Free Republic

PARIS - Partial results showed President Nicolas Sarkozy's backers losing in Paris and other key French cities Sunday in the first round of municipal elections seen as a referendum on the increasingly unpopular conservative. Official results of the total vote nationwide showed candidates from Sarkozy's UMP party and its allies with 45.5 percent and the Socialists and their allies with 47 percent. The total was not broken down by city, but projections based on partial results by the polling agencies Ipsos and TNS-Sofres showed Socialists on track to take over key cities previously held by the right, including Strasbourg, Reims,...

Suzanne, grandmotherly with neat snowy hair, prim gray anorak and white shirt fastened at the collar with a blue brooch, glanced furtively up and down the subway platform bustling with out-on-the-towners. Slowly, the station emptied; the coast was clear. Spinning on her heels, a mischievous glint in her soft blue eyes, she whipped a red wax crayon from her handbag and, wielding it sword-like, scrawled her fury across a billboard advertising home appliances. "TOO MANY THINGS, NOT ENOUGH POETRY!" she wrote. Pow! Thus another blow was struck in a fight raging in France against advertising. The attackers are a small,...

France's recently appointed ambassador to Israel, Gérard Araud, has caused a diplomatic row by calling Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a "lout" and describing Israel as a "paranoid country." The French ambassador allegedly made the comments at a reception, where he was overheard by a journalist who published them in an Israeli newspaper. The incident prompted calls from Israel's education minister, Limor Livnant, for Israel to reject the ambassador's credentials. Mr Araud denies the allegations.