A Norfolk micro brewery has been told it must change its name or face legal action, because it sounds too similar to the energy drink Red Bull.

Redwell brewery, which employs just eight people in Norwich, has been told by the firm its name could "confuse" customers and "tarnish" its trademark.
Company owner Patrick Fisher said he was "shocked" by Red Bull's letter and has sought legal advice.
Red Bull said it would not comment on a pending case.
Mr Fisher said the brewery started up earlier this year and problems began days after it went to trademark its brand, which is named after Redwell Street in Norwich city centre.
"We were just shocked. It's been like a dark cloud hanging over us," he said.
"Our name is different, our branding is different. We don't make energy drinks and we're not planning to move into Formula One or send a man skydiving from space very soon."
A letter from Hansjorg Jeserznik, Red Bull's brand enforcement manager, said the brewery's mark was "highly similar" to Red Bull's earlier trademark of RED and its application covered goods in the same marketplace in which it was competing.
In addition, it said Redwell and Red Bull looked and sounded similar and it was "likely" that customers would perceive the brewery's drinks as an "imitation".
Mr Fisher said the brewery, which makes about 5,000 pints of lager and ale every week, had been given until the end of August to come to a resolution.
He said: "It's just very sad. We've had a successful launch of the brewery and we just don't know what sort of clout they've got.
"But our solicitors have told us we are in a strong position and we hope to reach a settlement."


Human rights groups in Egypt have condemned a new law restricting public protests which has been signed by the interim President Adly Mansour.

The law bans protests without prior police notification.
Many believe the new legislation is aimed mainly at supporters of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood and the ousted president, Mohammed Morsi.
Mass protests have led to the toppling of two Egyptian presidents in the past three years.
By Orla GuerinBBC News, Cairo
Taking to the streets will be much harder for Egyptians from now on.
The new law requires protest organisers to notify police at least three working days before a demonstration. They have to provide their names, addresses, and demands.
The security forces can ban or postpone demonstrations if they believe they will threaten public order.  If trouble breaks out and crowds refuse to disperse, police can use tear gas, and birdshot.
Those who break the law can face up to seven years in jail.
The law was signed as more protests took place in several cities on Sunday.
Thousands of supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi gathered in Cairo and elsewhere.
They were marking 100 days since security forces broke up sit-ins calling for his reinstatement - violence which saw hundreds killed.
A similar protest on Friday in Cairo led to clashes with anti-Morsi demonstrators and police.
Mr Morsi, who has roots in political Islam, is currently on trial alongside other leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood on charges including incitement to the killing of protesters in 2012.
Human rights groups in Egypt rejected the draft law before it was enacted by interim President Mansour.
"The draft law seeks to criminalise all forms of peaceful assembly, including demonstrations and public meetings, and gives the state free hand to disperse peaceful gatherings by use of force," 19 Egyptian organisations said in a statement.
But Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi, speaking to the AFP news agency, said the new law was designed to protect "the right of protesters" and required them to give "notice" rather than seek permission.
Government sources were quoted as saying the legislation had been watered down to require three rather than seven days' notice.
Parliamentary and presidential elections are due to take place next year, but human rights groups have accused the military-backed authorities of anti-democratic tendencies.
Thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members have been detained since Mr Morsi's overthrow, though the authorities say this is part of combating "terrorism".


A 17,000-tonne oil rig that ran aground in the Outer Hebrides and was successfully refloated has arrived at a temporary location.

The Transocean Winner drilling rig ran aground on Lewis two weeks ago.
It has now arrived at Broad Bay after being refloated and towed from the other side of the island.
Salvage experts said the operation had gone smoothly despite concern about further spillages of fuel from the damaged rig.
Two tug boats pulled the rig on a 54-mile journey to Broad Bay where experts will assess the damage.
The journey has taken longer than initially estimated with a travelling speed of 1-1.5 knots (1.15-1.72mph).
The Maritime & Coastguard Agency has been conducting counter pollution flyover checks in the area to examine the water for any sign of discharge, sheen or pollution from the rig.
There was no pollution reported in the Dalmore Bay area, but a slight sheen was detected as the aircraft continued to follow the path of the rig.
The sheen is said to be associated with the ongoing pressurisation of tanks to maintain the rig's stability, but a Brigg's Marine and Environmental Services team is accompanying the tow and assisting by "breaking up the light sheen".
A temporary exclusion zone remains in place at Dalmore Bay, where the rig initially ran aground, until the seabed has been checked for any debris or environmental impact.
Hugh Shaw, the Secretary of State's representative for maritime salvage and intervention, said: "We are taking advantage of the favourable weather conditions following this big step forward, and we will continue to closely monitor the rig whilst it is under tow.
"Once everything is declared safe, I will be looking at releasing the exclusion zone in Dalmore Bay.
"I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the Western Isles Council and community for their patience and their gracious hospitality during this challenging and disruptive period.
"This salvage operation has required the united cooperation from so many different organisations who have spared no effort to ensure that this rig reaches safer waters."
Eight anchors are being laid out in Broad Bay to hold the rig in place when it arrives.
Transocean will then begin the assessment process - which includes putting divers in the water - to look at the damage the rig has suffered; a process which could take until the middle of September.
The semi-submersible structure was blown ashore at Dalmore during a towing operation on Monday 8 August. The towline between the rig and its tug was lost en route from Norway to Malta amid high winds and heavy seas in the early hours that day.


A man has been charged with murder following the death of a man who was stabbed in the stomach in Manchester.

Steven Chadwick, 30, was found injured in Carslake Road, Harpurhey, on the night of 29 August.
He was taken to hospital but died four days later.
Ryan Donnellan, 30, of Butler Court in Gunson Street, Manchester, has been remanded in custody and is due to appear at Manchester Crown Court on 4 November.


Somerset have re-signed West Indies batsman Chris Gayle for six matches in this summer's T20 Blast competition.

Earlier this month, the 36-year-old was fined £4,900 after asking a TV reporter for a date in a live interview while playing for Melbourne Renegades in Australia's Big Bash League.
He later apologised but said the reaction was "out of proportion".
Gayle, whose first game is on 1 June against Sussex, scored 328 runs in three appearances for Somerset in 2015.
The final match of his six-game stint will be against Hampshire on 19 June.
Gayle said: "I really enjoyed my time at Somerset last year. It's a great club and the supporters were absolutely incredible.
"I'm looking forward to seeing the fans again and to scoring some more runs. Hopefully I can help the club make it through to the later stages."
Somerset's director of cricket Matt Maynard previously described Gayle as "box office" and suggested Somerset sold out their seven T20 Blast games last year "essentially on the back of him signing".
The left-hander hit a 12-ball half-century to equal the record for the fastest fifty in Twenty20 cricket before Renegades exited the Big Bash earlier this month.
Somerset's chief executive Guy Lavender said they may be able to bring Gayle back to Taunton if they qualified from the group stage.
Somerset's newly-appointed County Championship skipper Chris Rogers has made it clear he's not the biggest fan of his former Sydney Thunder team-mate Gayle.
Australian batsman Rogers played in the Big Bash League alongside Gayle three years ago.
"From my time at the Thunder I was very disappointed in his attitude and his behaviour," Rogers said on 5 January. "I've never been a fan since.
"He has to realise at some stage, and I'd be the first to admit that at times I've let myself down with my behaviour, but you grow up and you start making better decisions. He needs to start making better decisions."
Rogers has replaced Marcus Trescothick as captain for the four-day competition, after he stepped down from the role last week.
However, Gayle will not play under Rogers directly as Jim Allenby is the club's one-day captain.
Media playback is not supported on this device
Gayle has earned the backing of Maynard despite Rogers' criticism of his time with the Thunder.
The former Glamorgan batsman said the West Indian had got on well with everyone during his time with Somerset last summer.
"He obviously didn't leave a great impression there, but he did here," Maynard told Points West.
"He made a superb impression on the fans, on the players, on the town itself. He was so well thought of and that's what you go on.
"I know there will be no issues between him and Chris Rogers. They are both grown men and they will get on fine."
Gayle's 2016 stint with Somerset
Wednesday, 1 June - Sussex v Somerset
Friday, 3 June - Somerset v Essex
Friday, 10 June - Somerset v Surrey
Wednesday, 15 June - Somerset v Glamorgan
Friday, 17 June - Gloucestershire v Somerset
Sunday, 19 June - Somerset v Hampshire


A convicted rapist and a man servicing a sentence for domestic assault have absconded from an open prison.

Anthony McCormick, 52, who was jailed for life for rape, and Nicholas Briggs, 28, walked out from HMP Leyhill in South Gloucestershire on Thursday.
McCormick is 5' 9" tall, and has links to Merseyside. Briggs is 6' tall and from the Newport area in south Wales.
Police say the men should not be approached and anyone seeing them should ring 999 immediately.


Britain's Tahnee Seagrave won her second Downhill Mountain Bike World Cup race of the season in Canada.

Having clinched her maiden win in Austria in June, the 22-year-old secured the penultimate race of the calendar at Mont-Sainte-Anne.
Seagrave stays third in the overall rankings, a place ahead of fellow Briton Rachel Atherton, the defending World Cup champion, who finished fifth.
World Champion Danny Hart had to settle for third in the elite men's race.
"It doesn't feel real yet, it's a lot better than my first," Seagrave said.
"It all comes down to the last race now and that's not happened since I've been competing."
France's Miriam Nicole finished second, 5.7 seconds behind Seagrave, to retain her World Cup lead with Australia's Tracey Hannah third.
Atherton was undefeated for 15 consecutive races until May when a crash during a practice run at Fort William in Scotland left her with a dislocated shoulder and unable to compete.
And in her third race back since the injury, she produced a sensational piece of handling to avoid yet another crash.
"I could hear the crowd gasping," she said. "There was a massive rock and I couldn't change my line. I thought 'I can't crash, I'll fall to pieces'."
The final races of the season takes place at Val di Sole in Italy on 26-27 August.
Heavy rain caused chaos before the start of the elite men's race but Britain's Hart navigated the tricky conditions well in the first part of his race before slowing towards the finish.
American Aaron Gwin produced a great run in the wet to win the round and take his third Mont-Sainte-Anne career win.
Briton Michael Jones was in contention for much of the competition but was denied a first podium finish since 2015, coming fifth.
1. Tahnee Seagrave (GBR, Transition Bikes/FMD Factory Racing) 00:04:46.723
2. Myriam Nicole (FRA, Commencal/Vallnord)00:04:52.460
3. Hannah Tracey (AUS, Polygon UR) 00:04:58.779
4. Emilie Siegenthaler (SUI, Pivot Factory Racing) 00:04:59.476
5. Rachel Atherton (GBR, Trek Factory Racing) 00:04:59.549
1. AaronGwin (USA, The YT Mob) 00:04:18.426
2. Dean Lucas (AUS, Intense Factory Racing) 00:04:19.484
3. Danny Hart (GBR, MS Mondraker Team) 00:04:19.846
4. Loic Bruni (FRA, Specialized Gravity) 00:04:21.684
5. Michael Jones (GBR, Chain Reaction Cycles/Mavic 22) 00:04:21.858


On Wednesday, a huge call was made by one of the internet’s most powerful companies.

Think of Cloudflare as the nightclub bouncer of the internet - it stops harmful traffic, designed to knock a website offline by flooding it with requests, from reaching its intended target.
It is used by everyone from dating service OkCupid to the official website of the Eurovision Song Contest.
In fact, 10% of all internet traffic, the company estimates, is routed via Cloudflare.
And it prides itself on protecting everyone and anyone, as a point of principle.
Which is why it protected the Daily Stormer, the hateful neo-Nazi website booted out by GoDaddy and Google earlier this week.
But not any more. Cloudflare’s chief executive, Matthew Prince, has withdrawn his company’s services - but in doing so issued a nervous warning about the future of the internet.
Rational justice
Cloudflare’s decision represents an unprecedented and significant escalation in the way private companies have chosen - or been pushed - to police the internet.
And here’s why.
Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook remove thousands of pieces of content every day - postings they deem to be offensive, hateful or illegal.
Concerns over freedom of speech and censorship are often toothlessly barked - but the fact is that when anyone joins those sites, they agree on a set of terms and conditions that prohibit such talk.
If you don’t like it, go somewhere else.
With Cloudflare, it is a wholly different situation.
In removing its protections, Cloudflare admits, it is essentially removing the Daily Stormer's ability to exist anywhere on the open internet - given that the site has faced continual cyber-attacks for years, which will probably continue.
The straw that broke Cloudflare’s back, Mr Prince told me, was seeing neo-Nazis claiming that senior executives at Cloudflare were supporting their cause.
He also made this point later, in a blog post.
Now, you might ask whether the internet is not better off without a neo-Nazi website.
But the more important question, and the root of Mr Prince’s concern, is simply who decides what stays and what goes.
“I feel really anxious,” Mr Prince told the BBC.
"Because I feel like we have a very principled position, and we just made an exception to that position.
"While that’s very popular and people on Twitter are saying nice things about me, I really worry about the long term.
"The internet that I’ve built a company around, and spent the last 20-plus years enjoying, was one where any idea could exist.
"I worry that that’s a little less true today."
Underground
It puts us in the dreaded “something must be done” stage of proceedings, and many in internet businesses are concerned.
"Hard cases make bad law," Mr Prince said, and in the swirl of anger around what is happening in the US, hasty decisions could prove disastrous further down the line.
So what happens next? In the near-term, division.
An excellent recent LA Times piece looked at the consequence of extreme voices being sidelined on the internet.
It detailed how we are already seeing an alt-right-powered internet, with entire companies set up to give voices kicked off other platforms a chance to express their views.
Almost every major internet service is getting its alt-right counterpart.
Instead of Patreon, a site that allows donations for causes or projects, see Hatreon, a site that has allowed the support of white supremacists (the man behind the Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin, being one of them).
Instead of GoFundMe, there’s WeSearchr. Instead of Reddit, there’s Gab. This trend will continue.
Difficult line
For now, the Daily Stormer has been chased out of town and resides in the grotty depths of the “dark web”, accessible only via a special type of browser (I interviewed the creator of the software recently).
Mr Prince told me he would not know if he had made the right decision until about five years from now.
In the meantime, he is expecting the already hard battles the company endures to protect important, legitimate websites to become even tougher.
“We said we would never take down a customer or site based on political pressure," he said.
"We protect things like LGBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender] rights groups in the Middle East, and journalists covering corruption across Africa, human rights organisations in China… we get pressure all the time to take those organisations offline.
"And it's really powerful to be able to say, 'We have never done that.' As a result, that was something we saw as a really difficult line to cross."


Four men and a teenage boy have been arrested after a series of fights following a funeral in Cardiff.

Armed police were at the scene of an initial disturbance at Western Cemetery in Ely at about 12:45 BST on Monday.
Three men received non-life threatening injuries in the incident between groups "known to each other", South Wales Police said.
Four men, aged 20, 24, 31 and 44, and a boy aged 16, are in police custody.
At 15:45, another disturbance was reported outside the British Legion on Cowbridge Road West. Another incident took place near Fairwater police station.
South Wales Police said the incidents were "linked" and there was an increased police presence to reassure the local community.


The US military has increased its threat level at facilities across North America, although most installations were already operating at a higher level of protection.

Army Col Steve Warren said the increase was not the result of a specific event.
He said it was the result of an increased threat climate, including the arrests of several suspected Islamic State sympathizers in the US.
The increase likely means more bag and vehicle checks at military facilities.
The military has four levels of security that are labelled A through D.
The decision moves the baseline level from A to B at all facilities, even though most were already engaging in stricter security measures individually.
It comes several days after two men tried to attack a conference in Texas which included a contest to draw cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed; they were shot dead by police.


Eights cars were caught up in two crashes that happened within minutes of each other on the same stretch of the A9 in the Highlands.

A woman was injured when six cars collided before 09:00 near the road's Munlochy junction, north of Inverness.
Two cars were involved in the second incident near the scene of the first accident. One of the cars caught fire but no-one was hurt.
The accidents shut the southbound carriageway for several hours.
Fire crews from Dingwall, Beauly and Inverness, along with ambulance crews and police, were sent to the scenes of the accidents.
Two women trapped in the wreckage of two cars were freed by firefighters.
A spokesman for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said: "Thankfully no-one involved in the incidents was seriously injured."
Earlier, at about 07:20, firefighters from Inverness and Nairn were called to a collision between a car and a van on the A96 at Delnies, near Nairn.
A man was hurt in the crash. The road was closed after the incident, but has now reopened.


Reports of racist behaviour during Carlisle United's home game against Everton are being investigated by police and the Football Association.

It was alleged "racial remarks" were directed towards players from Brunton Park's Warwick Road End following Everton's opening goal.
Cumbria Police appealed for information, while both clubs said they would work with the authorities.
Everton went on to beat Carlisle 3-0 in the FA Cup fourth round tie on Sunday.
Carlisle manager Keith Curle said:  "It is not what we want inside Brunton Park, inside football, or inside society. It is not accepted.
"To any supporters who were next to people and heard people - please step forward to identify them."
Everton manager Roberto Martinez said: "There is no room for that sort of behaviour, but I must stress it was a very small minority and I want to believe that it was just an emotional reaction to the disappointment of conceding a goal."
The FA said in a statement: "We have received the referee's report regarding the alleged incident during today's game between Carlisle United and Everton.
"We have contacted both clubs .... and will be conducting an immediate and thorough investigation."


A County Antrim Somme veteran has been remembered by the band of which he was a member for more than eight decades.

William McConnell, from Magheramorne outside Larne, was one of the last surviving veterans of the Battle of the Somme when he died in 1995 aged 101.
On Thursday night, Magheramorne Orange Lodge and Silver Band held a commemoration at his grave in Larne cemetery.
It coincided with overnight vigils across the UK.
They marked the centenary of one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
Historian David Hume interviewed Mr McConnell when he was 99 years old.
"He wasn't someone who spoke about the Battle of the Somme and his involvement often, but given his age he decided to share his experiences and his memories were still so lucid," Mr Hume said.
"On the first day he was wounded, and he remembered other soldiers falling around him at Thiepval Wood.
"He remembered the confusion of trying to get back to his own line, he said everything was so mixed up in the aftermath."
Mr McConnell had described receiving medical treatment in "a bath with electric bulbs".
It was only following further research that Mr Hume realised he had been recalling electric shock treatment, prescribed for shell-shock.
After the Somme, Mr McConnell continued to fight in other battles during World War One and was wounded three times in all.
It was his last injury that would prove most memorable.
Mr Hume explained: "He told me he had come face to face with a German soldier and tried to shoot him, but his rifle jammed.
"The German soldier winked at him, and shot him in the shoulder.
"He could have killed him, but he chose only to injure him instead. Such an injury was called a 'Blighty', because it got the recipient sent back to Britain."
Mr Hume, who spoke at Thursday night's event, said it had been an "honour" to interview Mr McConnell.
"I was very aware at the time that there weren't many Somme veterans left, and I have always seen it as an immense privilege to have met William McConnell and heard his stories."
Mark McKinty is a UUP councillor and assistant conductor of the Magheramorne silver band - William McConnell was honorary president at the time of his death.
He said: "William McConnell's family attended the service and we played Abide With Me at his graveside because that was his favourite hymn.
"When the UK is remembering men like William McConnell and his comrades, it's important for us to do something because the local community is very proud of him.
"When I am taking part in remembrance events and I think of William and all that he did, I walk two inches taller."


Richard E  Grant and Anna Chancellor will join the cast of Downton Abbey for the fifth series of the ITV drama.

Both actors will play guests of the Grantham family. Grant will play Simon Bricker and Chancellor will play Lady Anstruther.
Dame Harriet Walter will reprise her role as Lady Shackleton, alongside Peter Egan as Lord Flintshire.
24 star Rade Sherbedgia will play a Russian refugee who has fled the revolution after World War One.
Chancellor is currently starring in Sky's drama Fleming about James Bond writer Ian Fleming, while Grant is appearing in the new series of US show Girls.
'Romance'
Downton Abbey, which follows the Grantham family and their servants, will return to ITV later this year, after the show's executive producer ruled out the show coming to an end in the near future.
Gareth Neame promised that the fifth series would have "all the usual highs and lows, romance, drama and comedy".
Speculation over the show's future arose when its creator Julian Fellowes told a newspaper he would not be able to continue writing its storylines at the same time as working on his next project - The Gilded Age, described as an American version of Downton Abbey.
Series four of Downton Abbey achieved an average of 11.8 million viewers in the UK.
Last summer it was announced that Oscar-nominated Sideways star Paul Giamatti was joining the cast of Downton, as the "maverick, playboy" brother of Lady Grantham.
He joined the cast for the Christmas special, which was watched by 6.6 million on Christmas Day, rising to 9.4 million once catch-up services were taken into account.


A teenage blogger with terminal cancer has raised £1m for charity and posted a final message to his followers.

Stephen Sutton, 19, from Burntwood, in Staffordshire, was diagnosed with bowel cancer aged 15 and started raising funds for the Teenage Cancer Trust.
On Tuesday, he posted on Facebook: "It's a final thumbs up from me! I think this is just one hurdle too far."
Reacting to news that the total had passed £1m, Stephen tweeted "thank you all so much".
"The whole situation is just breathtaking in many ways!!" he added.
Dozens of people responded with their congratulations, including one who described Stephen as a "true inspiration", while another said he had "changed thousands of people's lives".
A day earlier he told his thousands of friends and followers on Facebook that it would be his last post and any further updates would be from family members.
He wrote: "It's a shame the end has come so suddenly. There's so many people I haven't got round to properly thank or say goodbye to. Apologies for that.
"I will continue fighting for as long as I can, and whatever happens next I want you all to know I am currently in a good place mentally and at ease with the situation.
"That's it from me. But life has been good. Very good."
Tuesday's messages prompted people to pledge more than £250,000 overnight with a further £200,000 coming in on Wednesday morning.
Comedian Jason Manford was among a number of celebrities who supported Stephen's fundraising over recent months.
He described the 19-year-old as "inspirational".
"He told me it was terminal [cancer]. You would think he would be depressed by it," Mr Manford said.
"He's not bitter about leaving the party early, he's just happy that he was invited to the party at all.
"At the age of 19 he's done more in the past few years than some people do in a lifetime."
Stephen used a bucket list featuring things he wanted to accomplish before he died to help raise funds and give other people the motivation to "enjoy life".
It included playing the drums in front of 90,000 people, hugging an elephant and getting a tattoo.


There has been a fire in the cabin of a ship at Lisahally Port, just outside Londonderry.

The Fire and Rescue Service said the alert was raised just before 07:00 GMT on Tuesday.
About 50 firefighters, including crews from the city and specialist teams from Belfast, worked to bring the fire under control. It has now been extinguished.
There were no reports of any injuries.


The US financial regulator has charged the Chinese units of five accounting firms - including the so-called Big Four - over refusing to hand over auditing data on China-based companies.

The companies are under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for "potential accounting fraud against US investors".
The China-based firms are publicly traded in the US.
An administrative law judge will schedule a hearing on the matter soon.
The five firms are the Chinese affiliates of the Big Four - Deloitte Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers - as well as the accounting firm BDO's China unit.
The SEC said the audit firms had refused to co-operate in the investigations. The firms are charged with the Securities Exchange Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires foreign public accounting firms to provide the SEC upon request with audit work papers involving any company trading on US markets.
"Only with access to work papers of foreign public accounting firms can the SEC test the quality of the underlying audits and protect investors from the dangers of accounting fraud," said Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's enforcement division.
"Firms that conduct audits knowing they cannot comply with laws requiring access to these work papers face serious sanctions."
Claims of fraud and questionable auditing standards at several US-listed Chinese companies, for example Sino-Forest Corporation, have dented investor confidence.
The scandals have prompted US regulators to react by demanding access to auditing documents kept in China by accounting firms.
China's state law says that Chinese company records can be claimed as state secrets. The firms have cited this in refusing to release their records.
Last year, the regulator asked a federal court to force Deloitte to reveal records for the Chinese company Longtop Financial Technologies, as part of an investigation into reports of fraud.
And in August, Hong Kong's market regulator said it was taking Ernst and Young to court to force it to reveal information on a former China-based client, in an unprecedented move.


Restaurants and other spaces catering to the public in France have been banned from offering unlimited sugary drinks in an effort to reduce obesity.

It is now illegal to sell unlimited soft drinks at a fixed price or offer them unlimited for free.
The number of overweight or obese people in France is below the EU average but is on the rise.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends taxing sugary drinks, linking them to obesity and diabetes.
Self-service "soda fountains" have long been a feature of family restaurants and cafes in some countries like the UK, where a soft drinks tax will be introduced next year.
The new law [in French] targets soft drinks, including sports drinks containing added sugar or sweeteners.
15.9%
are obese
Highest obesity in Malta 26%
Second lowest is Italy 10.7%
France 15.3%
Among children across EU 5.7%
All public eateries, from fast-food joints to school canteens, are affected.
The aim of the law is to "limit, especially among the young, the risks of obesity, overweight and diabetes" in line with WHO recommendations.
A recent Eurostat survey of adult obesity put the French at 15.3%, which is just below the EU average of 15.9%. France was slimmer than the UK (20.1%) but fatter than Italy (10.7%).
Past the age of 30, nearly 57% of French men are overweight or obese, according to a report published in October by the French medical journal Bulletin Epidemiologique Hebdomadaire.
Some 41% of women in the same age category are also overweight or obese, the study found.


Very few titles are won by golfers who putt badly, and no matter how supreme a player's ball striking is, such prowess will always be undone by a missed three-footer.

It is little wonder Rory McIlroy is being driven to distraction trying to settle upon a new putter as he heads into the meat of the 2017 season.
Last week in Connecticut, the Northern Irishman used three different models. And, in acknowledging that his best performance on the greens came on Sunday when he scored a six-under-par 64, he still admitted the standard of his putting was only "average".
On the same day, a 21-year-old Englishman called Harry Ellis knocked in putt after putt to come from four down with five to play to win the Amateur Championship at Royal St George's.
His sudden-death play-off triumph against Australia's Dylan Perry gave the Hampshire youngster a place at next month's Open at Royal Birkdale, as well as spots in the fields for the 2018 Masters and US Open.
The week before Ellis' victory, another Englishman, Tommy Fleetwood, came close to winning the US Open at Erin Hills. The Southport player was fourth in a performance notable for his assured display on the greens.
At the Masters in April, Sergio Garcia's efficiency with the putter helped land the Spaniard his first major title, denying Olympic champion Justin Rose in a play-off for the Augusta title.
Ellis, Fleetwood, Garcia and Rose have one thing in common on the greens. They use a split-handed pencil-style grip to wield the short stick.
In doing so they prove putting is an art rather than a science.
And no-one is celebrating their success more than a highly talented English octogenarian who claims to have invented this style more than 50 years ago.
Sports artist Paul Trevillion is the man responsible for the Roy of the Rovers cartoons and a string of newspaper strips, including the famous Gary Player instruction series syndicated globally to about 15,000 different papers.
This work with the South African great helped fuel Trevillion's passion for golf.  The 83-year-old actually gave up the sport when he missed a four-foot putt for an eagle at Enfield Golf Club back in the 1960s.
"I thought, 'you can't miss from four feet', and I started to study what I did wrong," Trevillion told BBC Sport. "I realised it was the left hand that was blocking and that I didn't hold a pencil with two hands.
"If I tried to draw a straight line the way I was holding a putter, I couldn't do it.  I could do a reasonably straight line but not a perfect straight line.
"So I thought, 'no, take the left hand out'. It allows the right hand to take the ball through on a straight line. That's all you need to do."
So convinced was Trevillion that he had found the secret to putting, he tried to convince all and sundry of his discovery. His theory was largely rejected and he was referred to as "the putter nutter".
"I was getting on everyone's nerves so eventually I let it go," Trevillion told me.  "I took the advice of [former golfer] Peter Alliss, who said 'look Paul, if you continue to preach, it will never be used and people will say you're only an artist, so forget it'."
But three-time Open champion Sir Henry Cotton did see merit in the method and urged golfers to "Give this Trevillion putting method an extensive trial".
However, it was only in America that he gained any traction. Trevillion was invited to tour the US to demonstrate his split-grip idea and at one stage this involved a putting contest with the mighty Billy Casper.
"There were 12 balls around the hole. Billy was one of the top three putters in the world at the time and he knocked in 10," Trevillion said.
"Then they put them all back up for me and I told them to just put up 11. I told them I didn't need 12 and I knocked all 11 into the hole."
In his time in the US, Trevillion made himself a dollar millionaire and won putting bets with people prepared to throw in their car keys to up the stakes.
His website still carries the boast "sink 1,000 and I will sink 1,001".
The Englishman wrote books on his technique, saying: "An artist never gets the yips. I aim at the hole and draw a straight line.
"Too often on TV you hear, 'he pushed the putt'… an artist never pushes a pencil."
To this day he maintains it is impossible to miss a putt inside four foot using his method, aiming straight at the hole regardless of borrow. This might not take account of modern green speeds, but he is adamant the technique is foolproof.
Seeing Garcia win the Masters was the crowning moment for someone who believes he was thinking 50 years ahead of his time on how to conquer golf's most maddening frustration.
"Have you ever seen a footballer score a goal and take his shirt off and run around the pitch? That's what I did, I ran out on the street," he said.
"I promise you, I was in tears. It was when Garcia won the Masters and they called it 'the pencil grip'."
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The Spaniard had clarified this terminology back in 2014 with a Twitter reply to the renowned putting exponent Ken Brown, who had sought explanation on the difference between "claw" and "pencil" grips.
Garcia tweeted: "Claw: fingers are more on top of the grip. Pencil: fingers are more on the side of the grip. I prefer the pencil grip!"
Which was vindication enough for Trevillion, who believes Fleetwood and the amateur Ellis are the best exponents of the method.
"They've got it about 90% right," he said.
"I watched Harry, he was four down with five to play and he had to hole the putts. He holed them.
"Fleetwood does it terrifically, Garcia's not quite so good but young Harry is the best."
So could the split-grip pencil method be the answer to McIlroy's putting woes?
Never would I feel qualified to make such a suggestion to a golfer of his immense talent, but I know a man who would.


Undercover journalist Mazher Mahmood, known as the "Fake Sheikh", has been jailed for 15 months for tampering with evidence in a case involving singer Tulisa Contostavlos.

The reporter, 53, and his driver Alan Smith, 67, were both found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice earlier this month.
Judge Gerald Gordon said Mahmood had wanted to "enhance" his reputation.
Smith was sentenced to 12 months, suspended for two years.
Immediately after the sentencing News UK announced that Mahmood - a former News Of The World investigations editor - had been sacked after working for the company for 25 years.
A company spokesman said any civil claims brought against the company over Mahmood's past work would be "vigorously defended".
The Fake Sheikh's most famous stings
Following the guilty verdict earlier this month, lawyers announced that 18 other people targeted by Mahmood - who also worked for the Sunday Times and Sun on Sunday - planned to bring civil claims against him, which could total Â£800m.
Some of the individuals were convicted of crimes which, they argued at the time, came as the result of false evidence.
Judge Gordon told the pair: "You, Alan Smith, agreed to and did alter your original witness statement to remove the passage that you both realised could be used to support Tulisa Contostavlos's case in an entrapment hearing.
"Mazher Mahmood, it was your idea. You were the intended beneficiary and you made use of a loyal person, partly an employee, in order to achieve your purpose.
"The motive was to preserve and enhance your reputation.
"You wanted another scalp and Miss Contostavlos's conviction would have achieved that.
"And to achieve that, when you saw a problem, you were prepared for the court to be deceived."
As Mahmood was sent down, a man, believed to be one of Mahmood's alleged victims, shouted from the public gallery "your turn now Mazher".
After the sentencing hearing, former London's Burning star John Alford, whose case is among those being taken up by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, said: "It's taken over 20 years for some of us, but finally a judge and a jury of our peers has woken up to Mazher Mahmood's lies.
"We would now like to ask Parliament to honour their promise to the British people and implement Leveson part two.
"Our three estates, the monarch, our Parliament and our judicial system, must be held accountable, yes?
"But they must not be held to ransom by a corrupt or unscrupulous press. So please let's cleanse this stain on our democracy once and for all."
The first part of the Leveson inquiry, in 2011-2012, examined press ethics, but hearings into ties between newspapers and the police were put on hold amid criminal inquiries over phone hacking.
Former page three model Emma Morgan, who plans to sue Mahmood over a drugs sting in the 1990s, said: "As far as a guilty man receiving 15 months jail, of which he's going to serve seven and a half months, at the end of his career, I don't think it's quite the same as what he gave me in a sense.
"It was a life sentence at the very beginning of my career."
Mahmood's lawyer, John Kelsey-Fry QC, had said his client stood before the court as a "very frightened man".
"Whatever people say of him today, that career has provided some valuable service," he said.
"He has brought catastrophe upon himself and a lifetime's work will be forever tarnished."
During the trial at London's Old Bailey, the court heard that Miss Contostavlos had been targeted by Mahmood, posing as an influential film producer who wanted her to star in a Hollywood blockbuster.
Mahmood met the singer at the Metropolitan Hotel in London in 2013 and she allegedly arranged for him to be sold half an ounce of cocaine by one of her contacts for Â£800.
The former N-Dubz star and X Factor judge was later arrested and charged with being concerned in the supply of a class A drug, after Mahmood, from Purley, south London, handed evidence to police.
But her trial was eventually thrown out, the Old Bailey was told, after driver Smith was found to have changed his police statement, removing comments that she made to him expressing her disapproval of hard drugs.
A News UK spokesman said Mahmood was originally suspended pending an internal inquiry after the Tulisa Contostavlos trial collapsed, but the inquiry had been superseded by the criminal process.
Mahmood had led "scores of successful investigations" during his 25-year career with the company which had "led to the exposure of criminality and wrongdoing".
"It is a source of great regret that his time with the company should end in this manner," he said.


Lawyers in the US have filed a petition seeking the release of an Afghan family detained in the US, despite having valid entry visas.

A couple and their three young children were taken into custody shortly after their arrival at Los Angeles International Airport last week.
They had Special Immigrant Visas, granted for work done for the US military that put their lives at risk.
Afghanistan was not among the countries listed on a now blocked US travel ban.
The original order prohibited the entry of immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, but has since been halted by US federal courts. The Trump administration is preparing a new executive order.
A petition for the release of the Afghan family was filed by the International Refugee Assistance Project, which said the family had been taken into custody "with absolutely no justification" and it was a violation of due process rights under the US constitution.
The man was detained in a maximum-security detention facility in Orange County, California, Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project,  told AP news agency on Sunday.
Though his wife and children - aged seven years, six years and eight months- were initially taken to a similar facility in Los Angeles, they were later moved to a hotel, she said.
The Special Immigrant Visas, created by Congress for citizens from Iraq and Afghanistan, can be granted to to those who have helped the US military as drivers, interpreters and in other jobs, which often put their lives at risk in those countries.
One of the lawyers defending the family said it was "extremely unusual if not entirely unique" for someone who holds this special visa to be detained upon arrival.
"The visas require extreme vetting to get," said Talia Inlender, a lawyer with the legal aid group Public Counsel.
The petition filed in US District Court in Santa Ana, California, south of Los Angeles, also said that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents has held the family in isolation without access to legal counsel.
"Despite repeated requests, the CBP has provided no information regarding why the family was detained, whether they have been questioned, and whether any reason at all exists to justify their continued detention," the petition said.


Darren Clarke says he wants to be Europe's 2016 Ryder Cup captain at Hazeltine National in Minnesota, USA.

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The Northern Irishman, who has won the cup four times as a player, expects an announcement on the new captain to be made next Wednesday, 18 February.
Clarke, 46, is favourite for the coveted role, ahead of Spain's Miguel Angel Jimenez.
"If it's Miguel, I would be delighted for him, but I would love to do the job," Clarke told BBC Northern Ireland.
"To be the captain is huge, but he is only there to steer the players. It's not about the captain, it's about the team."
A five-man European Tour selection panel, including 2014-winning captain Paul McGinley, will make the decision.
Europe retained the trophy at the 40th Ryder Cup 16½-11½ against the United States at Gleneagles in September.
It was the eighth win in 10 meetings for Europe.
Clarke added: "I've got very, very special memories of the event and I'm fortunate to have played in many winning teams. Those memories I will cherish for ever."
The United States will host the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine between 30 September and 2 October.


Blackpool owner Owen Oyston has said the club is "not for sale" despite revealing his son Karl has stepped down as chief executive.

Oyston senior attended a public meeting with members of the League Two club's Supporters Trust (BST) on Saturday.
He was heckled throughout as he attempted to answer questions from the floor at the Blackpool Hilton hotel.
Fans chanted "Oyston out" and "get out of our club" during the meeting, which lasted just over an hour.
Oyston was invited to make a rare appearance in front of supporters by trust chairman Steve Rowland.
At the end of the meeting, Oyston was escorted from the function room by security guards.
Blackpool, who were relegated for the third time in five seasons in May, have been owned by the Oyston family since 1988.
Relations between supporters and the owners have deteriorated since the club's relegation after one season in the Premier League in 2010-11.
This season, the club will play in the fourth tier for the first time since 2000-01.
BST launched a £16m bid to buy Blackpool in July 2015 but Oyston, whose son Karl is to continue as chairman, eventually ended those takeover talks.
Alex Cowdy will replace Karl as chief executive as Blackpool prepare for the coming season under new manager Gary Bowyer.


Kris Meeke edged out Sebastian Ogier to lead by 10.3 seconds after the first day of the World Rally Championship round at Corsica.

The Citroen driver from Dungannon won three out of the four stages in the Tour de Course.
Ogier stayed within touching distance of the Meeke, who is aiming to follow up his dramatic victory in Rally Mexico with another win.
Huyundai's Thierry Neuville holds third, 25.8 seconds off the lead.
Meeke took control early on the first Asphalt round of the season, winning the opening stage before adding two more stage wins before the end of the day .
Four-time world champion Ogier was fastest in SS3 in his M-Sport Ford to cut Meeke's advantage to just over eight seconds, however he responded on the final stage to extend his advantage over 10 seconds.
"It's been a good day," said Meeke, 37. "You always have to be wary of Seb, because he never gives up. But I'm comfortable with my pace, so let's see how we go on Saturday."
Meeke's Citroen team-mate Craig Breen holds an impressive fourth, with the Waterford driver locked in a tight battle with Spaniard Dani Sordo.


Plans for a 285 home development have been approved for a derelict former naval base in Suffolk.

HMS Ganges at Shotley Gate was last used as a police training base until 2001.
Galliard Homes has been granted planning permission to develop the site by Babergh District Council.
The plans also include a hotel, a 60 bed nursing home, retail and commercial units and a commitment to restore the listed ceremonial mast.
The site had been the subject of 16 planning applications since 2001, including many smaller ones which were approved but not implemented.
An application for 325 homes was turned down by the government in 2006.
Several parish councils raised objections that the latest plan would create too much extra traffic on the B1456 to Ipswich.
Councillor Peter Beer, chairman of Babergh's development committee, said he was "confident the impact on the environment, heritage and ecology could be minimised, whilst creating new homes and jobs".
"We took the concerns about traffic to heart and the county's highways department decided the development was acceptable.
"The application retains many of the existing buildings and the mast, which is a real landmark and nearly beyond repair, will get re-instated which is great news."
Galliard Homes will provide investment in community facilities, including Â£437,000 for local education and Â£83,980 for health services, as part of the development.
The council said the approval also committed Galliard to provide funding to look at improving the foot ferry service to Harwich and Felixstowe and local cycle routes and restoring the base's indoor swimming pool.


A large fire at the derelict North Wales Hospital site in Denbighshire has been put out after five hours.

Firefighters were called to the Grade II-listed building outside Denbigh at 16:28 GMT on Monday.
Four appliances and an aerial ladder platform were used to tackle the blaze and crews will remain there for some time, damping down.
The building's roof collapsed in September, prompting police to label the site "dangerous".
The former psychiatric hospital has been at the centre of a long-running dispute over its future.
It was also the target of arson attacks in 2016.


Musical film La La Land leads the pack in this year's Golden Globe nominations, with seven nods in total.

Damien Chazelle's movie is up for best musical or comedy film, while there are acting nominations for its stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
Chazelle is up for best film director and it is also nominated for original screenplay, score and song.
Coming-of-age drama Moonlight is close behind with six nominations, including best drama film.
British actress Naomie Harris is up for best supporting actress for her role as a drug addict in the film.
Manchester by the Sea, about a caretaker who finds himself taking in his teenage nephew, has five nods - best drama film, original screenplay, director for Kenneth Lonergan, actor for Casey Affleck and supporting actress for Michelle Williams.
The other best drama actor nominees are Joel Edgerton for Loving, Andrew Garfield for Hacksaw Ridge, Viggo Mortensen for Captain Fantastic and Denzel Washington for Fences.
Natalie Portman is favourite for the best drama actress award for playing Jacqueline Kennedy in the biopic Jackie.
She will face competition from Arrival's Amy Adams, Jessica Chastain for Miss Sloane, Isabelle Huppert for Elle and Ruth Negga for Loving.
World War II biopic Hacksaw Ridge, Texan family drama Hell or High Water and Indian/Australian coming-of-age movie Lion are also up for best drama film.
BBC series The Night Manager has fared well in the TV categories, with nods for its British stars Olivia Colman, Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. It is also up for best limited series.
The Golden Globe nominations contained few real surprises and in many ways have confirmed, rather than changed the direction of this year's film awards race, which will culminate with the Oscars in February.
Since it opened the Venice Film Festival in August, La La Land has been seen as the frontrunner for best film and best director at the Academy Awards, with its main rivals remaining Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea.
Although the Golden Globes offers twice as many lead acting categories as the Baftas or the Oscars, today has done little to change the perception that Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) and Emma Stone (La La Land) remain the favourites for the best actor and best actress Academy Awards.
Perhaps most notable is the performance of Moonlight, with just one nomination fewer than La La Land. The Miami-set story of a young black man dealing with his sexuality now looks like the leading film to help end the race controversy of the last two years, with Mahershala Ali heavily tipped to win best supporting actor.
And while Fences performed less strongly overall, Viola Davis is also thought likely to win best supporting actress. A welcome sign that after two years of #OscarsSoWhite, next year's Academy Awards nominations are likely to be more diverse - and on top of that the favourites to win in two of the acting categories are black.
Olivia Colman faces fellow Brit Thandie Newton (Westworld) for best supporting actress in a limited TV series, as well as Game of Thrones star Lena Heady plus Chrissy Metz and Mandy Moore, who are both recognised for family comedy drama This Is Us.
The Night Of's British star Riz Ahmed is nominated alongside Hiddleston for best actor in a limited TV series. They are up against Bryan Cranston for All the Way, John Turturro for for The Night Of and Courtney B Vance for American Crime Story: OJ Simpson v The People.
American Crime Story: OJ Simpson v The People is also recognised, with acting nominations for John Travolta, Sterling K Brown and Sarah Paulson alongside Vance. The drama is also up for best limited series.
In the movie categories, Disney's Zootopia and Moana are among those up for best animated feature film, alongside Kubo and the Strings, My Life as A Zucchini and Sing.
Florence Foster Jenkins, based on the true story of a New York heiress who dreams of being an opera star, has four nominations, including a 30th Golden Globe nod for Meryl Streep and one for Hugh Grant.
It is also up for best comedy or musical film alongside La La Land, 20th Century Woman, Deadpool and Irish film Sing Street, which was written and directed by Once film-maker John Carney.
Other actors recognised in the musical/comedy category include Colin Farrell (The Lobster), Jonah Hill (War Dogs) and Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool).
Alongside La La Land's Stone and Streep in best actress in a musical or comedy film category are Lily Collins (Rules Don't Apply), Hailee Steinfeld (The Edge of Seventeen) and Annette Bening (20th Century Women).
Sully, starring Tom Hanks, was a notable omission from the list, as was with Martin Scorsese's Silence.
The Golden Globes will be handed out in Los Angeles on 8 January at a ceremony hosted by Jimmy Fallon.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.


A football fan who was brain damaged during an attack after a match has returned home, a year after the incident.

Cambridge United supporter Simon Dobbin, 43, had been in hospital since the fracas in Southend last March.
His wife Nicole said she was "really excited" to have him back at their house in Mildenhall, Suffolk.
He is still unable to talk, walk or eat solid food, but it is hoped he will make further progress at home.
Mr Dobbin was attacked outside The Railway pub while on the way home from Southend's Roots Hall stadium on 21 March.
Essex Police arrested a total of 17 men on suspicion of assault or violent disorder following the attack. The Crown Prosecution Service is still considering if charges are to be brought against 13 people.
Live updates on this story and others here
Mrs Dobbin said: "It was a year ago he walked out of the house and now it's a year later he's coming back and I'm just so excited.
"He has still got a long road ahead of him but I'm just hoping that when he comes home he'll make better progress."
His face "lit up" when she told him he was going home, Mrs Dobbin added.
Mrs Dobbin and their 17-year-old daughter Emily have spent the last year travelling to see him in hospital in Norwich.
"It seems like the last year has gone really quickly but it didn't at the time," she said.
He is aware of who they are and "was saying a few words a few months ago" but now cannot communicate apart from to say "yes", she added.
A hospital bed, a reclining chair and a hoist have all been installed at their home but they need to make further changes, she said.
She said the family could get up to Â£30,000 of state support to make the changes, but needed to raise an extra Â£20,000 on top of that.


A Brazilian samba school that highlighted the environmental impact caused by the collapse of a dam has been crowned champions of the Rio de Janeiro carnival.

During its parade, one of Portela's floats depicted the destruction of the River Doce in 2015.
The dam was used to hold waste at an iron ore mine near the city of Mariana.
Portela is Rio's most successful samba school but it had not won the world-famous parade for 33 years.
A panel of judges gave it top marks in most categories, including costumes, rhythm and the quality of the samba song composed for this year's carnival.
Thousands of supporters began celebrating as soon as the final mark was read out at Rio's Sambadrome.
Portela scored 269.9 points to 269.8 for runners-up Mocidade.
One of Rio's most traditional samba schools, it had been eclipsed by younger rivals in the past decades, failing to win the carnival title since 1984.
"The wait is over," said Portela's president, Luis Carlos Magalhaes. "We won't need to mention that anymore."
In this year's parade, Portela focused on The Source of Life: the stories, myths and legends surrounding some of the world's best known rivers, including the Nile and the Mississippi.
It used its floats and the predominantly blue and white costumes of its 3,400 members to develop the story during the 75-minute-long parade.
"We deserved to win, more than anyone else," said Mr Magalhaes. "We worked very hard."


Monday will see the first extraordinary meeting of Fifa since May's corruption scandal whipped through its senior ranks.

There will be plenty on the agenda, including a possible announcement on some, or all, of its plans to reform the damaged organisation.
What we will know for certain is when president Sepp Blatter's successor will be chosen.
I'm told 16 December is still the preferred date.
However Blatter's desire to stick around a while longer before departing may see the emergency Fifa congress - which will be attended by all 209 member states - slip to early 2016.
Either way the clock is now ticking for those wishing to be the next leader of world football.
So far there have only been a handful of declarations, principally from individuals who are well-intentioned but have little chance of winning.
The big beasts of football politics are still to pounce.
The reasons? Many are thought to be holding off because of concerns about the state of the organisation they will inherit.
Others are simply waiting to see who makes the first move.
Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, for example, may decide not to run again if Uefa president Michel Platini enters the race. That despite Ali polling 73 votes in May's ballot.
Fifa is already involved in two criminal investigations. With the threat of further action and arrests still to come, the organisation is set to be mired in legal disputes for many years to come.
But someone will have to lead once Blatter departs.
The rules dictate presidential candidates must have been involved in football for two of the past five years.
They then have to gain the support of five football associations in order to validate their place on the ballot paper.
It's a difficult hurdle to clear - just ask Jerome Champagne and David Ginola, who both failed in their attempts to become qualified candidates in the election just gone.
There are some, including the Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore, who would like to see a candidate untainted by past scandal and with a corporate track record come forward.
Speaking to me earlier this month, Scudamore said: "The problem with the football politician is that it's all about votes. In some ways Fifa needs someone who can transcend that, who is a more unifying candidate.
"Quite frankly, we need some new names and some new thinking.
"It probably needs someone from one of the emerging nations or at least someone who is independent from what has gone on in the past."
But the rules as they stand prevent anyone from outside football entering the contest.
Much has already been said about the potential candidacies of individuals such as Platini, Champagne, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, David Chung, Issa Hayatou, Ted Howard, Musa Bility and others.
In due course, the field will thin out and the true contenders will come forward.
But one man who hasn't been mentioned as a possible runner is Domenico Scala, appointed in 2012 as Fifa's independent head of audit and compliance.
His position was spun by Fifa at the time as a crucial part of the ultimately botched reform process undertaken in light of several previous electoral and financial scandals.
Fast forward to last month and it was the Swiss-Italian who was present when Blatter dramatically announced he would "lay down his mandate" and call for a fresh election.
That day Scala spoke of how Blatter, in promising to resign, had "created an opportunity for us to go further than Fifa has before - to fundamentally change the way in which Fifa is structured".
"Nothing will be off the table, including the structure and composition of the executive committee and the way in which members of the executive committee are elected," he added.
"These steps will ensure that the organisation cannot be used by those seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of the game."
It was a clear statement on the work he feels Fifa must now undertake. In another context, it would work well as a manifesto.
Scala has backed up those words in recent weeks - most notably when Blatter tested the water on a possible resignation U-turn.
"The times of flirting with the power are definitely gone," he said in a terse statement.
"I call on all concerned - including Mr Blatter - to endorse in the interest of the reforms unequivocally the announced changing of the guard at the top of Fifa."
There are clear reputational risks for Scala in being involved with Fifa given the crisis that has enveloped it. As such, his statement reminding Blatter that he needs to stick to his word is unquestionably part of a desire to remain untainted.
However the strength of his declaration on the need for Blatter to go demonstrates that a big role in Fifa's new leadership team should not be discounted for him just yet.
On paper he has all the attributes required to run a large, financially strong organisation given his strong corporate background.
He knows Fifa's structural flaws and strengths intimately, having worked inside the organisation for over three years (and he therefore passes the first stage of the eligibility test).
Significantly, he's also untainted by any previous scandal and played no part in the controversial decisions to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cup awards to Russia and Qatar respectively.
However there are those who will feel that having worked so closely with Blatter he is part of the old regime and should leave as part of a clean break with the organisation's toxic past.
To be clear, Scala has not given a clear indication he has political ambition nor that he will indeed seek a nomination.
But with Fifa set to make an announcement about the new election date there is still time for him to make a move.
At the very least, with Jerome Valcke's future highly uncertain in a post-Blatter world, the job of secretary general could appeal to him.
A Scala presidency could also be acceptable to Blatter.
That's potentially significant as the level of enmity between Blatter and Platini means the former is likely to be searching for a candidate to block his arch-critic should he decide to stand.
Scala's candidacy could therefore provide Blatter with an acceptable heir to his kingdom - and, as he sees it, an ideologically sound successor.
This election race may be about to get even more intriguing.


Through the barbed wire fence, the signs are there - tips of blackened trees and patches of scorched earth where a fire engulfed large parts of Moria, the biggest migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.

By Tuesday, 12 hours after the blaze, damaged tents had already been cleared away and most of the residents of this sprawling facility had returned after escaping the flames and sleeping out in the bush.
The metaphor of the inferno was clear. For months, anger has been building in Moria as asylum applications were delayed and migrants were held in an overcrowded camp. Moria has capacity for 3,500 - but about 5,000 live here in stretched facilities.
"Fighting broke out between blacks and Afghans," says Kingsley, a Ghanaian man whom we spoke to through the fence, the authorities not allowing us in. "They were throwing stones at each other and there was an argument over food. The fire caused a lot of damage and my luggage was destroyed."
Does he have hopes of staying in Europe, I ask?
"We've been given papers that say we'll probably have to return to Turkey," he replied. "But I have hope in God."
The EU deal struck to deport failed asylum seekers to Turkey and then back to their country of origin significantly cut the numbers of new arrivals here. But the quid pro quo was supposed to be visa-free travel for Turks travelling to the EU's Schengen zone in return.
It hasn't happened, as Brussels says Turkey needs to amend its broad anti-terror legislation. Ankara has refused and the deal is foundering, sparking fears that new arrivals here will again soar.
In the wider Lesbos community, there's also growing anger over the continued migrant presence. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has stoked it, organising protests and exploiting the tension. It could prompt more flare-ups here.
With the burnt tents removed and new ones brought in, Moria has an air of permanence.
There are holes in the fences - the residents sometimes wander out, through the litter-strewn forest around it.
But there's little place to go. The doors of the Balkans remain closed and the desperate are being kept here until Europe decides what to do with them.


Gay rights activists have expressed fears about Nigeria's tightening of laws against homosexuals.

New legislation, signed into law by the president without announcement, bans same-sex marriages, gay groups and shows of same-sex public affection.
It is already illegal to have gay sex in Nigeria - now same-sex couples could face up to 14 years in prison.
Nigerian activist Bisi Alimi told the BBC the law would also affect those trying to assist gay people.
"You're not allowed to provide services to anyone who is perceived to be homosexual," said Mr Alimi, who heads the UK-based gay rights group Kaleidoscope International Diversity Trust.
"When you say that services will not be provided, what you're saying is that HIV services that are catering for men who have sex with men will have to stop," he told the BBC's Newsday programme.
The new law recommends prison sentences of up to 10 years for anyone who participates in gay clubs or organisations and for same-sex couples who publicly show affection.
"Any person who registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies and organisations or directly or indirectly makes public show of same-sex amorous relationship in Nigeria commits an offence and shall each be liable on conviction to a term of 10 years in prison," the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act says.
The act, which was adopted by the Senate in 2011 and passed by the lower house of parliament last May, was signed by President Goodluck Jonathan earlier this month.
"This is a law that is in line with the people's cultural and religious inclination. So it is a law that is a reflection of the beliefs and orientation of Nigerian people," presidential spokesman Reuben Abati told the Associated Press news agency.
According to AP, the few Nigerian gay and human rights activists who tried to give evidence last year during the parliamentary debate were heckled and booed until one broke into tears and another could not be heard.
The US has also expressed its concern about the new legislation.
It dangerously restricted "freedom of assembly, association and expression for all Nigerians", US Secretary of State John Kerry said.
He said the act was "inconsistent with Nigeria's international legal obligations and undermines the democratic reforms and human rights protections enshrined in its 1999 constitution".
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay described the law as "draconian".
"Rarely have I seen a piece of legislation that in so few paragraphs directly violates so many basic, universal human rights," she said.
A number of other African nations have already made homosexuality punishable by jail sentences.
In December, Ugandan MPs passed a bill increasing sentences for homosexual acts to life in jail and making it punishable by a prison term not to report gay people.
The controversial legislation has yet to be signed into law by the Ugandan president.


A leading health research charity says drugs companies may "retreat" from dementia research without more support.

Alzheimer's Research UK says more government help is needed to ensure the industry does not "retreat" from the challenge of finding new drugs.
The warning follows disappointing results in recent clinical trials.
The pharmaceutical industry body, the ABPI, says there are over 200 medicines under development for Alzheimer's.
It is estimated that more than 800,000 people in the UK have dementia. The majority have Alzheimer's disease.
The numbers affected are growing fast, and the search for new treatments is becoming more urgent.
But this summer two big trials have reported disappointing results. The drugs - bapineuzumab and solanezumab - failed to show benefits that researchers had hoped to see.
Alzheimer's Research UK fears companies may decide that putting resources into dementia is too risky. The charity's science director, Dr Eric Karran, said the trial setbacks were "very disappointing". He warned that companies could be deterred from investing in dementia.
"If you're running a business and you have options to find important new medicines in cancer, in diabetes or in neuroscience inevitably I think you have to place your bets where ultimately you will get a better chance of a return on your investment."
Dr Karran said there was a need for a new model of funding to ensure the pharmaceutical industry does not "retreat" from this challenging field of research.
"Now is certainly not the time to be giving up. But we need to accept that this is a challenging area and really bring all of our resources together from the pharmaceutical industry, from academia and from government, to tackle it."
In response, the chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, Stephen Whitehead, insisted that companies were still working on new dementia treatments.
"The industry continues to address unmet medical need in Alzheimer's as well as other neurodegenerative diseases, which are serious health challenges facing all societies with ageing demographics. Hence there is a pipeline of over 200 candidate medicines in various stages of development for Alzheimer's disease."
In March this year the prime minister said extra funding for research was a central part of his plan to tackle what he called the "national crisis" of dementia. Overall funding will increase to more than 66 million pounds by 2015.
In a statement, Andrew Chidgey from the Alzheimer's Society, said given the scale of the problem, funding for dementia was still far too low.
"Currently there are 150 times more clinical trials focusing on treating people in the late stages of cancer than Alzheimer's disease. One in three people over the age of 65 will die with dementia. More funding for research is urgently needed if we are to defeat the condition once and for all."


President Donald Trump has defended embattled Fox News host Bill O'Reilly amid reports of settlements with five women who sued him for harassment.

"I think he's a person I know well - he is a good person," Mr Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday from the White House, surrounded by his aides.
"I think he shouldn't have settled; personally I think he shouldn't have settled," the president added.
Dozens of advertisers have pulled commercials from The O'Reilly Factor.
"I don't think Bill did anything wrong," Mr Trump told the New York Times, adding that "he should have taken it all the way" to court.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that settlements of $13m (Â£10.4m) were reached with five women who accused Mr O'Reilly of inappropriate behaviour.
Since then, about 26 firms - including Mercedes Benz, BMW and Advil - have withdrawn advertisements from Mr O'Reilly's show.
The scandal poses a problem for Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News because The O'Reilly Factor is the cable network's most popular show, with four million viewers a night.
Mr O'Reilly - who is reportedly paid $18m (Â£14m) a year - has so far remained silent about the allegations on his nightly programme this week.
In 2004 when he was accused by a Fox News producer of making sexually suggestive phone calls, he took to the airwaves to defend himself.
He called the case "the single most evil thing I have ever experienced, and I've seen a lot".
On Tuesday night, an advert for Coldwell Banker ran, but the real estate company tweeted afterwards: "We were disappointed that our ad ran on O'Reilly as it wasn't part of our intentional media programming. We pulled future ads from the show."
The other companies include GlaxoSmithKline, Hyundai, Constant Contact, UNTUCKit, Sanofi, Allstate, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition/Rachael Ray Nutrish, T. Rowe Price, Mitsubishi, Wayfair, MileIQ, Lexus, Bayer, Esurance, Credit Karma, True Car, The Wonderful Company, Society of Human Resources Management, Suburu, and Orkin.
In June 2016, Mr Trump defended then-Fox News chairman Roger Ailes when he faced allegations of sexual assault at the cable network.
"I can tell you that some of the women that are complaining," said Mr O'Reilly, "I know how much he's helped them.
"And now all of a sudden they're saying these horrible things about him."
Mr Ailes later left Fox over the claims.
Earlier this month, President Trump signed a presidential proclamation declaring April to be National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.
During last year's election campaign, Mr Trump apologised after a 2005 video emerged of him making obscene boasts about groping women.


A Cardiff theatre producer has admitted falsifying bank statements to show £29,000 was available to fund a play in order to obtain the money himself.

Freelance worker Michael Salmon, 30, from Grangetown, led the production Cosy at Wales Millennium Centre.
He pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud at Cardiff Crown Court on Thursday and the case was adjourned for sentencing.
The deception took place between May 2015 and February 2016.
Salmon had written a false letter in support of the production to the Arts Council of Wales and produced false bank statements showing £29,000 was available to fund it.
He also made a false representation to Arts Admin Ltd, saying a grant of £26,394 was going to be spent on it.
Salmon was released on bail and will be sentenced on 16 June.
Wales Millennium Centre managing director Mathew Milsom said no funding contributions or applications were made.
He added: "Michael Salmon was a freelance producer for the play Cosy and not directly employed by Wales Millennium Centre.
"The centre's involvement in the project extended solely to some technical support and presenting the production at the centre."


A 32-year-old man has appeared in court in Dublin charged with the murder of Patricia O'Connor.

Ms O'Connor, who was 61, and from Rathfarnham in south Dublin, was reported missing on 2 June.
Her remains were found in several locations in the Wicklow Mountains, south of Dublin, over the past week.
A Garda (Irish police) detective told the court that Kieran Green, 32, with an address in Mountain View Park in Rathfarnham, was arrested on Thursday.
The detective told the court that when he was charged with the murder, Mr Green said "it was self defence".
The judge said due to the seriousness of the charge there was no question of bail and remanded Mr Green in custody.
She asked about legal aid and the accused's solicitor said his client is on social welfare and has an adult and four children as dependants.
He said his only request for his client was that he would receive a medical assessment in custody and be given any medical assistance required.


Crystal Palace loanee Mamadou Sakho could miss the remainder of the season with strained knee ligaments.

Scott Dann and James Tomkins are also sidelined, so Martin Kelly and Damien Delaney might be paired at centre-back.
Burnley will be without Joey Barton, who has been banned for 18 months, while defender Ben Mee is a doubt with a shin injury.
Stephen Ward should be fit after a knee problem, and Sam Vokes and Scott Arfield could also be available.
Jonathan Pearce: "Nerves will be jangling for this.
"Realistically, Palace need one more win for safety. Six wins in eight games prior to Wednesday's defeat by Spurs suggests they have to form to do it against a Burnley side who have not won at Selhurst Park since 2001.
"But injuries to Dann, Sakho and Tomkins leaves their defence looking vulnerable.
"Burnley have slipped dangerously towards relegation again with just one win in 11. They've not gone a season without an away victory since 1903 but a first of the campaign will surely see them safe as well.
"The Selhurst atmosphere and in-form Wilfred Zaha may edge it for Palace."
Crystal Palace manager Sam Allardyce: "The lads need to motivate themselves to get to the level they have been to beat Burnley and put it to bed once and for all, get past the 40-point mark and be safe.
"It is a big effort I will be asking for the players to give.
"Everyone says 'keep your mouth shut' - you don't want it to bite you back, but I think 41 points will be enough."
Burnley manager Sean Dyche: "It's now about everything we've learned over the season and delivering performances in these last four games.
"We as a club, without a shadow of a doubt, are in really good shape going into this last bunch of games.
"But we aren't naïve enough to think it takes care of itself, because it doesn't. We have to take care of what we need to."
Crystal Palace are running out of centre-halves after losing Mamadou Sakho to injury but, at the other end, they always pose problems.
Burnley were brushed aside by Manchester United last time out and it might take a little while longer before they banish their relegation fears.
Prediction: 2-1
Lawro's full predictions v Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar
Head-to-head
Crystal Palace
Burnley
SAM (Sports Analytics Machine) is a super-computer created by @ProfIanMcHale at the University of Salford that is used to predict the outcome of football matches.


Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has met several high-profile conservative figures in US politics to extend an olive branch.

The site has been accused of tampering with its Trending Topics feature, promoting "progressive" views and websites over content presenting views from the American right.
Mr Zuckerberg has denied the reports - which first appeared on tech news site Gizmodo - were accurate, though the site did concede that the feature was controlled by human editors rather than a popularity algorithm.
After Wednesday's meeting at the company's headquarters in California, he wrote on his Facebook page: "This afternoon I hosted more than a dozen leading conservatives to talk about how we can make sure Facebook continues to be a platform for all ideas across the political spectrum.
"Silicon Valley has a reputation for being liberal. But the Facebook community includes more than 1.6 billion people of every background and ideology - from liberal to conservative and everything in between.
"We've built Facebook to be a platform for all ideas. Our community's success depends on everyone feeling comfortable sharing anything they want. It doesn't make sense for our mission or our business to suppress political content or prevent anyone from seeing what matters most to them."
Facebook earlier confirmed to the BBC that those travelling to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, included:
It is understood that several others declined Mr Zuckerberg's offer.
Matthew Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, wrote in a statement: "We will not be attending this meeting. We know one meeting cannot possibly resolve all of the above mentioned issues."
Glenn Beck, writing on his Facebook page, said: " It would be interesting to look him in the eye as he explains and a win for all voices if we can come to a place of real trust with this powerful tool.
"While they are a private business and I support their right to run it any way they desire without government interference, it would be wonderful if a tool like Facebook independently chose to hold up freedom of speech and freedom of association as a corporate principle."
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC and on Facebook


A 58-year-old man arrested after another man died at a country park in Cardiff has been released on bail pending further inquiries.

Police were called to Forest Farm Country Park, near Coryton, just after 16:45 BST on Thursday.
A 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene.
Anyone with information is asked to call South Wales Police on 101.


The US space agency, Nasa, has suspended the March launch of its next mission to Mars because of a fault in a key research instrument.

Nasa said a problem with a seismometer provided by the French space agency meant the launch could not go ahead.
It is feared the mission could now face a two-year delay.
The InSight spacecraft was scheduled to take off between 4-30 March and land on the Red Planet six months later to examine Mars' geology in depth.
Nasa said it had decided to call off the launch because the agency was unable to fix a leak affecting the seismometer, which required a vacuum seal to cope with harsh conditions on Mars.
The instrument is designed to measure ground movements.
"A decision on a path forward will be made in the coming months, but one thing is clear: Nasa remains fully committed to the scientific discovery and exploration of Mars," Nasa's John Grunsfeld was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
The next time the earth and Mars are favourably aligned for a launch will be in 2018.
The mission is also intended to monitor the temperature on Mars, as well as the variations in its orbit.


A group of prominent Nigerians has called on President Muhammadu Buhari, 74, to take medical leave, amid growing concern about his health.

There was an "apparent deterioration" in his health following his failure to attend the last two cabinet meetings, the group said.
Mr Buhari took about seven weeks of medical leave in January, and flew to the UK for treatment.
When he returned home in March, he said he had never been so ill in his life.
Mr Buhari has not disclosed his illness, but hinted that he had had a blood transfusion.
Information Minister Lai Mohammed told the BBC that the president's health was "a personal matter".
Nigerians have been kept aware of his condition, he added.
'Take a rest'
The 13-member group included some of the Nigeria's most influential civil society figures, including lawyer Femi Falana, political analyst Jibrin Ibrahim, and Transparency International Nigeria head Anwal Musa Rafsanjani.
In their statement, they said the president had not been seen in public for the last week, and his absence from the cabinet meetings, as well as the weekly Friday Muslim prayers, "has fuelled further speculation and rumours" about his medical condition.
The 13 said they felt "compelled" to ask Mr Buhari "to heed the advice of his personal physicians by taking a rest to attend to his health without any further delay".
Mr Buhari's personal assistant Bashir Ahmed said the president had met Justice Minister Abubakar Malami and other officials at the presidential villa on Tuesday as part of his official duties.
Last week, presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said Mr Buhari was "taking things slowly, as he fully recovers from the long period of treatment" in the UK.
Buhari's unhealthy start to 2017
19 January: Leaves for UK on "medical vacation"
5 February: Asks parliament to extend medical leave
10 March: Returns home but does not resume work immediately
26 April: Misses second cabinet meeting and is "working from home"
28 April: Misses Friday prayers


Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel took a dominant victory in the Japanese Grand Prix to put himself in a strong position to win the world title.

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Championship leader Fernando Alonso of Ferrari retired on the first lap and had to watch as Vettel cut his lead to four points.
Alonso suffered a puncture when he was hit from behind by Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen.
1. Sebastian Vettel - Red Bull 1:28.56
2. Felipe Massa - Ferrari +00:20.64
3. Kamui Kobayashi - Sauber +00:24.54
4. Jenson Button - McLaren +00:25.54
5. Lewis Hamilton - McLaren +00:46.49
6. Kimi Raikkonen - Lotus +00:50.42
7. Nico Hulkenberg  -  Force India +00:51.16
8. Pastor Maldonado - Williams +00:52.36
9. Mark Webber - Red Bull +00:55.68
10. Daniel Ricciardo - Toro Rosso +01:07.92
Ferrari's Felipe Massa took second ahead of Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi.
"I knew behind me there was a crash and I saw a Ferrari was out but wasn't sure which," said Vettel. "Halfway through I was looking to see the others and I saw there [Ferrari] car still racing Felipe, I didn't know what happened to Fernando.
"The atmosphere has been unbelievable all weekend. There has been so much support, the stands have been full and that really makes our job feel very special.
"When you're dreaming at night, you dream one day about racing a car like that. The balance was so good and that's why there was a gap to behind."
It was Massa's first podium of the year and may well have secured his future at Ferrari, while Kobayashi held off a late charge from McLaren's Jenson Button to take a maiden career podium.
"I was clever on the first corner to manage to avoid the accident and the pace was really good," said Massa.
"I was quicker than Jenson [Button], then I was able to pass him and then Kamui [Kobayashi] so for sure it was a better race than what I expected.
"Unfortunately Fernando isn't here on the podium fighting for the championship but hopefully we can keep on pushing."
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The second McLaren of Lewis Hamilton was fifth, ahead of Raikkonen, who was forced to fend off Force India's Nico Hulkenberg and Williams's Pastor Maldonado in the closing laps.
Red Bull's Mark Webber fought up from the back of the field after being hit from behind at the first corner to take ninth ahead of Daniel Ricciardo, who held off Michael Schumacher's Mercedes in the last few laps.
For Vettel, it was one the most comfortable victories of the year. He converted pole position into a lead at the first corner and streaked away into a race of his own.
It was the first time a driver has taken back-to-back victories this season, and Vettel's third win in four years in Japan. The 25-year-old now looks a strong bet to win his third consecutive world title.
The Red Bull is a faster car than the Ferrari, in which Alonso has been fighting a rear-guard battle for some time.
Thank you very much everyone. This is my first podium, and in Japan. Fantastic, unbelievable
Alonso said of his retirement: "Kimi touched me a little bit in the rear and I had a puncture. It is a little sad but we need to concentrate and think about [the next race in Korea] next week.
"We need to keep working well and not making mistakes. Nothing we can do. Thanks to this consistency we are leading the championship. The others make mistakes, we need to avoid this."
Raikkonen is in third place in the championship, 33 points behind Vettel and five points ahead of Hamilton.
Red Bull's Mark Webber, who finished ninth, is effectively out of contention, 60 points behind Alonso with a maximum of only 125 still available.
The turning point of the race and perhaps the entire championship came on the run to the first corner.
Raikkonen ran slightly off the road and as he rejoined his front wing touched Alonso's left rear tyre, which punctured and tipped the Spaniard into a spin as he turned into the first corner.
Meanwhile, Lotus's Romain Grosjean put Webber into a spin, and in a separate incident Williams's Bruno Senna hit Nico Rosberg's Mercedes.
Rosberg was forced to retire, but Webber, Grosjean and Senna were all able to rejoin at the back of the field after pit stops, with Webber driving a quietly determined race to get back up into the points in ninth place.
Grosjean was given a 10-second stop-and-go penalty for what was his seventh first-lap incident in his 14 races this season. The Frenchman was banned from the Italian Grand Prix after causing a first-corner pile-up in Belgium last month.
The safety car was sent out while the debris was cleared away, with Massa up into fourth place behind Vettel, Kobayashi and Button.
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Massa passed both his rivals by making his first pit stop later than they did, partly thanks to being able to start the race on new tyres while those who made it into the top 10 in qualifying had to start on the tyres that had used to set their grid time.
The Ferrari initially made inroads into Vettel's lead, but a couple of fastest laps from the Red Bull driver made it clear there was plenty of pace in reserve.
Behind Massa, Kobayashi held off a determined challenge from Button, who was battling with a gearbox that was intermittently slipping into neutral in the first three laps after each of his two pit stops before righting itself.
Button closed on Kobayashi before their final pit stops, but lost out by making his earlier than the Japanese.
The McLaren closed in again in the final 10 laps but Kobayashi was able to hold him off.
"Thank you very much everyone. This is my first podium, and in Japan. Fantastic, unbelievable," said Kobayashi after the race.


The Gambia's decision to withdraw from the Commonwealth 48 years after joining is something to "very much regret", the UK Foreign Office has said.

The west African nation branded the 54-member grouping, which includes the UK and most of its former colonies, a "neo-colonial institution".
The withdrawal was announced on state TV but no other reasons were given.
Two years ago President Yahya Jammeh accused the UK of backing his political opposition ahead of elections.
Commonwealth officials said they only heard about the move through the media and had not yet been contacted by The Gambia.
A spokesman said Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma had seen the reports with "dismay and disappointment" and had asked for "clarification" from the country.
There is a history of tension between President Jammeh, who came to power in a 1994 coup, and the UK.
Earlier this year, a Foreign Office report singled out The Gambia for its human rights record, citing cases of unlawful detentions, illegal closures of newspapers and discrimination against minority groups.
On Thursday a Foreign Office spokesman said: "Decisions on Commonwealth membership are a matter for each member government. We would very much regret Gambia, or any other country, deciding to leave the Commonwealth."
In August last year The Gambia was criticised by Amnesty International and others for executing nine prisoners by firing squad.
The Commonwealth was founded in 1931 but acquired its modern shape after 1949 as former British colonies and protectorates, including The Gambia, started to achieve self-government and varying degrees of independence.
According to the Commonwealth's charter, member states should communicate and co-operate "in the common interests of our peoples and in the promotion of international understanding and world peace".
In its statement, The Gambian government said it had "withdrawn its membership of the British Commonwealth".
It said it had "decided that The Gambia will never be a member of any neo-colonial institution and will never be a party to any institution that represents an extension of colonialism".
But Bakary Dabo, former vice president of The Gambia and chairman of the country's campaign for democratic change, said people there are generally "very happy" to be part of the Commonwealth.
He said the government had recently begun "picking up war against poorly specified enemies called 'western powers'".
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Dabo said this rhetoric had "accelerated" in recent years and been used when President Jammeh gave a "rambling" speech at the United Nations General Assembly last month
Also at the UN, President Jammeh said homosexuality was one of the three "biggest threats to human existence".
He has also drawn international criticism for claiming he can cure Aids with a herbal body rub and bananas.
BBC Africa analyst Farouk Chothia said despite its image as an idyllic holiday destination, The Gambia, and its population of less than two million, were kept under tight control by its eccentric leader.
The latest decision was bound to come from him, our analyst added.
The Royal Commonwealth Society, an education charity which works in Commonwealth countries, said The Gambia's announcement was unexpected and appeared to be undemocratic.
Society director Michael Lake said President Jammeh had made the decision "without consulting The Gambia's people" and the country's withdrawal would be "a loss felt by both its people and the wider Commonwealth network".
He added: "Far from being a 'neo-colonial institution', the modern Commonwealth operates on a consensus model and its voluntary membership is predicated primarily on a country's commitment to upholding shared values and principles."
The last time a nation left the Commonwealth was in 2003, when Zimbabwe withdrew.
The Queen, who is 87, is the head of the Commonwealth, which holds its next heads of government meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, next month.
However, the gathering will be the first that the Queen has not attended since 1971. She will send her son, the Prince of Wales instead. Buckingham Palace said she would make fewer overseas trips because of her age.
Three African countries have joined the Commonwealth in recent years. Rwanda was admitted in 2009 after applying for membership the previous year, while Cameroon and Mozambique became members in 1995.


Welsh settlers asserted dominance in Patagonia by portraying Wales as a small country filled with moral giants, an academic has said.

Lucy Taylor of Aberystwyth University has studied the relationship between the Welsh and the people of Argentina 150 years ago.
Speaking at the Eisteddfod, she said the Welsh could not claim economic, military or political dominance.
Instead they focused on moral supremacy, she said.
Dr Taylor said it could be argued this has remained relevant, through post-devolution policies such as banning smoking in public places, the introduction of a plastic bag levy and presumed consent over organ donation - all containing a moral agenda.
"The Welsh in Patagonia emphasised the principles of righteousness when they first met the indigenous people of Patagonia, and purposefully followed a path of friendship, not violence, based on a desire to exercise compassion and mercy," she added.
"They contrasted the peaceful 'Welsh way of colonisation' with the scornful and sometimes violent policies adopted by the Argentines in Patagonia and within the British Empire."


British cyclist Simon Yates will not be provisionally suspended despite failing an in-competition drugs test.

Yates tested positive for terbutaline last month, with his Orica-GreenEdge team blaming an "administrative error" over the use of an asthma inhaler.
The sport's governing body said Yates, 23, had not been suspended because of the nature of the substance involved.
The UCI said in a statement "such a substance does not entail imposition of a provisional suspension".
Yates tested positive on 12 March, at stage six of the Paris-Nice. He finished the race in seventh.
Orica-GreenEdge said a team doctor failed to apply for a therapeutic use exemption and it took "full responsibility for the mistake", adding there was "no wrongdoing" by the rider.
Owain Doull has backed his Great Britain team-mate, writing: "Can always rely on Twitter for some abuse. Tweet my thoughts on Yatesy yesterday and people calling me naive and stupid for believing in him.
"I'm not naive, I just know and trust the lad I raced and lived with for years and have seen first hand how he has struggled with asthma."
Yates, a former points race world champion, is regarded as one of Britain's brightest prospects on the road, along with his twin brother Adam.
The Bury-born rider is a strong contender to make the Team GB road race team for the 2016 Olympics, which begin in Rio de Janeiro on 5 August.
Rod Ellingworth, who is responsible for the British men's road squad in Brazil, said Yates remains in contention until he is deemed ineligible.
"My job is to put the best team on the line," he said. "I'll use anybody eligible."