PARIS — French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts."

Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.

She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000.

Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding: "I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot."

Bardot did not attend the trial because she said she was physically unable to. The verdict is expected in several weeks.

French anti-racist groups complained last year about comments Bardot made about the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy that was later published by her foundation.

Muslims traditionally mark Eid al-Adha by slaughtering a sheep or another animal to commemorate the prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son on God's orders.

France is home to 5 million Muslims, Europe's largest Muslim community, making up 8 percent of France's population.

"I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts," the star of 'And God created woman' and 'Contempt' said.

Bardot has previously said France is being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims and published a book attacking gays, immigrants and the unemployed, in which she also lamented the "Islamisation of France."

(Reporting by Thierry Leveque; writing by Francois Murphy, editing by Mary Gabriel)

THE Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen has backed a Brisbane school's decision to turn down a request by gay students to bring male partners to a school dance.

Uruzgan tops Dutch army weapon use

Monday 14 April 2008

Dutch soldiers have used their weapons on 648 occasions since they began their mission in Afghanistan two years ago, the NRC reports at the weekend.

This is more than all the other Dutch foreign missions together since the Korean war, the paper says.

The defence department says it does not have figures on how many Taliban fighters have been killed by Dutch troops. ‘This is not a criterium that we consider relevant,’ army chief Dick Berlijn tells the paper in an interview.

Berlijn does however, admit that many more local people have died than expected. Official figures put the number of civilian deaths involving Dutch soldiers at 75.

Tehran: The explosion in a mosque in Iran that killed at least 10 people was caused by an accident and not an attack, a senior Interior Ministry official said on Sunday.

Contradicting earlier media reports, official IRNA news agency quoted the deputy interior minister in charge of national security as saying: “Last night's explosion in Shiraz was as a consequence of an accident and not the planting of a bomb.”

Details were not released but state Press TV television said the blast may have been "caused by explosives left behind from an earlier exhibition commemorating" the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Fars News Agency also quoted commander of security forces in the southern Fars province as saying: "Based on the initial evaluation, the Saturday night explosion ... has not been intentional or sabotage.”

HASBAYA, Lebanon (AFP)

U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon began on Thursday erecting a barbed-wire fence along the border with Israel to prevent breaches of the "Blue Line" aimed at keeping peace between the two neighbors.

"UNIFIL soldiers began laying the barbed-wire fence in the area north of the (border) village of Ghajar," Yasmina Bouziane, spokeswoman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, told AFP.

About 50 Spanish peacekeepers are installing the barbed wire fence north of the so-called "Blue Line", set up by the United Nations eight years ago to keep the peace between the two neighbors, an AFP correspondent said.

The plotting of the Blue Line in 2000 by the United Nations when Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon, placed a third of the village of Ghajar in Lebanon and two thirds of it a zone annexed by Israel.

The decision to set up the barrier was made on April 2 at a meeting between UNIFIL commander General Claudio Graziano and officials from Lebanese and Israeli armies, Bouziane said.

The three parties agreed that UNIFIL would set up the barrier north of Ghajar "in order to prevent violations of the Blue Line," Garziano had said then.

"The prevention of drug trafficking in the area is also one of the goals of the barrier," Bouziane said.

There have been only few incidents along the border since the end of the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia.

A Lebanese drug trafficker was killed and another wounded by Israeli soldiers in February.

UNIFIL, which was created in 1978 after an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, saw its mission extended by UN Security Council resolution 1701 which ended the 34-day conflict in August 2006.

A significant development in that conflict was the building of a security wall separating Israel from the west bank. It's a massive structure, over 650 km long and in some places eight metres high. It was built to prevent attacks by Palestinian-based terrorists.

But now, some Palestinians are using it for a very different purpose. For 30 euros, about 45 dollars, you can have a Palestinian spray-paint a message on the barrier wall. The money earned is spent on small cultural and educational projects. The message can be about anything, as long as it does not promote hate.

Wall as symbol
The wall has become a potent symbol for many, but the messages being spray-painted are mostly mundane. People say hello to each other, tell jokes, there are recipes and even a proposal of marriage.

One client, David Gaughran, used the service to wish his sister Jesse a happy birthday. "I thought it was a cool idea. I would automatically have a negative reaction to something like the security wall. In Europe we're in the process of tearing down barriers and in the middle east they're in the process of putting them up. That seems like a negative thing."

A story in spray-paint
Faris Arouri is one of the Palestinians who writes messages on the wall. At times is can be a bit dangerous. "I can't say it's 100 percent safe. It's just like living in the West Bank. Let's just say we know how to deal with the situation."

Faris has a favourite quote "one from Nelson Mandela who said "It seems impossible until it's done." That's like our project as well. It seemed impossible... This wall was made to separate people and we're using this barrier to bring people together."

The Dutch proprietors of the site have posted a video of Faris and some of his friends in action at the wall near Ramallah, which you can view on their website www.sendamessage.nl.

Friday 11 April 2008

An unemployed woman in Maastricht was forced to undergo a 10-week course of 'reincarnation therapy' as part of efforts to get her back to work, local paper De Limburger reports on Friday.

By delving into her past lives, the woman was supposed to be better able to deal with her problems and find a job, the paper said.

MPs have called on social affairs minister Piet Hein Donner for an explanation.

Last year the Volkskrant reported that tarot card readers, astrologers and spiritually-based 'personal development programmes' were being given government funding as part of efforts to get people back into work.

© DutchNews.nl

In another move to make Muslim women responsible for the behavior of their men folk, they now are being asked to lock the pants. How about the "men" keeping their zippers up? Islam is all about the repression of women and keeping their men sexually frustrated. This gets the men to blow them selves up to get some from 70 virgins in the next life. The travel poster to heaven for the Muslim male should read "Can't get it here; get it in the next life. Go out with a bang so you can get banged"

JAKARTA (AFP)

A move by Indonesian massage parlors to padlock female workers' trousers to prevent prostitution has caused outrage here, with one minister branding it an "insult" to women, reports said Thursday.

Minister Meutia Fardia Hatta Swasono reacted angrily to reports of locks being fitted to the trousers of female staff in a small town in Indonesia, where massage parlors are often used as a front for prostitution.

"It's not the right way to prevent promiscuity. It insults women as if they are the ones in the wrong," Swasono, the minister for women's empowerment, told the Jakarta Post.

The daily said authorities in Batu in East Java had ordered masseuses to wear the padlocks to protect the resort town's reputation.

But the massage parlor owner who first introduced the locks told AFP he did so for the good of his workers.

"You know well how naughty some clients can be," said Frangki Setiawan, owner of the Dogado massage parlor in Batu.

"It is a move taken purely in the interest of the working safety of my staff."

Most of the town's 20 massage parlors have now adopted the practice after local police encouraged them to do so, Batu spokesman Hidayat told AFP.

The Jakarta Post said the capital's tourism authorities were considering introducing the practice to improve the reputation of massage parlors in the city, which has a large but technically illegal sex industry.

No one at the Jakarta Tourism Agency could be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, Setiawan said he was fed up with the attention he was getting after his controversial plan hit the headlines this week.

"I am tired of this. I should not be talking anymore after so many comments have been made against this. Even a minister has commented," he said.

Najaf, IRAQ (AFP)

Gunmen shot dead a top aide to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq's holy city of Najaf on Friday, sparking anger among his followers as they battle government forces on two fronts.

Riyad al-Nuri, director of the Sadr movement's office in Najaf, was shot dead near his home as he returned from Friday prayers, Najaf police chief Major General Abdul Karim Mustafa said.

Police immediately imposed an indefinite curfew in the shrine city following the shooting, while Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki strongly condemned the attack and the Sadr movement blamed U.S. forces "and others working with them."

A Sadr official in Najaf, Haider al-Turfi, said the gunmen were waiting for 37-year-old Nuri near his home in the city's eastern neighborhood of Al-Adala.

Sadr's spokesman in Najaf, Salah al-Obeidi, lashed out at the U.S. military.

"The occupation forces and others who are working with them are responsible for this assassination," Obeidi told AFP.

"Those who have done this want the situation in Iraq to be unstable and want the fighting between the Sadrists and Iraqi forces to continue," he added. "This action serves the interest of the occupier."

Nuri was a senior leader in the cleric's movement and his sister had been married to Sadr's brother Murtada who was killed in 1999.

The attack comes as Sadr's Mahdi Army militia is engaged in deadly clashes with Iraqi security forces in their eastern Baghdad bastion of Sadr City and in the southern port city of Basra.

Mahdi Army militiamen have been battling Iraqi troops in the two Shiite strongholds since March 25, when Maliki ordered a crackdown on militiamen in Basra.

At least 700 people have been killed in the fighting, which began in Basra but quickly spread to Shiite areas of Baghdad and other regions of Iraq.

The battles subsided after Sadr pulled his fighters off the streets on March 30, but fighting erupted in greater fury a week later in Sadr City when Iraqi and U.S. forces began new operations in the sprawling township.

Published: Friday 11 April 2008 12:22 UTC
Last updated: Friday 11 April 2008 14:13 UTC

Al-JOUF, 10 April 2008 — US Ambassador Ford Fraker said in Sakaka that his country aims to double the number of student visas issued to Saudis.

“Currently there are 15,000 Saudi students in the US,” he said during an event on Sunday with local business leaders to an audience at the Al-Jouf Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “We aim to increase their numbers to 30,000 over the next five years.”

Fraker said Saudi Arabia should bolster its English-language programs because it is generally required for Saudis seeking to pursue higher studies in the US.

Fraker also stressed the need for popularizing English teaching programs because it would overcome the language barriers for Saudi students seeking to study in the US easier.

In order to facilitate increased mutual visits, Fraker said he is working to simplify the issue of visas to Saudi businessmen.