French press review 10 May 2013

Friday’s papers are dominated by good economic news for the United States and Europe after the Dow Jones set an all time record.

The economic newspaper Les Echos welcomes a feel-good moment for Europe's major stock markets which posted solid gains after the Dow Jones closed above 15,000 points on on Tuesday for the first time in its history.  

The index followed that with another close above 15,000 points on Wednesday. It fell slightly on Thursday but still remained above the symbolic 15,000 mark. The broad-based S&P 500 also set all-time records for five days in a row.

That was after the US Department of Labour reported on Thursday that new claims of US unemployment insurance benefits fell to 323,000, well below the 336,000 consensus estimate.

For Les Echos, the European markets have been playing the economic recovery scenario as well, with Frankfurt's main index hitting another record high in the wake of recent robust German industrial data.

The newspaper reports, however, that in Paris, the CAC 40 slid by 0.70 percent in value.

Les Echos also has some good news for smokers after the French government and the tobacco industry agreed to push back planned cigarette price hikes originally set to come into force in July. The five percent increase, or around 30 cents more per packet of cigarettes, will now be introduced in autumn, according to the paper.

L’Humanité is panting with anger over what it describes as the free market poison the United States is preparing for Europe. According to the Communist party daily, Washington is pushing to get Europe to sign an accord seeking to remove trade barriers that will expose the EU to new food quality risks.

Genetically modified foods, pesticides and food processing are at the heart of the negotiations, and L’Humanité warns the Europeans won’t accept the Americans’ ploy to change their food philosophy. It is like getting one to eat a dish of butter served with ketchup sauce, according to the paper.

Twelve years ago today, the French parliament made an historic declaration by recognising trans-atlantic slavery as a crime against humanity. L’Humanité marks the day with an investigation on the ongoing effects of the colonial-era slave trade which still affects people's lives 165 years since its abolition.

The Communist party daily takes up the battle being waged in French overseas territories for reparations.The paper writes local Creole populations, struggling to break their chains, are angry at what they say is “profitation”, the stranglehold over the local economy by a white minority of so-called descendants of slave masters.

Libération returns to the besieged Syrian opposition stronghold of Aleppo to investigate persisting allegations about the use of chemical weapons such as sarin gas in the civil war. The paper says it learnt from doctors and survivors that some of the victims of a recent bombing raid in Aleppo were foaming at the mouth and nose.

Libé says that, while there has been no clear evidence it was sarin gaz, the attack suggests the punctual entry of a neuro-toxic agent in the war, a development many western countries had feared for weeks.

With more than 70,000 people already been killed in the fighting, Libération wonders what more the international community is looking for to understand that a genocide is underway in Syria.

Le Figaro looks at the legal challenge the anti-gay marriage coalition in France has launched in the country's Constitutional Court in an attempt to repeal same-sex marriage. According to the right-wing newspaper, the centre-right opposition UMP and Centrist UDI parties have prepared an arsenal of judicial arguments to discredit the bill when the legal battle get underway on 16 May.