested that more than 89,000 links be removed from Google's search listings under the recently introduced 'right to be forgotten' legislation.

In its latest European Privacy report Google said that it received 29,140 requests from France for a total of 89,277 URLs to be removed from its listings - the highest in Europe.

Google reports that it removed 51.5% (36,514) of the URLs requested, this compares to a UK figure of 35.4% being removed, while in Italy 24.25% were removed.

The company introduced its removal request process following a European court of justice ruling in May that links to irrelevant and outdated data should be erased on request from searches within the EU.

And it is also worth remembering that the actual web page where the information is found is still live and available to be read, it is just the link from Google that is deleted.

France to outlaw single-use plastic bags by 2016

France is set to become the latest nation to ban single-use plastic bags in shops following a vote in the National Assembly Friday on a wide-ranging Energy Transition bill.

The ban will come into force in 2016 if the bill is approved by the Senate, although it will not apply to re-usable or biodegradable bags.

The proposed law will also outlaw disposable plastic cutlery and crockery by 2020, a measure introduced by members of France's EELV Green Party which wanted the rule enforced by 2017.

via www.theguardian.com