La Belgique francophone accouche douloureusement d’un cours de philosophie et de citoyenneté non désiré par tous

Empruntant la voie explorée notamment par la Norvège et le Québec, la Belgique francophone met en place depuis 2015, dans l’enseignement officiel obligatoire, un cours de philosophie et de citoyenneté qui se substitue partiellement, pour l’instant du moins, aux cours de religion et de morale. Cette innovation ne concerne pas les établissements libres confessionnels qui privilégient une approche transversale de la philosophie, ce qui soulève la question de l’égalité des élèves. La mise en place du nouveau cours rencontre différentes difficultés, dont la conversion des professeurs de religion et de morale, invités désormais à donner un enseignement neutre.Following the path explored by Norway and Quebec, French-speaking Belgium has been introducing since 2015 a philosophy and citizenship course in compulsory official education, partially replacing, at least for the time being, courses in religion and morality. This innovation does not concern faith-based private schools that favour a transversal approach to philosophy, which raises the issue of equality of pupils. The implementation of the new course is facing various difficulties, including the conversion of teachers of religion and morality, who are now invited to give neutral instruction

Le principe de proportionnalité : retour sur quelques espoirs déçus

Le principe de proportionnalité occupe une place cardinale dans le raisonnement juridique toutes les fois qu’il s’agit d’apprécier la licéité d’une action ou d’une abstention au regard des normes protectrices des droits et libertés, en ce compris de la liberté de religion. Assez paradoxalement au regard de cette centralité, son contenu précis est longtemps demeuré assez mystérieux. Une reconstruction doctrinale macroscopique est aujourd’hui possible. Elle réduit les angles morts, mais ne les élimine pas complètement. La présente contribution s’efforce d’offrir un bilan de la matière, essentiellement au regard de la jurisprudence de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme consacrée à l’article 9 de la Convention.The proportionality principle plays a key role in legal reasoning whenever the validity of an act or omission must be assessed in the light of norms protecting fundamental rights and freedoms, including the freedom of religion. Paradoxically, its exact content remained for a long time unclear, despite its central importance. A macroscopic doctrinal reconstruction is now possible. It reduces the blind spots, without, however, completely removing them. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of this question, essentially in relation to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights on article 9 of the Convention

Cell Culture Replication of a Genotype 1b Hepatitis C Virus Isolate Cloned from a Patient Who Underwent Liver Transplantation

The introduction of the genotype 2a isolate JFH1 was a major breakthrough in the field of hepatitis C virus (HCV), allowing researchers to study the complete life cycle of the virus in cell culture. However, fully competent culture systems encompassing the most therapeutically relevant HCV genotypes are still lacking, especially for the highly drug-resistant genotype 1b. For most isolated HCV clones, efficient replication in cultured hepatoma cells requires the introduction of replication-enhancing mutations. However, such mutations may interfere with viral assembly, as occurs in the case of the genotype 1b isolate Con1. In this study, we show that a clinical serum carrying a genotype 1b virus with an exceptionally high viral load was able to infect Huh7.5 cells. Similar to previous reports, inoculation of Huh7.5 cells by natural virus is very inefficient compared to infection by cell culture HCV. A consensus sequence of a new genotype 1b HCV isolate was cloned from the clinical serum (designated Barcelona HCV1), and then subjected to replication studies. This virus replicated poorly in a transient fashion in Huh7.5 cells after electroporation with in vitro transcribed RNA. Nonetheless, approximately 3 weeks post electroporation and thereafter, core protein-positive cells were detected by immunofluorescence. Surprisingly, small amounts of core protein were also measurable in the supernatant of electroporated cells, suggesting that HCV particles might be assembled and released. Our findings not only enhance the current method of cloning in vitro HCV replication-competent isolates, but also offer valuable insights for the realization of fully competent culture systems for HCV