“We are not necessarily trying to force litigation, on the American model.We just want to force the state to accept its responsibilities.”"Many mothers have come forward to bear witness to the problems they have endured with their children, from physical malformations to mental and nervous deficiencies, even after drinking only moderately while pregnant.”More than 6,000 babies born in France each year are believed to suffer from mental or physical damage from “passive consumption” of alcohol in the womb. Beno?Titran, lawyer for the Esper pressure group, made a formal complaint to the public prosecutor in the spring.The case arises just as the French alcohol industry – and especially struggling producers of medium and low-quality wine – are putting pressure on the government to relax the existing rules restricting the advertising and marketing of alcoholic drinks.The Esper group and other campaigners want the government to force all drinks companies to label their bottles with a warning about drinking and pregnancy.”The alcohol producers know what the dangers are,” Beno?Titran said. Automatic cash machines in the Irish Republic have been hit by armed robberies, smash-and-grab raids that sometimes use heavy construction machinery, and industrial action.
In the latest incident earlier this week, robbers used a mechanical digger to rip an entire cash machine from the wall of a bank in Co Carlow. They lost the machine during a high-speed car chase with police. It was the fourth such attack in the Irish Republic in the past five weeks.Several hundred ATMs have been put out of action as staff at the cash delivery company Brinks Allied have refused to put new security instructions into effect.

The most controversial is a suggestion that staff should drive off in the delivery vehicles in the event of armed attack, perhaps leaving threatened crew members behind.Many hours of talks involving the company and trade union representatives have failed to resolve the dispute, which has put more than 200 machines on the east coast out of action.The dispute began as security firms attempted to tighten procedures after Dublin criminal gangs stepped up robberies of cash transit vans servicing the cash machines in and around the Irish capital. He said he wanted to “release them from their agony”.State prosecutors said it was possible that he had killed many more patients as their inquiries had found that drugs were missing from the hospital.A spokesman for the prosecutors said: “We are investigating a total of 80 deaths that occurred at Sonthofen while the accused was employed there.”. A German male nurse, who confessed to murdering 10 of his elderly patients with lethal injections, was yesterday being investigated by police on suspicion that he had killed a further 70 patients at the Bavarian geriatric hospital where he was employed.
State prosecutors in the town of Kempten said they had widened their inquiries in the case of Stephan L, 25, who was arrested last week after admitting to the murder of six women and four men aged between 60 and 89 at the Sonthofen hospital over the past 16 months.He confessed to injecting his victims with a lethal mixture of barbiturates and muscle relaxants, claiming that he could not “bear to witness the suffering” of what he insisted were terminally ill patients. “We need another mass movement to bring about a second peaceful revolution in Germany,” he added.. Last week, thousands of demonstrators in the east German cities of Magdeburg and Dessau took to the streets to vent their anger.In Leipzig, where opposition to the former East German Communist regime began in 1989, church leaders declared yesterday that they planned to hold regular church services and demonstrations in the city again to protest against the reforms.”The discontent is threatening,” said Christian Fuehrer, the Protestant pastor who headed the protest movement of 1989. “We are convinced that there is no other remedy that could halt the crisis within our party and bring a return to genuine Social Democracy: Schroeder must go – whether he wants to or not!” it added.The letter, which was leaked to a regional newspaper in Mr Schroeder’s home town of Hanover yesterday, came as a grave embarrassment to the Social Democrat leadership, which has been fighting a losing battle to convince voters of the need to implement the government’s unpopular reform programme.Party officials at Social Democrat headquarters in Berlin refused to comment on the existence of the letter yesterday, claiming they had not seen it. “We have not got a copy of this letter, so obviously we cannot pass judgement,” a spokesman said.The call for Mr Schroeder’s resignation was the latest development in a growing anti-reform backlash in Germany led by trade unionists, disgruntled voters and Social Democrat party dissidents.Mounting opposition to Agenda 2010 has been mirrored by the government’s own record unpopularity and the decision by thousands of Social Democrat rank and file members to quit the party.

Growing dissent over Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s plans to reform the German economy was dramatically underscored yesterday following revelations that rebel members of his own party had circulated an internet chain letter demanding his immediate resignation.
The letter, drawn up by Social Democrat party members, traditional party voters and trade unionists, was addressed to all members of the ruling party and demanded that the government roll back its ambitious Agenda 2010 reform programme.”We appeal to every one to act now: Schroeder must go! – the government must change course immediately,” the letter demanded. Even though they could now have their pick from top of the range sports cars, the couple are debating between a more humble Renault Clio or Volkswagen Golf.The first real treat for the winner herself could be a brand new washing machine, she revealed.The couple are also planning a holiday to their dream location of Las Vegas.. Mr Kent, who was a wealthy farmer and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, lived in a house filled with rare artefacts.. The widespread British inability to speak any language other than English means few students study in other European countries for part of their degrees, research published yesterday found. The vase dates back to the Predynastic era around 3,200BC.It is one of several hundred Egyptian artefacts from the private collection of Benjamin Kent, who lived at Tatefield Hall, Beckwithshaw, near Harrogate, until his death in 1968 He bequeathed his collection to Harrogate council. The decoration on the vase shows a figure on a boat, lying on its back and curled in the foetal position. This is how some early Egyptians may have been buried before mummification was introduced.Ceryl Evans, head of museums and arts for Harrogate borough council, said: “We had the vase analysed and York University’s archaeologists said it was 5,000 years old.”After that we had the paint tested and discovered it was also genuine and had not been ‘improved’ by the Victorians as some experts believed.”The vase will be on show at the Royal Pump Room Museum in Harrogate from tomorrow, as part of a small display of Harrogate’s archaeological collections.

An Egyptian vase that for 30 years was dismissed as fake by experts, was yesterday revealed to be genuine – and older than the Pyramids. She told BBC Radio 4’s PM: “I don’t know why they do not want a settlement but they obviously don’t want to get an agreement and they don’t like people who speak the truth.”The LGA said Ms Jebb had “lost the confidence” of elected members.. She said: “They would say to each other, ’see you in half an hour’. You didn’t need to be a detective to work out they were going to the pub. I had to collar some of them about withholding information, and had a couple of stand-up rows.”Det Supt McTigue was not available for comment yesterday.POLICEWOMEN AND THE GLASS CEILINGAlison HalfordAppointed Britain’s first female assistant chief constable in 1983. When shewas passed over for promotion for the ninth time, she decided it was because of sex discrimination. In 1990 she began a court battle with Merseyside Police, who responded by tapping her phones.