Translation of "shoot for the top " (English → French) :

Long guns raise Canadians to the top of podiums in Olympic and international competitions in trap shooting and biathlons.

Despite the ban imposed by the Commission on the hunting of birds during the migration season for many species of bird from and to Africa, and despite major protests from animal welfare organisations, the government of Malta has this year again, at the start of spring, authorised the hunting and shooting of a number of protected bird species. This is in flagrant contravention of the Birds Directive, which is designed, in particular, to protect a number of rare bird species.

With regard to the recent shooting mentioned by Mr Czarnecki, I would like to inform you that this matter was formally taken up by the European Union during the last session of the EU-China Dialogue on human rights held in Beijing in October 2006 and via the subsequent follow-up démarche in December 2006. On both occasions, the EU urged the Chinese authorities to undertake a thorough investigation of this incident and refuted the Chinese claim that the shooting had been done in self-defence.

I fear that if we were to take the option of establishing a right of veto, which is still on the cards, we would ultimately be shooting ourselves in the foot, for this would ultimately reduce the European area – which is, in fact, the largest or one of the largest common markets in the world – to a mere collection of national interests.

It also means that the US, the UK and the others who supported them are pursuing a shoot-to-kill policy - i.e. we believe or suspect the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction, therefore we go in, we shoot and kill the people and then afterwards we find out there was no justification for this action.

In southern Cyprus, which constitutes the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, and which functions as a true democracy, even if it is handicapped by the Turkish occupation, the economy is flourishing, prosperity is increasing and all the economic and political criteria set in Copenhagen have been met; however, the people are deprived of the natural, supremely human right to travel around their country, to return to the houses in which they were born, to their small villages, to travel the length and breadth of the country without coming up against barbed wire, road blocks, divided towns or armed soldiers ready to ...[+++]shoot.