External News

PARIS: The woman behind France’s answer to the #MeToo campaign exposing abusive behaviour by men appeared in court on Wednesday accused of slandering a media executive who she said had made lewd remarks.

Sandra Muller, a US-based French journalist, is being sued for defamation by French TV executive Eric Brion at a Paris court over a Twitter post accusing him of humiliating her with vulgar comments.

Muller and Brion, a media consultant and former head of TV channel Equidia, were both present in court for the hearing.

Muller started a viral hashtag in French in October 2017, #balancetonporc (“expose your pig”), which called on Frenchwomen to name and shame men in an echo of the #MeToo movement that began in response to allegations that toppled movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

In her Twitter post, she told of how Brion had humiliated her, saying: “You have big breasts. You are my type of woman. I will make you orgasm all night.”

The post led to an outpouring of tales of harassment and assault, which were hailed as ending a culture of permissiveness in France towards unwanted advances.

After apologising for his remarks, Brion nonetheless decided to launch legal action against her.

He is asking for €50,000 (US$55,000) in damages, €15,000 (US$17,000) in legal fees  and the deletion of the tweet where his name is mentioned.

‘Predator’

Drion’s legal team argue that while he does not dispute that he flirted with Muller she had portrayed him as a sexual predator and ruined his career.

“He has never admitted to harassing anyone. He said that one evening he tried to flirt with Sandra Muller as he liked her,” Brion’s lawyer Marie Burguburu told the court. “This is his right to flirt,” she added.

Muller, speaking to the court, said that she wanted things to change so that “sexist insults, whatever they are, are finally taken seriously”.

“I started a movement that spread through all levels of society,” said Muller, who said she was happy to travel from the United States to attend the hearing.

In a column in Le Monde newspaper late last year, Brion admitted making “inappropriate remarks to Sandra Muller” at a cocktail party.

But he also accused Muller of “deliberately creating ambiguity about what happened” by linking it to the response to the Weinstein affair.

He complained of the severe personal and professional consequences of what he said was a “conflation of heavyhanded flirting and sexual harassment in the workplace”.

Many Frenchwomen made public their experiences of abusive behaviour by men in the wake of the #MeToo and #balancetonporc movements.

But there has also been controversy.

Last year a group of prominent French women, led by film star Catherine Deneuve, complained that the campaign against harassment had become “puritanical” and they defended the right of men to “hit on” women.

A new study about “13 Reasons Why,” which follows the story of a high school girl who takes her own life, found that suicides among US youths rose significantly in the months following the popular Netflix show’s release.

The paper, which was published in JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday, estimated a 13% spike in suicides among 10 to 19-year-olds between April and June of 2017, with a higher proportion among females.

The study was conducted by a team led by Thomas Niederkrotenthaler of the Medical University of Vienna’s Center for Public Health and used suicide data from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

“The associations identified here must be interpreted with a substantial degree of caution, but they do appear to demonstrate an increase in suicides that is consistent with potential contagion by media,” they wrote.

The team looked at suicides from 1999 to 2017 to establish a model that controlled for variables such as seasonal variations like known spring peaks in adolescent suicides.

Since Netflix does not publicly share its viewership data, the researchers established a proxy to estimate its popularity via the buzz the show generated on social media platforms Twitter and Instagram, which is especially popular among US youths.

The show was released on March 31, 2017, and generated some 11 million tweets within the first three weeks alone, before tailing off.

“Because of the absence of social media attention after June 2017, we defined the exposure window as April to June,” the researchers wrote.

The estimated 13.3% increase in deaths corresponds to 94 more suicides for the age category than would otherwise be expected over the time period.

The proportion was higher among girls, which the authors attributed to the show’s focus on the suicide of 17-year-old student Hannah Baker.

No similar increase in suicide was seen among the other age groups.

The authors cautioned that the research’s reliance on so-called “ecological data” – that is to say, estimates based on proxy measures – was a limitation, noting “it was not possible to ascertain whether the excess suicide decedents had actually watched ’13 Reasons Why.’”

A study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry earlier this month estimated an additional 195 suicide deaths – an increase of nearly 29% – among 10 to 17 year-olds in the nine months after the show’s release.

KUALA LUMPUR, May 30 — An asteroid will be named after two 16-year-old boys from a school in Penang, following their victory in an international science fair held in the US.

The Star reported Melwin Cheng Choon Lei and Tham Yong Shiang from SMJK Chung Ling had emerged as champions in the Chemistry category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2019 (Intel ISEF) for making crude cinnamon extract into a cost-effective and eco-friendly larvicide, that can be used to get rid of Aedes mosquito larvae.

Tham said there were 24 categories in the global event, where winners of the first and second place would get the chance to have their names among the celestial bodies.

“However, the naming of asteroids will have to go through some procedures and we might have to wait for another year before an asteroid is named after us,” Tham was reported to have said, stating that the procedure would have to abide by the guidelines set by the International Astronomical Union.

Discovering crude cinnamon to have pesticide characteristics, the Form Four students had converted the extract into larvicide, which they claimed was 90 per cent cheaper than commercial pesticides.

The duo were awaiting to have the research published before applying for a patent.

Cheng said the decision to create the eco-friendly larvicide was due to the alarming health issue in Malaysia caused by dengue.

“We are honoured to win the aware and have our names immortalised by having an asteroid named after us,” he said.

It was reported that Cheng and Tham had earned a spot at the Intel ISEF after winning the gold award at the National Science and Engineering Innovation Challenge (Pistek) in Kuala Lumpur last November.

The duo were the first Malaysians to win at the international event, after Faye Jong-Sow Fei from Sarawak had won the Environmental Management Award in 2015.

The world’s largest international pre-college science competition, Intel ISEF, was held from May 11 to 18 in Arizona, with 1,800 participating finalists from 80 countries.

KUALA LUMPUR, May 30 — Parti Bumiputera Perkasa Malaysia (Putra) vice president Datuk Hamidah Osman had urged Putrajaya to review its suggestion to loosen the conditions for tourists from China and India as she said the move would bring more harm to the country, Sinar Harian reported today.

She told the Malay daily that the laxed regulation for tourists from the two nations would increase the number of illegal immigrants in the country.

Hamidah had also cited a 2005 statistics from the Tourism Ministry, which stated out of 500,000 China tourists that had entered the country, only 315,000 were recorded to have left the country.

“This means the whereabouts of 185,000 China tourists has not been identified and it is believed they have continued to stay in the country as PATI,” she said, referring to illegal immigrants.

“This number is extremely shocking as lately there have been a lot of people from China who were involved in the prostitution sector, massage parlours, and other vice activities,” she was reported to have said.

Hamidah said she was also informed that over 100,000 China citizens were granted citizenship by the Pakatan Harapan government, after being said to have only accepted permanent resident status (PR).

“Does the number has something to do with the China tourists who was not recorded to have left the country and have stayed to work here illegally?

“The Federal government cannot continue to take risks at making decisions that could jeopardise the sovereignty of the nation,” she said.

Last month, Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Mohamaddin Ketapi said the Visa On Arrival (VOA) requirements for tourists from China and India may be relaxed in a bid to boost the number of visitors from the two countries in conjunction with Visit Malaysia Year 2020.

He said the move might be implemented this year, but did not specify which of the requirements would be exactly relaxed.