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Discusses a case concerning night flights and Strasbourg, France's retreat from environmental human rights handled by the European Court of Human Rights. Facts and background of the cases; Review of related to laws; Bases of the court's decision.

As part of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, agro-environmental measures are introducing a social control on agricultural practices in several European countries. Focusing chiefly on the French case, but with cross-national comparisons, this paper analyses the development of ambiguous social concern about environmental degradation linked to farming activities. Several causes are examined: the crisis of the productive agricultural model, renewed urban pressure on countryside uses and overall development of environmental anxieties. The article stresses the fact that farmers are given the ambivalent part of being at the same time damaging and managing the environmental qualities of the countryside. In conclusion, it questions the durability of public support to a policy based on local compromises and leading to greater territorial differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Quality of Rocky Bottoms index (CFR by its Spanish acronym) is a multimetric method used for the assessment of macroalgae communities in accordance to the European Water Framework Directive. In order to improve the precision and accuracy of the assessments, the index was adjusted using a continuous scoring system. The index was tested at 184 intertidal and 57 subtidal stations located in the Atlantic coasts of Spain, Portugal and France. The anthropogenic pressure level of the stations was estimated according to a semiquantitative scale based on the type of discharge, distance to the contaminant source and its magnitude. 70.5% of the stations were correctly assigned to their expected quality and only 5.8% were critically misclassified. The linear regression and weighted kappa analyses between the pressure levels and the CFR results showed highly significant correlations and very good agreement levels both at intertidal and subtidal areas., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)