From the Wires: Busy Day

Surgeons Call Off Strike

Remeber? Thousands of surgeons had been threating to on strike by leaving for the UK to protest high insurance rates and low pay. The AFP now reports:

Some 2,000 French private practice surgeons who had threatened to go into "exile" next week in Britain in protest at low pay and soaring insurance rates on Tuesday called off their strike.

"After long negotiations with the health minister, the leaders of Surgeons of France welcome the willingness and determination of Philippe Douste-Blazy to save the surgical profession in France," the group said in a statement.

Nazis Here... Nazis There...

Reuters reports:

French police arrested a Romanian man on Tuesday as he scrawled a swastika and a Star of David on the wall of an Interior Ministry building while shouting "Long Live Germany", a police spokesman said.

Paris police were not sure whether the man, who was caught defacing the building in broad daylight, was a racist or a deranged person inspired by a recent series of desecrations at Jewish, Muslim and Christian cemeteries, the spokesman said.

France's series of anti-religious attacks, which included the firebombing of a Jewish soup kitchen in Paris on Sunday, continued on Tuesday with the damaging of about 40 graves at a Catholic cemetery near the central town of Saint Etienne.

Meanwhile, in the Germany, unknown persons are busy trying to catch up on the latest fashion craze but not doing too well: according to the Belga news agency, 50 tombs in Jewish cemetery in Bochum, western Germany, were found desecrated by unknown persons who had put Nazi stickers on them. Stickers? How will they ever undo the damage?

Israeli FM Sylvain Shalom is in Paris and he reportedly says he feels "encouraged" by remarks made by French authorities on the subject of anti-Semitism but he wants results.

According to France 3, roughly 200 people gathered in front of the Jewish soup kitchen on rue Perpignan this evening to protest anti-Semitism. Representatives of the Jewish community, elected officials and officials from the French Union of Sephardic Jews, which ran the soup kitchen. Rabbi Claude Zaffran, who leads a nearby synagogue, castigated investigating magistrates, shouting, "How long shall you judge with iniquity and how long shall you take the side of the unbelievers?" The mayor of the 11th arrondissement called on others to "attack the real causes" of anti-Semitism and "restore the rule of law." The crowd observed a minute of silence and then dispersed in silence.

The judges, however, decided to hit back. According to Reuters, the two main magistrate's unions issued statements rebutting claims that they have been lax in the prosecution of anti-Semitism.