the times | Friday August 7 2020 2GM 31
Wo r l d
the country’s divided society in his
second term, calling for a strengthening
of the family and the economy. Yet the
atmosphere in the Sejm, the Polish
equivalent of the House of Commons,
appears to be more polarised than ever.over central Europe and undermine
Ukraine by robbing it of revenues from
its pipelines. The US has imposed hefty
sanctions on companies involved.
The new legal challenge is from Envi-
ronmental Action Germany, which
says research on the pipeline’s dangers
must be heeded. It suggests that gas ex-
traction and transport releases far more
methane into the air than previously
thought. Pound for pound, methane,
the chief component in liquid natural
gas, traps up to 86 times as much heat in
the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
The group’s appeal was rejected by
the local authority and has been taken
to the higher administrative court in
Greifswald. It is expected to hold up the
project for months if not longer.Russian pipeline hobbled
by green court challenge
Germany
Oliver Moody BerlinPolish opposition MPs dressed in the
colours of the rainbow and gay pride
facemasks stole the limelight at the
swearing-in ceremony for President
Duda, who attacked “LGBT ideology”
during his battle for re-election.
After a close-run and volatile cam-
paign, Mr Duda took his oath before a
half-empty parliament chamber as
many politicians from the losing party
boycotted the event in protest at what
they said was his assault on the coun-
try’s constitution.
The president, who is closely affiliat-
ed with the ruling right-wing populist
Law and Justice (PiS) party, beat Rafal
Trzaskowski, the centre-right mayor of
Warsaw, by 51 to 49 per cent of the vote
on July 12. Mr Duda promised to unite
Gay protest upstages Polish president
Among the MPs who shunned the
ceremony was Borys Budka, leader of
the opposition Civic Platform party,
which was the driving force behind Mr
Trzaskowski’s campaign. Mr Budka ac-
cused the president of “violating the
constitution”.
Ten female MPs from the Left, an
alliance of social democratic parties,
wore dresses in rainbow hues and
posed on the steps in front of the parlia-
ment building with a gay pride banner.
During the final weeks of the cam-
paign Mr Duda, 48, criticised the gay
rights movement as a foreign ideology
“even more destructive” than commu-
nism. This reflects a wider anxiety in
the Polish population, especially in pro-
vincial parts of the country, where
several towns have declared them-
selves to be “LGBT-free zones” in
recent months.Poland
Oliver Moody
The building of a heavily disputed gas
pipeline from Russia to Germany is in
more trouble after an environmental
group asked a court to strip the project
of its operating licence.
Work on Nord Stream 2, which is
supposed to pipe 55 billion cubic metres
of gas along the bottom of the Baltic Sea
each year, had already been halted by a
dispute with Denmark over the laying
of pipes in waters near the island of
Bornholm. All but 45 miles of the 750-
mile route has been completed.
The project is opposed by the US,
France, Britain and Poland, which
argue that it will hand Russia leverageWomen MPs in rainbow colours posed
outside the parliament buildingSaturday evenings in front of the tele-
vision have been a dismal experience in
France for the past 30 years — a kitsch
cocktail of variety, game shows and
ageing comics. Now the French are
going to get the chance to see some-
thing that has been the norm in Britain
for years: a Saturday night film.
In a move hailed as a cultural mile-
stone in one of the democratic world’s
most heavily regulated nations, Jean
Castex, the prime minister, has author-
ised television channels to broadcast
films on Saturday evenings.
Showing them had been banned
under a 1990 law designed to prop up
the French film industry by encourag-
ing people to go out to cinemas on Sat-
urdays. The law limited the broad-
casting of films on television to
days when MPs thought the
French were less likely to leave
their homes: Mondays, Tues-
days, Thursdays and Sunday
evenings.
The liberalisation is only par-
tial, however. It remains illegal
to show films on Wednesday
and Friday evenings and on
Saturdays and Sundays
before 8.30pm. Neverthe-
less, the easing of the re-
strictions could trans-
form Saturdays for
families reduced to
watching pro-
grammes such as
the French ver-
sion of Who
Wants to be a Mil-
lionaire?
Now they will be
able to see Hollywood
blockbusters as well as the
arthouse films that have
long been a French tradi-
tion, such as Blue is the
Warmest Colour, or Rust
and Bone, both winners
at Cannes.
The change was
welcomed by tele-
vision station chiefs
who argue that they
have been at an unfair
disadvantage by compar-
ison with streaming ser-
vices such as Netflix. The
likes of TF1, the country’s
biggest private channel,
and France Télévisions,
the state broadcaster,
hope to boost Satur-
day viewing figures
that are often disap-
pointing. On Sat-
urday July 19, for
instance, 2 million
viewers watched
the repeat of
a 2016 charity
concert, while
2.8 million turned in to Fort Boy-
ard, a celebrity reality TV show.
The ratings for films are sig-
nificantly better. A total of
4.3 million viewers watched
Bienvenu à Marly-Gomont, a
Franco-Belgian comedy on
July 26, while 3.5 million saw
Jennifer Aniston in We’re
the Millers, an American
comedy, the previous
week.
M6, the private chan-
nel, has been leading
the campaign for Sat-
urday evening films.
“We’ve been pushing
for this for 20 years,”
a spokesman told
Le Parisien news-
paper.
FrustrationThe Grand Rex is shut but stars like
Juliette Binoche, far left, Léa Seydoux,
Fabrizio Rongione and Marion
Cotillard will boost TV viewing figuresAt last, French can stay at home
to watch Saturday night movies
Beaten wife
pretended to
order a pizza
Tom Kington RomeIt sounded like the beginning of a prank
call, police emergency lines tied up by
someone ordering a pizza, but for a
woman in Italy the call to police was
deadly serious.
She had been beaten by her drunk
husband and called the police, but she
asked for a pizza to be delivered so as
not to alert him.
The South American woman, who
lives in Milan with her partner, 31, and
their son, ten, was accustomed to being
insulted. That evening, after the man
returned home in a drunk and surly
state, he punched her in the face and hit
their son after finding that the televi-
sion did not work.
He then destroyed the TV set and lay
down on the sofa. Seizing the moment,
the woman, whose name and age have
not been released, rang the police
emergency number. When the opera-
tor asked if she knew who she was
speaking to, the woman replied: “Yes, I
really want a pizza.”
The call, on the night of August 2, was
passed to a police officer, Vincenzo
Tripodi, 27, who quickly figured out that
she was unable to speak freely.
“Her voice was trembling and she
started to cry out as her husband
started hitting her again,” he told The
Times. “I asked her to give her name and
address, information that she would
give a pizza delivery person, and I
started asking questions she could
answer yes or no to.
“I said, ‘Are you OK?’, and she replied,
‘No’, at which point we dispatched a
local police patrol to the address.”
Within three minutes officers rang
the doorbell. “The man opened the
door but instead of being handed a
pizza he was arrested,” Mr Tripodi said.
Reports of domestic violence dipped
at the start of Italy’s strict ten-week
lockdown in March, but later rose. Elisa
Ercoli of Differenza Donna, a women’s
aid agency, said: “Calls for help dropped
85 per cent in the first two weeks but by
the fifth week were up 18 per cent on
the average.”
Some of the women making such
calls had been risking their lives, she
added, because they were “stuck at
home and were under constant control
of their abusers”. Since the end of
lockdown, calls have continued to be
about 10 per cent above normal.
“I hope to meet the woman I spoke to
and thank her,” said Mr Tripodi. “She
showed real courage and intelligence.
She is the real hero.”among television channels is all the
greater since they are obliged by law to
finance the production of French films.
In 2018 they contributed €292 million
to the country’s film industry.
Yet critics say that the authorisation
to broadcast films on the television on
Saturday evenings will deepen the
crisis facing the country’s 6,000 or so
cinemas. They say that takings are
down 70 per cent this summer com-
pared with last and fear that many
houses will go bankrupt.
About 12 cinemas have said that they
were attracting so few people that they
had to shut for the summer, including
the celebrated Grand Rex in Paris.France
Adam Sage Paris
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