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- WORLD, Page 55World NotesFRANCEOut on a Limb For the Trees
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- Simonne Caillot, a writer and former schoolteacher in the
- Normandy town of St.-Lo, has refused to eat for more than three
- weeks, and she shows no signs of ending her hunger strike.
- Caillot, 45, is protesting to ensure that the strip of trees
- on a 9,000-sq.-yd. plot of land she once owned will not be
- felled by its new owner.
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- Caillot is a victim of remembrement, an obscure French rural
- code that allows community governments to redistribute land in
- the name of more productive farming. Her "save the trees"
- strike has brought to light simmering popular resentment
- against the policy, which is seen by its opponents as favoring
- influential landowners with big farms.
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- After lengthy legal appeals, word came last week that the
- regional prefect has suggested that the case be reviewed -- a
- difficult feat in August, when most of the French are away on
- holiday.
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