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As attacks mount around the election, one presidential front runner said France is seeing "a climate near civil war". Journalists accused of bias. Judges said to be taking orders from the president. The country in a state of "near civil war." This isn't America's bitter presidential election campaign last year, but France's in 2017. The latest comments from conservative Francois Fillon, who has accused the Socialist government of failing to protect candidates, underline the increasingly ugly tone of France's campaign. Clashes in the western city of Nantes at the weekend during a demonstration against far-right leader Marine Le Pen and...

A campaign to make Barack Obama the president of France is gathering steam… but why? If you think you’ve glimpsed campaign posters for “Obama 17” across Paris then you’re not mistaken. The posters, which have been pasted to walls around Paris in recent days, are calling for a fresh face in the 2017 presidential race — that of the former president of the US. Under a picture of the former US President are the words “Oui, on peut”, the French translation of Obama’s “Yes we can” slogan. A group of friends behind the campaign have said that it started as...

Far-Right candidate Marine Le Pen has hit a record high in a new poll as France's former leaders have admitted she could become the country's president. The Kantar poll currently has the National Front party leader at 45 percent in a second round contest against conservative candidate Francois Fillon. Her popularity drops to 42 percent against centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron, who is currently favourite to win. The figures come as two former prime ministers have said the anti-EU politician could pick up momentum and steal victory in May. They say a Le Pen victory could come as a result of...

A former aide to the Franch far-right presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, has made new allegations about fraudulent party financing. Gael Nofri said that in 2012 the National Front(FN) had recruited him into Ms. Le Pen's presidential campaign team, using a fictitious European Parliament (EP) contract. It was apparently a way for the FN to avoid declaring campaign spending. The FN is already under investigation for alleged misuse of EP funds. Polls suggest that Ms. Le Pen is on course to win the first round of the presidential election in April, but centrist Emmanauel Macron is gaining ground (NOT) and...

The Front National leader has laid out her foreign policy vision for France with plans to reverse EU bureaucracy which has left France “enfeebled” and “cut off” form the world. Speaking in Paris yesterday, she said: “It’s time for us to put an end to this bureaucratic monster that is the European Union. European countries are bound together in many ways, and this mandatory coalition is destroying individual member states.” The far-right chief also vowed not to allow her country be “diminished, isolated, and wholly dependent on the EU”.

One day after president Trump remarked in a speech at a conference that a friend thought "Paris is no longer Paris" after attacks by Islamist militants, French President Francois Hollande fired back at Donald Trump on Saturday. During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Trump repeated his criticism of Europe's handling of attacks by Islamist militants saying a friend "Jim" no longer wanted to take his family to Paris. Hollande said Trump should show support for U.S. allies. "There is terrorism and we must fight it together. I think that it is never good to show...

French police are investigating an assault on two Jewish brothers in a Paris suburb in which the attackers allegedly shouted anti-Semitic abuse. The eldest, 29, and his brother, 17, say one of the attackers was armed with a hacksaw and they both suffered cuts during the struggle. They say they were harassed while driving through Bondy on Tuesday evening wearing kippas. Bondy is near Aulnay-sous-Bois, an area hit by anti-police rioting this month. No suspects have been detained yet in connection with Tuesday's assault, Bondy is part of Seine-Saint-Denis district, north-eastern Paris, where violence erupted earlier this month because of...

Marine Le Pen, the frontrunner in the first round of France’s upcoming presidential elections, has declared it is “time do away” with the European Union (EU), which has become a “bureaucratic monster”. According to EU Observer, the Front National leader told journalists it is time to “build another Europe, whether madame Merkel, monsieur Schulz or the other Commissioners want it or not”. The 48-year-old said “It is time to do away with an EU that is tempted by a fusion that destroys the Europe of nations”, echoing the sentiments of France’s late post-war leader, General Charles De Gaulle. The De...

Polls are predicting a stunning victory for Marine Le Pen and her party, France’s National Front (FN), in this year’s French elections. Riding a wave of popularity that has never before been seen in modern French politics, Le Pen looks set to follow the trajectories of both Donald Trump and the Brexit vote in upsetting the political establishment’s Status Quo. Her popularity is not least in part due to the shocking wave of terrorist attacks and migrant riots that are sweeping the European continent.

As French voters look set to make a massive swing to the right in their upcoming presidential election (see our notes on the topic here and here), a group of frightened liberal protesters have decided to back a relatively surprising, if impossible, presidential candidate in 2017, Barack Obama. And, lest you thing this is a joke, a quick walk around Paris even reveals campaign posters for "Obama17" plastered all around the city. The group of protesters who launched the effort to bring "hope and change" to France are urging French citizens to visit their website to sign a petition to...

Front National leader Marine Le Pen has extended her lead in polling for the French Presidential elections, and is now comfortably placed to win the first round of voting. The BVA-Salesforce poll published Thursday gave Le Pen on 27 per cent of the vote in the first round of the election, due to take place on 23 April, up 2.5 percentage points from the last time the poll was conducted in early February. A second poll by Harris International showed similar results placing Le Pen on 25 percent, four points clear of Francois Fillon (Les Republicains) and five ahead of...

Marine Le Pen, French Presidential candidate for the far-right political party Front National, had a meeting with Lebanon’s Grand Mufti, a top Muslim cleric. Upon arriving, an aide for the cleric demanded she wear a headscarf before entering his office. Big mistake. “You can pass on my respects to the grand mufti,” Le Pen said, “but I will not cover myself up.”

The leading centrist candidate in France's presidential election, Emmanuel Macron, has received a boost after allying with a veteran moderate. He accepted the offer of an alliance from Francois Bayrou, another centrist and devout Roman Catholic. Recent polls suggest support for Mr. Macron, tipped by many to win the election, has dropped slightly. Two of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen's staff were detained on Wednesday as part of a financial inquiry.....

Jesse Hughes doesn't have nightmares anymore. He sleeps peacefully through the night, curled up in his bed. It's the waking hours that are hard, as memories of Paris return with a jolt from a random smell or image on the street, taking him back to that night of violence and fear. More than a year has passed since heavily armed terrorists aligned with the Islamic State walked into the Paris theater Le Bataclan and shattered the lives of those gathered for an evening of seething rock & roll from Hughes and his band, Eagles of Death Metal. The band narrowly...

It is getting difficult to keep track of all the parallel (alleged) financial scandals involving French presidential candidates.Several weeks after presidential candidate Francois Fillon's campaign nearly ended over a sprawling graft scandal involving allegations he used public funds to pay the wages of his wife and children, on Wednesday, French police detained two of Marine Le Pen's closest aides: her bodyguard and chief of staff,  for questioning over alleged misuse of European Union funds to pay parliamentary assistants, Le Pen's lawyer said. Le Pen slammed the latest move in what Reuters dubbed "a financial sleaze case" that has landed...

As part of her 144 pledges to the French people, anti-mass migration Front National presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has said she will abandon gay marriages in favour of civil partnerships. Earlier this month after holding her campaign launch in Lyon, Ms Le Pen talked about her 144 pledges to the French people, many of which are against globalism and the power of the European Union. Pledge number 87 speaks to her conservative supporters and rejects the idea of gay marriage which has been legal in France since 2013, but would allow for civil partnerships, law firm Marilyn Stowe claims.Civil partnerships in France...

Tourism in the greater Paris region Île-de-France has been hit hard by terror fears, the latest figures show. But it’s turning around. “In total, in 2016, hotel owners in Île-de-France welcomed 1.5 million fewer French and international tourists compared to 2015,” the Regional Tourism Committee reported on Tuesday. While the average number of tourists visiting the region has only decreased by 0.8 percent, the drop was particularly sharp among some countries more than others. There were 21.5 percent fewer Chinese tourists setting down their suitcases in the Paris region, and 41.2 percent fewer tourists from Japan checking in to hotels...

BEIRUT (Reuters) – French far-right National Front presidential candidate Marine Le Pen canceled a meeting on Tuesday with Lebanon’s grand mufti, its top cleric for Sunni Muslims, after refusing to wear a headscarf for the encounter. Le Pen, among the frontrunners for the presidency, is using a two-day visit to Lebanon to bolster her foreign policy credentials nine weeks from the April 23 first round, and may be partly targeting potential Franco-Lebanese votes. Many Lebanese fled to France, Lebanon’s former colonial power, during their country’s 1975-1990 civil war and became French citizens. After meeting Christian President Michel Aoun – her...

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, and leader of the National Front, canceled a Tuesday meeting with Lebanon's grand mufti, its top cleric for Sunni Muslims, after refusing to wear a headscarf for the encounter. After meeting Christian President Michel Aoun, her first public handshake with a head of state, and Sunni Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri on Monday, she had been scheduled to meet the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian. He heads the Dar al-Fatwa, the top religious authority for Sunni Muslims in the multireligious country.

A workmen’s café in central France was overwhelmed with phone calls from gourmet diners wanting to book tables after it was awarded a Michelin star — by mistake, it later turned out. Reporters, TV crews and prospective customers were astounded when they turned up at the Bouche à Oreille, in the small town of Bourges, to find a cheap and cheerful eatery with red and white polka dot plastic tablecloths. Many patrons wear high-visibility vests, it is often packed at lunchtime and the atmosphere is lively, with customers ordering beers at the bar. It serves its regular clientèle of local...