Tuesday, December 08, 2009 MARSEILLE: A French court on Tuesday banned France's anti-immigrant National Front party from giving out leaflets attacking plans to build a giant mosque because they used pictures of it without permission.The ruling was to protect the architects' intellectual property, but also came at a sensitive time after a ban on minarets in neighbouring Switzerland stoked debate about Islam in France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority.The Marseille court ordered the far-right party to destroy all leaflets on which it had reproduced designs for the planned Grand Mosque in the southern city, alongside the slogan "No to the mosque."It also ordered the National Front to pay 1,500 euros (2,210 dollars) in costs, according to a copy of the judgement.The architects' lawyer Armelle Bouty told the court that they had also been attacked on the party's website and the use of their intellectual property on the leaflets was "the last straw.""In the extremely political and polemical context, that was intolerable," she said.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
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