Brother of French hostage in Afghanistan is losing confidence

The brother of one of the two French hostages being held in Afghanistan says he's losing confidence in the French government's ability to secure their release.

Stéphane Taponier and Hervé Ghesquière, staff journalists for the French television channel France 3, were taken captive along with three Afghan colleagues in December 2009 as they were travelling in Afghanistan’s Kapisa province around 120 kilometres northeast of the capital Kabul.

On Friday Taponier's brother, Thierry, told the all-news channel i>Télé that he didn't share the French government's optimism about the release of the two men.

Thierry Taponier (screenshot from Dailymotion audio recording of Europe 1 interview)

He was talking after the broadcast of an audio message apparently from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden warning that France would "pay dearly for its policy in Afghanistan and that the release of the hostages would depend on French troops being withdrawn."

"This is a blow to us and comes when we least expected it because just a while ago François Fillion (the French prime minister) told us that he was optimistic about the fate of Stéphane and Hervé," he said.

"Now we're stunned at the difference between the positive things the (French) State is saying and the negative side of the kidnappers," he continued.

"I'm starting to lose confidence in what the government can achieve in Afghanistan, certainly in this case."

Picture of the two French hostages projected on to the Arc de Triomphe on the day marking the first anniversary of their capture (screenshot i>Télé report)

While the French government has at various times issued statements insisting that negotiations for the release of the two men are progressing, their families have by and large been hesitant about talking to the media.

Their silence was broken in December last year when both Taponier's father and brother expressed their frustrations and concerns.

Earlier this month the French prime minister, François Fillion, said that discussions with the kidnappers were "very advanced" and that he thought that there "could only be a positive outcome."

Handball ref who dropped his pants sent home from World Championships

The men's handball World Championship is currently taking place in Sweden with 24 countries battling it out to lift the title held by France.

The tournament is due to run until the end of January, but for one man it has all ended rather abruptly - and it wasn't one of the players.

France's Olympic gold-winning men's handball team, Beijing, 2008 (from Wikipedia, author Jmex60)

As The Local, an English-language online news site based in Sweden, reported, one of the referees for the tournament has been banned after he exposed himself to staff at the hotel in which he was staying in Göteborg, a city on the western coast of the country.

He was apparently arrested last Thursday evening after hotel cleaners alleged he had exposed himself in front of them.

Police detained him overnight for questioning, says The Local, on "suspicion of sexual molestation", but no charges were brought and he was released the following morning.

When the sport's governing body, the International Handball Federation (IHF), got wind of what had happened it immediately took action.

It issued a statement on its website saying that it had suspended the man from the tournament and had asked local authorities for more details on the incident before it would decide what further measures to take.

Neither the name nor the nationality of the man who apparently felt the need to dangle his privates in public has been released, according to Agence France Presse,

But TV4 news website nyhetskanalen.se reported that he had been spotted on Friday travelling to the Danish capital Copenhagen to take a flight back home.

The 2011 men's handball World Championship is the 22nd time the tournament has been held since 1938.

France are the current Olympic, World and European champions.

Aspirant - the cancer detecting dog

Dog's are well known for their powers of sniffing, guiding and licking themselves in places that would be rude if we humans tried to do the same thing.

And there are surely more than enough stories circulating on the Net about animal cruelty and just how much we use and abuse Man's Best Friend.

Here though is a tale of a dog, which according to the regional French daily La Nouvelle République has learnt a remarkable skill, and it's being put to good use.

Aspirant, a six-year-old Malinois, or Belgian shepherd dog, can detect patients with prostate cancer.

Aspirant (Screenshot from video accompanying La Nouvelle République report)

He's a military dog at the French airbase of Orléans-Bricy in central France and has undergone training to be able to detect signs of prostate cancer in urine samples.

It's all part of a programme of experiments conducted by Olivier Cussenot, the director of the research unit of urology at the Tenon hospital in Paris, who was put in contact with the airbase in 2007 because, as ministry of defence veterinarian Philippe Ulmer told the paper, "We have dogs capable of detecting all sorts of products such as drugs and explosives.

Over a period of months Aspirant, with the help of his handler, was taught to tell the difference between urine samples which came from patients diagnosed with prostate cancer and those without, always, stressed Ulmer, with the sense that, "Aspirant thought it was a game and when he correctly identified a 'positive' sample he would be rewarded."

And the training seemed to work - far beyond the expectations of many, according to Ulmer.

"One day we were surprised when he indicated that a negative sample was apparently positive," he said.

"It was then sent off to Paris for analysis and the tests came back proving that the dog had been right; the patient had indeed developed prostate cancer."

Journalists, including Bruno Besson from the paper, were treated to their own demonstration of Aspirant's ability last Friday when they were invited to see him in action at the airbase.

"Three samples were hidden in the drawers of three different tables," writes Besson.

"One of them was 'positive' and the other two 'negative'," he continues.

"Aspirant entered the room, sniffed the first table and then went to the second where he immediately sat down and didn't move. He was right!"

Aspirant might be unique in France, but there are reports of "canine cancer detection" (Wikipedia's catchy little title for the screening which it defines as relying "upon the olfactory ability of dogs to detect very low concentrations of the alkanes and aromatic compounds generated by tumors") in other countries.

In 2006 The Pine Street Foundation in Marin County, California published the findings of a study it had carried out claiming that it had trained dogs "to detect lung cancer in the breath of cancer sufferers with 99 percent accuracy."

And in 2004 the British Medical Journal published a paper outlining the results of a test to determine "whether dogs can be trained to identify people with bladder cancer on the basis of urine odour more successfully than would be expected by chance alone."