Argentina to end defamation laws
BUENOS AIRES, Sept 11, (AFP) - Under pressure from press freedom groups for a series of unpopular moves, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner announced Friday she had proposed a bill to do away with defamation laws.
“I have decided to send to Congress proposed legislation to end the offences of defamation and slander in cases of free speech,” Kirchner said.
Kirchner did not specify the circumstances under which defamation and slander would no longer be criminal offences, though several proposed bills have suggested applying the new rules only to cases related to the press or public interest.
France's first couple inspires play in Spain
MADRID, Sept 12-(AFP) -French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, former model Carla Bruni, are the inspiration behind a play about the pangs of love in the corridors of power underway at a major Spanish theatre.
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| Spanish actors Pedro Ruiz and Lidia San Jose perform the comedy “Escandalo en Palacio” (Scandal at the Palace) |
“Scandal in the Palace”, which opened Wednesday, revolves around Bernard Mathieu, the president of an unnamed country, and his young wife Paola d'Angio who, like Bruni, is also of Italian origin.
But while play is fiction, any resemblance between the two protagonists of this comedy playing at Madrid's Reina Victoria theatre, which seats 600 people, with Sarkozy and Bruni is not coincidental.
Pedro Ruiz, the play's author, director and main actor, does not hide that he was inspired by France's first couple but said the characters are “close archetypes, a radiography of everyone rather than the portrait of anyone.”
”The play is about two human beings trapped in their position, in their ambitions and the enormous media pressure they face,” he said.
In the play the couple waits nervously for a television newscast that will broadcast images captured by security camaras of President Mathieu making love to d'Angio in the toilets of an official palace while still married to his ex-wife. The president, who is in his fifties, announces he will resign because of the scandal.
“I am no longer the president, I am the president who kisses in the toilet,” he says. His wife however refuses to even consider the possibility.
Sarkozy will attend each session of the play -- or at least an effigy of the French president from Madrid's wax museum will.
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