French claim a breakthrough in the battle against snoring

A new device developed by a French orthodontist promises a good night's sleep for snorers...and their partners!

Help could be at hand for those among us who suffer from snoring - both the "culprits" who noisily sleep their way through the night and their partners who have to endure the rumblings and snortings coming from the other side of the bed.

On Tuesday a laboratory in the northwestern French city of Rennes launched an "innovate device" which promises to put an end to sleepless nights by reducing the level of snoring and the amount of sleeping apnoea (the temporary cessation of breathing while sleeping).

Ah yes, where have we - the long-suffering partners forced to share the night time with high volume snorts and grunts reverberating around the bedroom - heard that before?

There are countless devices out there on the market that claim to reduce snoring, endless tips on how to sleep soundly while making less of a racket and (as a last resort perhaps) surgery for those who snore.

But as the British Snoring & Sleep Apnoea Association (yes there really is such a body) says on its website "There isn't a cure for snoring," only ways in which it can "be successfully controlled."


And that would seem to be the promise behind the product launched this week called the "Blue nocta".

It's a brace that has been developed by an orthodontist in Rennes, who spent more than 10 years testing several prototypes before coming up with the final product.

The brace itself isn't innovative, several others already exist apparently. But what is groundbreaking is "a screw that allows the patient to adjust the device before going to sleep," according to Denis Masquilier the head of the laboratory that'll be marketing it.

And here's the good news - no scrub that, GREAT news. It has been tested on around 500 people and has had a "one hundred per cent success rate".

"We mustn't forget that because of snoring and sleep apnea, sleep is disrupted," says Masquilier.

"People who snore are often people who wake up tired."

Ah M. Masquilier, that might indeed be very true, but they're surely not alone as anyone with a partner who could snore their way to Olympic gold would be able to testify.

All right so the cost of the brace at the moment is perhaps rather steep - €470 - and won't be reimbursed by the social security here in France, but it could be the answer to many people's prayers and the promise of a full night's sleep.

A Christmas present for the Superior Other One maybe?

Sarkozy reaches new heights

You have to hand it to the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

He's not exactly subtle about adding a few centimetres (or inches if you like) to his height when he deems it necessary.

For the second time in almost as many weeks, the French media - all right then, some parts of it - have focused on Sarkozy's height to poke fun at him.

Mind you, he does rather make himself an easy target.

At the beginning of the month of course it was Sarkozy's visit to a Belgian factory that was the source of comment, when an employee admitted that she (and others) had been invited to share the stage with him based on their height; ie they were shorter than the French president who measures in at around 1.65 (or five foot five inches).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8243486.stm

And during his speech at the United Nations on Thursday, Sarkozy needed some more help as he was at the podium, as Yann Barthès the presenter on Le Petit Journal on Canal + was keen to point out.

While the US president, Barack Obama and Britain's prime minister Gordon Brown obviously didn't need to appear to be taller than they actually were (they're 1.85m and 1.80m respectively) the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev at 1.64 metres (and therefore shorter than his French counterpart) could have sought a little extra help on the podium.

Only he didn't.

But as you can see from the video, Sarkozy did; stepping up a couple of centimetres before speaking, and then down again at the end.



The wonders of stage management.

Racism in France - one man's experiences

It's hard to overlook a piece* written in Thursday's issue of the national French daily, Le Monde, by the journalist Mustapha Kessous.

It's another reminder as to just how racism persists here in France.

And of course it couldn't be more timely in light of the recent remarks made by the interior minister, Brice Hortefeux at the ruling centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) party's summer conference at Seignosse in southwestern France at the beginning of the month.

Hortefeux was captured on video saying in the presence of Amine Benalia-Brouch, a young party activist of Algerian origin, that he (Benalia-Brouch), "Doesn't match the prototype. We always need one. It's when there are lots of them that there are problems."and the reaction there has been to them.

Many viewed the comment as a racial slur, but others shrugged it off and tried to explain it as part of the minister's "sense of humour".

Kessous of course begins his piece with a reference to that incident, describing how he first met Hortefeux for an interview in April 2008 when he was still the immigration minister.

"I had never met him before," he writes.

"We waited at his ministry and when Brice Hortefeux arrived, he shook my hand, smiled and said 'Do you have your papers?"

Kessous outlines some of the difficulties he has had even in his job as a journalist for such an illustrious newspaper simply because he is "of Arab origin with a slightly darker complexion and a Moslem."

He writes how he thought that his status as a journalist at one of the country's most respected newspapers would somehow shield him from encountering racism.

He was wrong.

When he covered the Tour de France in July 2008, one spectator refused to talk to him preferring instead to be interviewed by one of his colleagues, who later admitted that an employee for the organisers had also rung him to ask whether Kessous was his chauffeur.

Kessous tells of the time when he wanted to interview the director of a psychiatric hospital, and how he easily got an appointment with her when he introduced himself over the 'phone as Monsieur Kessous from Le Monde (dropping his first name).

"When I arrived, the director's secretary informed her that I was there," he writes.

"A woman on crutches passed in front of me and when I opened the door for her she looked at me without saying 'thank you' or 'hello'," he continues.

Then the woman, who was in fact the director with whom he had an interview, asked the secretary where the journalist was and received the reply that he was just behind her.

"'You have your press card? You have your identity card?'" was what Kessous was asked, reminding us that there had been no welcome yet.

Kessous writes of how he has had to put up with racism and insults from an early age.

"We were one of the few families of North African origin where we lived (in the centre of Lyon)," he says.

"In order to 'succeed' I requested to be sent to a catholic school, and there I went through hell being told to 'Go back to your country' from fellow pupils and teachers alike."

It was a racism that followed him through the education system to the time when he was taking a higher course at journalism school in 2007 and was faced by questions during his oral examination such as, "Are you Moslem" and "If you're a journalist at Le Monde, is it because they need to have an Arab on staff?"

Clearly those working in the field of education are just as prone to racism as the country's police force.

Who can forget the case of Abdeljalel El Haddioui, a 40-year-old police officer who in 2007 made it through to the final stages of a selection process for a higher grade and had to face questions from the board such as "Does your wife wear a headscarf?" and "Do you practise Ramadan?" or "Don't you find it strange that there are Arab ministers in the government?"

And apropos the police, Kessous ends his piece with an incident that occurred recently as he parked his scooter outside the building housing Le Monde and how he was approached by officers asking him what he was doing there and for proof that he was a journalist.

"I could recount any number of events like that," he writes.

"I'm described as being of foreign origin, a beur, rabble or riff-raff (racaille), an Islamist, a delinquent, a 'beurgeois' a child of immigrants...but never a Frenchman. In short, French."

*You can read the full article (in French) here.