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{{French journalists Pierre Torrès and Nicolas Hénin (pictured above, left to right) disappeared in Syria on June 22, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault revealed on Wednesday during an interview on French radio.}}

While the incident took place months ago in northern city of Raqqa, the families of the abducted Frenchmen initially convinced the government to keep the news from going public.

However, responding to a question about the fates of reporter Didier François and photojournalist Edouard Elias – two other captive French nationals – PM Ayrault unveiled the two additional abductions.

Nicolas Henin, 37, has worked for the past seven years for television news agency Solas Films, covering Africa and the Middle East. Pierre Torrès, 29, is a photojournalist who covered the Libyan revolution and was on his second trip to war-torn Syria at the time he was taken captive.

france24

The Pentagon is suggesting the world’s chemical weapons watchdog use a U.S.-made mobile destruction unit in Syria to neutralize the country’s toxic stockpile, officials told Reuters.

It gave a briefing on the unit on Tuesday to officials at the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, who are deciding what technology to use for the ambitious chemical weapons destruction plan, two officials said.

Faced with the threat of a U.S. military intervention, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed last month to a U.S.-Russian plan to destroy his sizeable chemical weapons program by the middle of 2014.

Initial talks between Washington and Moscow about where to destroy the stockpile included shipping it abroad, but it is illegal for most countries to import chemical weapons, making on-site destruction more likely.

Syria and the OPCW must make a decision on what technology will be used by November 15.

“Our people’s initial response was that it looks encouraging. It looks ideal,” said a source in the OPCW who attended the briefing. “But we don’t know how it will perform in the field and we would like to know the response from Syria and other countries with similar technology.”

The source said two of the units have been produced and several more are under production.

It will largely depend on how Syria’s suspected 1,000 tons of sarin, mustard and XV nerve agents are stored. The unit can destroy bulk chemicals, or precursors, but not munitions with a toxic payload. Separating these is more dangerous and time-consuming than incinerating or neutralizing precursor chemicals.

“This is very big business, very political, and several governments are pushing for it,” said chemical weapons expert Dieter Rothbacher, who used to train inspectors at the OPCW. “These units will be operating in Syria for a long period of time.”

Several countries have already been contacted to provide technicians for trials with the U.S.-made unit, which finished a trial stage in August after half a year of development, said a source who asked not to be named. It is known as the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System (FDHS).

A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the unit costs roughly $5 million to build.

reuters

{{This week conservative French lawmaker Phillipe Le Ray was docked one-quarter of his monthly parliamentary salary for clucking like a chicken while Green Party MP Véronique Massonneau addressed the National Assembly on the subject of reforming France’s pensions system.}}

Sadly, it was not an isolated sexist episode by a rogue UMP lawmaker.

It was just the latest outburst that has made France’s National Assembly appear more like a construction worksite than le peuple’s repository of liberty, equality and fraternity.

In July 2012, Housing Minister Cécile Duflot became the target of hooting by conservative MPs as she took the microphone to answer questions about a Paris infrastructure project wearing, get this… a floral dress. The completely unassuming garment sparked a surprising chorus of cat-calls and whistling.

And in February, UMP lawmakers began an ugly tirade against National Assembly Vice-President Laurence Dumont because she dared interrupt the minority UMP leader Christian Jacob. Dumont’s fellow Socialist MPs accused the UMP bench of getting irritated because it was a woman who was calling the shots that day.

In view of those earlier incidents, Le Ray’s inappropriate poultry imitation immediately set off alarms in the French press. “New sexist quack at the Assembly” was one of the headlines.

Woman lawmakers did not take this latest attack lightly.

Government spokesman and Women’s Rights Ministry Najat Vallaud-Belkacem lamented that “some people struggle to maintain composure after one-too-many bottles of wine with their lunch,” while Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti played a more pessimistic tune: “A leopard can’t change its spots”.

In a show of solidarity and force, women MPs delayed their entrance to Wednesday afternoon’s parliamentary session. They were applauded by left-wing lawmakers as they marched in together a few minutes later, with Massonneau leading at the head of the column.

Angered by the women’s “theatrics,” the opposition UMP group abandoned the chamber.

france24

{{Top finance officials from the G20 leading economies looked set to keep their focus on the receding risk of a U.S. default at talks on Friday as hopes grew that Washington could soon clinch a stop-gap deal to ensure it can keep paying its bills.}}

Officials from across the Group of 20 nations had warned that a failure by the U.S. Congress to raise the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt ceiling would wreak havoc on the global economy.

The U.S. Treasury has said it could quickly run out of cash if the cap is not raised by October 17. A failure to lift it, officials warned, could spark a financial crisis and tip the world’s largest economy into recession with damaging repercussions that would be felt worldwide.

But that risk receded on Thursday as Republicans presented a plan to extend the nation’s borrowing authority, opening a door for talks with the White House. Republicans have sought to use the need to raise the debt limit as leverage to force the White House to agree on budget cuts or to force changes in Obama’s signature health care law.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke assured their G20 counterparts at a dinner on Thursday that a resolution would be reached in time.

“They said that the problem will be solved by the 17th,” Anton Siluanov, finance minister of this year’s G20 host Russia, told reporters. “Both Lew and Bernanke believe that these difficulties can be overcome soon.”

Talks between the White House and Republican lawmakers pushed late into the night, but signs of progress earlier had already fueled the biggest Wall Street rally since January 2.

“It is quite clear that America has been pulled back from the brink, as sensible people expected,” Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey told reporters ahead of the dinner of top finance officials from the G20 developed and emerging economies.

agencies

{{The 2013 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Canada’s Alice Munro, whom the Nobel committee called a “master of the contemporary short story”.}}

{Alice Munro with one of her Books}