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Geopolitics

Outrage Spreads After French TV Broadcasts Tape Of Toulouse Killer

AFP, RTL, LE FIGARO (France)

Worldcrunch

PARIS – Outrage spread Monday after French TV station TF1 aired for the first time extracts of audio tapes between Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah and the police during the 32-hour siege on his apartment.

In the recordings, Mohamed Merah can be heard saying to the police negotiators: "Know that you are up against a man who is not afraid to die," adding that he was determined to continue his killing spree and claiming he had links to al-Qaeda and organized crime groups.

Merah, a French citizen of Algerian descent, shot dead three soldiers, and three children and a teacher at a Jewish school, in a wave of killings that shocked the country. The 32-hour standoff on his Toulouse apartment ended with Merah shot in the head by the French police.

The broadcast of the recordings on Sunday has sparked outrage in France, starting with Interior Minister Manuel Valls who condemned the decision to run the conversation while court proceedings were still ongoing. Valls told AFP that internal affairs would be launching an investigation into the leak of the tapes.

The families of Merah's victims also blamed TF1 for its lack of respect for them and their grief.

Fabrice Lorvo, a lawyer specialized in media and communication issues, was quoted Monday by French daily newspaper Le Figaro: "We've entered an accelerating spiral. The case of Canadian killer Luka Rocco Magnotta was symbolic of the excesses the media should try to avoid, given it no longer has anything to do with the right to information."

Emmanuel Chain, the producer of TF1's "Sept a Huit", the program that broadcast the extracts of the tapes, justified his decision on French radio station RTL: "We acted responsibly," he said. "We weighed the matter very carefully before deciding to run the document because of its high news value."

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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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