The Economist runs an exceptional Correspondent's diary:

“When the firemen demonstrate, we always call in the gendarmes. There can be trouble… A few years ago, one of them exploded a hand grenade and had to be taken to hospital.”

My copy's not handy, but this brings to mind a passage in New York City's report on the 1977 blackout noting that firemen, tired of bricks and worse being thrown at them from roofs, put up signs reading "We fight fires, not people." The NYPD took umbrage, as they read the signs as slyly saying, "attack cops, not us."

In the Friday diary, the paper also makes a fascinating comparison between Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal and National Front leader Jean-Marie le Pen, arguing that both are vehicles for the electorate to express their dissatisfaction with the nation's political scene. Months before her surprise landslide victory, Le Pen bragged that he'd "been the first to spot Ségolène's potential as a presidential candidate three years earlier." It'll be interesting to see how what's widely expected to be a rough-and-tumble presidential race is affected by the presence of a woman.