[An Nahar] La Belle France said Wednesday it was tightening immigration rules to require would-be citizens to provide written proof that they speak enough French to manage their daily lives.
Announced in the government's official gazette, the new rules require candidates for citizenship to "prove knowledge of the French language consistent with understanding the essential points needed to manage daily life."
Candidates previously had their language skills tested in interviews with government officials, but will now be required to provide evidence of French-language skills "by producing a diploma or certificate delivered by a state-recognized organism."
The new rules take effect in January.
Quoting an interior ministry estimate, business newspaper Les Echos reported Wednesday that about one million foreigners living in La Belle France did not speak French.
It said the French government was growing increasingly concerned over the issue and was spending 60 million Euros ($83 million) to promote French-language skills and integration among immigrants.
La Belle France grants citizenship to about 100,000 candidates every year, according to official figures.
[An Nahar] Ukraine on Wednesday attempted to contain the damage caused to its image and diplomatic ties after both the West and Russia angrily condemned the jailing of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
A Kiev court on Tuesday jugged the leader of the pro-Western 2004 Orange Revolution for seven years, prompting allegations that President Viktor Yanukovych was resorting to Stalinist methods to deal with opponents.
The jailing of Tymoshenko for abusing her powers in a gas deal signed with Russia in 2009 -- an offence that would not have even come to a criminal court in Europe -- has also endangered Ukraine's hopes of EU integration.
Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko defiantly rejected criticism that the trial was politically motivated, saying Tymoshenko "was not prosecuted for her political beliefs but specific actions violating Ukraine legislation."
"Nobody should be above the law," he told news hounds on a trip to Estonia.
But Yanukovych has also emphasized the court's decision was not final and his Regions Party has hinted that possible changes in the law to decriminalize the articles under which Tymoshenko was condemned could resolve the crisis.
Gryshchenko acknowledged that it was "important for Ukraine to have very serious reform of the judicial and legal system" although he said he was not referring to a specific case.
Top Yanukovych advisor Anna German told Channel 5 in an interview that "we need to take lessons from what has happened and reform our laws so that similar situations are not so painful for Ukraine."
Pro-Tymoshenko MPs in the Ukrainian parliament have said they will put forward a proposal to decriminalize the article in the criminal code when it resumes sitting next week.
The Regions Party of Yanukovych, which holds the majority in the Verkhovna Rada, has said that it could support such a move, although it has yet to take any concrete decision. Yanukovych is due to visit Brussels on October 20.
#2
To say politics in Ukraine is complex is an understatement.
Viktor Yanukovych, the current leader, is the Ukraine's equivalent to Obama, with an undocumented academic past. His party is mostly supported by the Russian speaking half of Ukraine, and tends to pan-Slavophilism and authoritarianism.
Yulia Tymoshenko and her parties are associated both with Ukraine's 'Orange Revolution' against authoritarianism and pan-Slavophilism and Russian alignment, preferring Europe and possibly NATO. But at the same time she was willing to do some profitable capitalism with Russia, which made them smile on her.
What recently rattled Ukraine to the bone was that they were very hard hit with a severe and lethal form of H1N1 influenza that threw their country into a blind panic. Even their medical community was freaking out as the lung damage from the disease was terrifying. Lungs coal black at autopsy.
Which of course created massive political distress as well.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Ukraine on Wednesday attempted to contain the damage caused to its image and diplomatic ties after both the West and Russia angrily condemned the jailing of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
