Free Republic

The private-equity tycoon Stephen A. Schwarzman, backed by an array of mostly western blue-chip companies with interests in China, is creating a $300 million scholarship for study in China that he hopes will rival the Rhodes scholarship in prestige and influence. The programme, whose endowment represents one of the largest single gifts to education in the world and one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever in China, was announced by Mr. Schwarzman in Beijing on Sunday. The Schwarzman Scholars programme will pay all expenses for 200 students each year from around the world for a one-year master’s programme at Tsinghua...

The French, who never really left, are expected to rejoin NATO as full members at the alliance’s 60th anniversary summit meeting next month. The decision, still to be formalized by President Nicolas Sarkozy, has stirred a predictable political debate in France, but it is being welcomed by Washington and France’s European allies. The full reintegration of France into the command structure of NATO will have little practical impact; France has long contributed money and is the fourth largest contributor of troops. But the decision to rejoin as a full partner carries enormous political and psychological weight, NATO officials and experts...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is very critical of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama's positions on Iran, according to reports that have reached Israel's government. Sarkozy has made his criticisms only in closed forums in France. But according to a senior Israeli government source, the reports reaching Israel indicate that Sarkozy views the Democratic candidate's stance on Iran as "utterly immature" and comprised of "formulations empty of all content." Obama visited Paris in July, and the Iranian issue was at the heart of his meeting with Sarkozy. At a joint press conference afterward, Obama urged Iran to accept the West's proposal...

PARIS - "It felt like they were out to kill us. We knew there were weapons in the suburbs, but never turned against us like that," one of the police officers shot during youth riots near Paris told AFP Wednesday. Sent to the suburb of Villiers le Bel to quell an outbreak of violence that followed the death of two teens in a crash with police, Francois, who asked not to be fully identified, found himself under siege. "We were attacked from all sides" by youths armed with hunting rifles." "The kids were shooting at us at close range, loading...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has a track record for dealing harshly with rioters, and he issued a warning to those stoking the latest round of antisocial violence. France will not approach these people as political activists, but as murderers who simply haven't yet found success: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to bring to justice rioters who shot at police in Paris in urban unrest that followed the death of two youths. Mr Sarkozy, visiting policemen injured in the riots, said such shootings could not be tolerated. ... Mr Sarkozy touched down from a state visit to China on Wednesday...

It's hard to say what is more remarkable -- that the French National Assembly was in session in mid-July at 1:30 on a Tuesday morning or that it approved an $18 billion tax cut plan that drastically reduces taxes on the rich and offers incentives for working more. After decades of economic drift and political paralysis, France suddenly finds itself caught up in a whirlwind of economic reform, all of it generated by its hyperactive new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. There he is lunching with student leaders at a local bistro to win their support for reform of the nation's under-funded...

PARIS - France's finance minister, a presidential hopeful, says mosques need state funding and it's time for a century-old law banning financing for religious groups to be modernized, according to excerpts of a new book hitting the shelves on Thursday. Nicolas Sarkozy, in his book "The Republic, Religions, Hope," says extremism is festering in underground mosques and Islamic groups don't have money to build houses of worship. "What is dangerous is not minarets, but caves and garages that keep clandestine religious groups hidden," Sarkozy says in the book, according to excerpts published in Le Monde and other French newspapers Tuesday....