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Sources

Australia Ruins Birthdays For Every School Kid In The Country

THE HERALD SUN, NHMRC, AAP, THE AUSTRALIAN (Australia)

Worldcrunch

MELBOURNE – Australia is officially the meanest country EVER!

New hygiene rules mean that Australian children will be banned from blowing out birthday candles at school parties.

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Photo devinf

Yes, you read it correctly. No this is not a cruel joke. According to the latest National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines, children at Australia's child-care centers will be banned from blowing out candles on communal birthday cakes, reports the Herald Sun.

The motivation behind the new rules: to avoid blowing germs on the cake.

"Children love to blow out their candles while their friends are singing "Happy birthday"," says the NHMRC document. "To prevent the spread of germs when the child blows out the candles, parents should either provide a separate cupcake, with a candle if they wish, for the birthday child and (either) enough cupcakes for all the other children ... (or) a large cake that can be cut and shared.”

So just how will these new rules be enforced? Will the fun police be patrolling every daycare and preschool in Australia?

According to the AAP, Health Minister Tanya told reporters: "We're not going to have the cupcake police out, but childcare centers know that whatever they can do to reduce infections in childcare centers is going to be good for the kids, good for the families they support and good for childcare workers."

The Australian Medical Association warned the clean-freak regulations place "kids in a bubble," reports the Australian. “If somebody sneezes on a cake, I probably don't want to eat it either - but if you're blowing out candles, how many organisms are transferred to a communal cake, for goodness' sake?" asks AMA president Steve Hambleton.

He added: “"If you live in a plastic bubble you're going to get infections (later in life) that you can't handle."

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Society

Italy's Right-Wing Government Turns Up The Heat On 'Gastronationalism'

Rome has been strongly opposed to synthetic foods, insect-based flours and health warnings on alcohol, and aggressive lobbying by Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government against nutritional labeling has prompted accusations in Brussels of "gastronationalism."

Dough is run through a press to make pasta

Creation of home made pasta

Karl De Meyer et Olivier Tosseri

ROME — On March 23, the Italian Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Francesco Lollobrigida, announced that Rome would ask UNESCO to recognize Italian cuisine as a piece of intangible cultural heritage.

On March 28, Lollobrigida, who is also Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's brother-in-law, promised that Italy would ban the production, import and marketing of food made in labs, especially artificial meat — despite the fact that there is still no official request to market it in Europe.

Days later, Italian Eurodeputy Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of fascist leader Benito Mussolini and member of the Forza Italia party, which is part of the governing coalition in Rome, caused a sensation in the European Parliament. On the sidelines of the plenary session, Sophia Loren's niece organized a wine tasting, under the slogan "In Vino Veritas," to show her strong opposition (and that of her government) to an Irish proposal to put health warnings on alcohol bottles. At the end of the press conference, around 11am, she showed her determination by drinking from the neck of a bottle of wine, to great applause.

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