A newly introduced French law designed to combat the proliferation of false information on social media which may manipulate elections was tested this month for the first time, but not in the manner the government foresaw when it devised the legislation. Two communist politicians lodged a demand, under the articles of the law, for the removal of a message posted on Twitter by French interior minister Christophe Castaner, who falsely claimed that May Day demonstrators had attacked a Paris hospital and its staff. Géraldine Delacroix reports on how they lost their case, but won their demonstration that the law, as they put it, “serves no purpose”.
Following recent acquittals in separate cases of men charged with raping 11-year-old girls, rulings justified by magistrates on the grounds that there was no evidence of violence or constraint, France's gender parity minister Marlène Schiappa said her government is to consider changes in the law that would automatically qualify sexual intercourse between an adult and a minor 'under a certain age' as rape.
Proposed legislation by France's new government to enshrine into regular law certain far-reaching powers allowed under the current state of emergency has passed its first parliamentary test after the Senate approved the bill by a two-thirds majority, meaning it will now go before the lower house, the National Assembly, where the government has a large majority, in October.
The French parliament will later this year debate a health ministry proposal to make compulsory the vaccination of young children against 11 different ingectious diseases, only three of which are currently mandatory, but the move divides public opinion of which, opinion surveys show, a large minority consider vaccines unsafe.
The French parliament on Thursday approved legislation that allows prison terms and fines to be handed against those involved in creating anti-abortion websites that imitate official information sites to dissuade women from terminating their pregnancy.
A new law due to be announced early February will replace 2003 legislation by which people under the age of 18 are automatically barred from seeing films 'with non-simulated sex scenes and extreme violence' in French cinemas.
The movement that unsuccessfully opposed a 2013 reform to introduce same-sex marriages in France held its first demonstration in two years on Sunday in Paris, which police estimated drew 24,000 while the organisers claimed an attendance of 200,000.
The French parliament has scrapped a law that required transgender individuals to undergo sterilisation when they sought to legally change their sex, although the official act of changing of sex will continue to require the approval of a court.
A bill of law on “transparency, anti-corruption and modernization of economic life” introduces for the first time in France a legal definition and protection of whistleblowers and a provision that companies will have to declare their tax position in countries where they or their subsidiaries operate. But for some MPs and transparency activists, the fine detail of this ambitious law makes it a lost opportunity. Dan Israel reports.
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