France

C'etait genial! When applied to the French presidential election in which conservative Nicolas Sarkozy beat Socialist candidate Segolene Royal by a comfortable margin, it means: That is fantastic! After decades of socialist influence in France, could the French election be a precursor to a Margaret Thatcher-like comeback for conservatives? Perhaps. Though, on foreign policy, Mr. Sarkozy is more pro-American than his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, he is still opposed to the Iraq war and doesn't want to seem too pro-American because most of the French remain firmly anti-American.

WASHINGTON -- It took more than two weeks after rioting by young people in more than 300 French cities and towns for President Jacques Chirac to address his nation. He argued that a "deep malaise" was at the root of the violence tearing through low-income, heavily Muslim neighborhoods and that greater economic integration was needed to combat the unrest. American critics have derided Mr. Chirac's slow response to the crisis and pointed to what they see as the irony of the French reaction to the images of Hurricane Katrina when their own record on equality appeared to be going up in flames on nightly television.

Paris. -- France is forcing a confrontation between the United States and Europe on trade issues. The Balladur government in Paris has hardened its public position on GATT disputes in recent days, despite German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's offer last week to mediate between Mr. Balladur and the equally obdurate American trade negotiator, Micky Kantor.Why is Paris doing this? The idea, fondly received abroad, that all this is about French peasants, or even French movies, explains nothing. It is a caricature.

Having made a mess of things during his auto-salesman's trip to Japan, President Bush is trying to rescue his faltering re-election campaign by bashing France and the European Community that seems to do its bidding. This is excellent targeting. While Japan is insular and xenophobic by reason of its island geography and its homogenous population, France's brand of protectionism is relatively gratuitous, a triumph of political timidity over principle.If France has its way, the international trade system the world has known and hopes to improve will go by the wayside.

Geneva France, a former boutique sales associate and active church member, died Monday of heart failure at Northwest Hospital Center. The longtime Edmondson Village resident was 87. She was born in Staunton, Va., and moved with her family to a home near Druid Hill Avenue in West Baltimore. She was a 1938 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School. Mrs. France worked for more than 20 years with her sister, Pauline Brooks-Amis, who owned Pauline Brooks Boutique in the Belvedere Hotel. She retired in the late 1980s.

Baltimore Police Maj. Wendell M. France, head of the homicide unit, has been elected chairman of the National Black Police Association, which represents 35,000 officers in 35 states.Major France, a 26-year veteran who is commander of the crimes against persons section, will serve two years as chairman, a job he will perform in his spare time. He is a past president of the Vanguard Justice Society, which represents black Baltimore officers.The police association was organized in 1972 to create a network among minority officers.

PARIS -- France timed the announcement for the eve of the long New Year's weekend, it gave "national interest" as the reason for its decision, and it promised no further explanation for its decision to send home two jailed Iranians who were wanted for murder in Switzerland.Yet, for all its efforts to keep attention away from the case, the deportation of the two men to Iran last week -- instead of their mandated extradition to Switzerland -- has brought angry protests from French newspapers, opposition parties and Iranian exiles, as well as from the Swiss government.

PARIS -- French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's brief visit to Washington at the end of the week was preceded by the usual flurry of complacent and condescending American appreciations of France's backwardness and of the bad character of the French.This kind of thing has been the thin gruel of American and British appraisals of France since the time of Napoleon, when British mothers warned their children that if they misbehaved, "Boney" would get them. It is interesting chiefly for the persistence of national stereotypes in the popular imaginations of nations.

SOMEWHERE today they're remembering Private Kreiner. It's a distant somewhere, a speck of a place in a valley in France. You could speak the name Kreiner there and an old man named Henri Ducret would break into the long story of the Germans and the war, the years of occupation and the day of liberation, and he'll describe the body of Private Kreiner being carried to the churchyard.In the little town of Sauvagney, they remember Private Kreiner.Here in Baltimore, however, we come to the story late, 54 years to the day late.

PARIS -- On the first day that nearly everything in France went on sale, employees of the upscale Bon Marche were stationed at the entrances offering cookies to customers as they stormed the glass doors. The shoppers were ravenous - but not so much for sweets. After months of planning, saving and strategizing, they couldn't wait to be set free in the most luxurious department store in France with prices slashed on every rack and in every bin. The same was true later across town in more pedestrian shops on Boulevard St. Denis, where Silvia Atisso and her sister were pawing through racks of winter coats priced at $29.35 each.