Free Republic

PARIS (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress picked on the wrong country when it replaced "French fries" with "Freedom fries" on its menus to protest France's opposition to a possible U.S.-led war in Iraq, according to a Belgian fry expert. Michel Mes, who runs the website www.belgianfries.com, said that fried potatoes were invented in Belgium, not France, and were only referred to as French fries in the United States. "Of course, in good food tradition, the French claim to be the inventors of our beloved fries," he writes on the website. "Anyway, we modest Belgians don't mind the French claim, because...

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt says he supports a change to the country's law on human rights, to allow the prosecution of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for alleged war crimes. Mr Verhofstadt said on Tuesday he did not object to parliament broadening the scope of the law so that a war crime could be prosecuted "no matter where the person accused of the crime is located," Belgian media said. The country's 1993 "universal competence" law allows Belgian courts to try cases of alleged human rights abuses committed anywhere in the would. But last June, a Belgian appeals court ruled...