French values. They would argue that hiding a woman’s face violates the ideals of equality and secularism so important in France. What drives some of this is a fear that some new arrivals and some ethnic groups are
clinging to
customs that set them apart with the risk of separate, parallel communities developing.
European Union finance ministers have been discussing what to do if the European banking system fails a test of its resilience. The EU says such failure is unlikely, but that national governments or even EU funds could act as a safety net if needed. Our economics correspondent Andrew Walker has more.
There are fears in the financial markets that some banks could be in serious danger of failure if they face heavy losses on debts sold by stressed European governments and property buyers. So European regulators were examining over 90 of them to see whether they would survive. But some analysts believe the test may not be tough enough and that weaknesses might be hidden. European officials say that won’t happen and they believe most banks are in
reasonable
health. The results of the test will be published next week.
New figures from the United Nations show the
prevalence
of HIV among young people has fallen in 16 of the world’s worst-affected countries, many of them in Africa. The UN figures suggest that young people are changing their sexual behavior
in response to
AIDS prevention campaigns. But the UN accepts that AIDS is on the rise in Uganda because of what it describes as "increasing