Toulouse shootings - seen from an expat bubble perspective

The deaths of three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the southwestern city of Toulouse on Monday after an unknown gunman opened fire on them has become not only a major local and national story, but an international one too.

Shootings in Toulouse and Montauban (screenshot from France 2 news)

All major news organisations, local, regional and international, have been carrying reports on the shooting, the reactions and the link that has been established to the separate shootings and deaths of three soldiers in the same city and the nearby town of Montauban last week.

The candidates in next month's first round of the presidential elections all suspended their campaigns for one day.

The current president, Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as his main opponent, the Socialist party candidate François Hollande, have both visited Toulouse since the shootings, as have several other candidates and current government ministers.

A minute's silence was held in schools throughout the country on Tuesday.

Turn on the radio or the television or pick up a newspaper and you'll more than likely catch an update on who has said what, speculation about the gunman's motives, the police investigation that has been launched, the concerns of parents over the safety of their children, the fears of another attack...in fact you cannot miss hearing, seeing or reading about what happened.

Not even if you're unable to speak French because BBC, CNN, Sky and others have all been covering developments.

The region of Midi-Pyrénées, in which both Toulouse and Montauban are situated, has been put on "scarlet alert", the highest terror alert in France.

So it's hard to live here and not at least have an inkling as to what happened - right?

Wrong.

This was posted on a thread about the "scarlet terror" alert in the Midi-Pyrénées on one of the many sites for mainly native English-speakers to help them get to grips with living in France.

"Please explain what you're talking about," wrote (link withheld) the contributor

"I live in L'isle-en-Dodon, Haute Garrone...! (sic)"

Just for those of you who don't know, and at the risk of being repetitive, Haute Garonne is one of the eight départements in the region of Midi-Pyrénées, and its main city is Toulouse.

L'Isle-en-Dodon is a small town (two thousand inhabitants) 70 kilometres or just over one hour's drive away from where the school shootings took place.

No comment.

"We like the world" round-the-world Facebook journey

If you're one of those people who casts doubts on whether Facebook "friends" can ever exist outside of the virtual world, then a French family is surely set to make you think again.

In July Frédéric and Estelle Colas, along with their eight-year-old daughter Héloïse, will leave Paris to set off on a round-the-world trip with a difference.

They'll be staying with Facebook friends in every country they visit.

The Colas family (screenshot from YouTube video)

Yes that's right; people they don't necessarily know and perhaps have never met but who have become "friends' in that Social Network definition of the word.



But this isn't just a gimmick or a publicity stunt and it's not a trip dedicated purely to pleasure - although there is obviously some of that involved too - as Frédéric Colas explained to journalist David Abiker on Europe 1 radio on Sunday.

There's also a purpose behind it.

"Every time one of our Facebook friends puts us up for the night, we'll donate the money we would otherwise have spent on a hotel to a fund aimed at building a girls' school in Burkina Faso together with the association La voix de l'enfant," he said.

The couple, both in their early forties and professionals in communications and advertising see the project as being a combination of making a dream come true, taking a break and allowing their daughter to discover the world.

And at the some time, they'll be doing something much more important, as Fréderic writes on We like the world's website.

"It is the time to ask myself important questions about what I want to do about my life while keeping my feet on the ground," he writes.

"It is a year when I want to 'be' but also to 'achieve' something. As in any project, I anticipate having constraints and some form of pressure, because I want to see the school built thanks to all the people who are interested in our project."

If you would like to become a friend of the project, offer the family accommodation overnight at some point during their trip o simply follow their progress, then check out the Facebook page for We like the world.

The Colas family (screenshot from YouTube video)

"The question is often asked what do Facebook 'friends' really mean in terms of proper friendship," says Colas.

"Our aim is to show that with the help of a Social Network we can do some good, something enjoyable and something that exists in the 'real life'."

We like the world - french

View more presentations from Frederic Colas

Hoax drug scare hits French schools

Local authority offices in the southwestern French département of Haute Garonne have reportedly been inundated in recent weeks with 'phones calls, letters and emails from concerned parents.

They were all acting on information that had dropped into their inboxes or they had read on the Net that the drug, "Strawberry quick" or "Strawberry meth", a flavoured crystal meth, was circulating in the area's schools.

"Strawberry quick" (snapshot from YouTube video)

Appearing to have been sent by the local authority and stamped with the official logo of the French interior ministry, the email warned that a "new drug" was being passed around and used in schools in the area.

"Children eat the drugs thinking they're sweets," read the email.

"And shortly afterwards they're admitted to hospital suffering from a number of side effects" it warned, stating that the local health authority had put in place a special unit to deal with the problem.

But according to the local authority, the alarm was nothing but a hoax and there was no need to be concerned.

In a statement it urged parents against passing the information on to others and an official, Loïc Armand, said that, "No special child protection unit had been set up as suggested in the email."

France is not alone in having had a hoax scare surrounding Strawberry quick.

It made its first "appearance" in 2007 when an identical rumour made the headlines in the United States after emails began to circulate suggesting that unsuspecting children were being given the drug.

And in March 2008 police in the British county of Oxfordshire sent out a warning to at least 80 schools after acting on a similar email hoax.

France steps up H1N1 vaccination campaign

A large proportion of a still sceptical French public will decide for itself this week whether to be inoculated against "swine flu" (H1N1 or influenza A as it's more commonly called here) as the government's vaccination campaign steps up a notch.

On Monday the health minister, Roselyne Bachelot, announced that over one thousand special centres would be open from November 12 and around six million French would be receiving letters this week encouraging them to go along and get vaccinated.

Among those given priority in the next stage of vaccinating the population at large are parents and childminders of infants under six months of age, health workers who haven't yet had the jab and the "more vulnerable" among the French especially those with respiratory problems.

From the second half of November until the end of the month letters will be sent out to other sectors of the population according to their perceived level of risk.

Pregnant women, who are also considered a priority, will have to wait until the vaccine that doesn't contain the chemical additive adjuvant is given the government's green light, while vaccination of the country's 12 million school children is scheduled to begin from November 25, with the education minister, Luc Chatel, stressing last weekend that it would be entirely voluntary with the decision being left to parents.

Adults over the age of 18 and in good health will be the last to receive a letter inviting them to be vaccinated.

So all well and good with the government finally delivering on its promise to be in a position to vaccinate the entire population.

It has in total ordered 94 million doses of the vaccine.

But in spite of the government's campaign and an increase in the both the number of confirmed cases in recent weeks and deaths reported linked to the H1N1 virus, the French seem to remain largely unimpressed with the most recent poll indicating that only 21 per cent of them intended to get themselves vaccinated.

And although Bachelot remains upbeat about the 10 per cent of health professionals who have so far voluntarily turned up for the jab since the vaccination became available to them as a priority last month, even she has had to admit that the figure is "insufficient".

Reducing truancy rates in French high schools

A trial begins on Monday in France to try to cut the truancy rate among students at vocational high schools.

Playing hookey, skiving off, cutting class or whatever you want to call it, is apparently an increasing problem in France, with figures from a 2007-2008 study putting the rate among the country's roughly one thousand lycées professionnels, or vocational high schools, at 8.2 per cent.

In an effort to bring down the level, three schools in the Ile de France region surrounding the French capital will be taking part in a pilot scheme of rewarding attendance with money.

Each class at the three schools will be allocated an initial sum of €2,000 with the promise of being able to "earn" up to €10,000 by the end of the academic year depending on how well they have collectively managed to keep to the agreement of increasing attendance rates.

What happens to the money amassed at the end of the year will be determined collectively by the students and teaching staff at the school from the beginning of the project.

The scheme has come in for some criticism especially from those who feel it inappropriate that students be paid to attend class, but speaking on national radio, Martin Hirsch, the junior minister for active solidarities against poverty and for young people, stressed the collective rather than individual nature of how the pool of money could be earned.

"We're trying something new," he said.

"There are schools where the truancy rate is anything from five to 80 percent and this sort of financial scheme already works in other countries," he added.

"The project to be financed at the end of the year must be an educative one," he continued.

"It could be a school trip, the creation of an association, or the purchase of computer equipment or sports material for the class as a whole."

But not everyone is as enthusiastic about the idea as the minister.

Jean-Paul Huchon, the president of the regional council for Ile de France region and a member of the Socialist party, thinks that it could in fact have the opposite effect to the one intended.

Instead of giving students collective responsibility in an effort to try to reduce truancy rates, Huchon thinks the scheme might potentially lead to an increase in violence in the institutions.

"Far from giving students a sense of responsibility, the setting up of a scheme of a 'collective kitty' could in fact foster a feeling of injustice among classes and different courses of study within the same school," he said.

"And that (feeling of injustice) could also lead to a growth in violence within the school."

If the pilot scheme proves successful, it is expected to be extended to another 70 classes (around 2,000 students) at institutions throughout France in the year 2010-2011, at a budget of €560,000.

A French high school's "short" protest

La rentrée, the time of the year when the French return from their summer holidays and get back to everyday life, has of course come and gone.

And it hasn't been without its problems. This year perhaps first and foremost has been the accompanying and much-predicted rapid spread of the H1N1 virus, especially as children started the new academic year.

But for students at the Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire lycée or high school in the town of Etampes in the département of Essone, 48 kilometres south of the French capital, another completely different issue has been occupying their minds.

Last week more than 200 of them refused to follow a "request" made by the school's principal to dress "correctly" in other words for example to wear skirts that dropped beyond knee level or refrain from attending school in Bermuda shorts.

Instead they organised "The day of shorts" and turned up at school "inappropriately" dressed.

The move was undoubtedly inspired by the film "La journée de la jupe" (Skirt day) released in March this year in which among other things, the main character of the teacher Sonia Bergerac, (played by Isabelle Adjani) wears a skirt to school and in the process breaks a rule set by the principal.

Back to reality though, and the result of the demonstration was a three-day suspension for the main organiser of the "day of the shorts" which had quickly gathered support among students through social networking sites and of course text messages.

Far from being the beginning of a 1968-type student revolution, the action was, in the words of one student, "A way of making a point in as light-hearted a fashion as possible," especially as the weather was particularly hot.

And the protest is unlikely to rest there if some students have anything to do with it.

Another "event" has been planned and once again the Internet could prove to play a vital role in spreading the word as quickly as possible.

A Facebook group "The right to kiss" has been set up with over 300 members who apparently will be taking the opportunity to do exactly as the name suggests at the school on Tuesday.