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BAGNOLET, France – Restive youths in a Paris suburb torched a tourist bus and nearly a half-dozen cars and hurled objects at police early Tuesday, a night after fullblown unrest prompted by the death of a teen fleeing police. The local prefecture, the administrative center for the region, said the situation was under control despite the scattered torchings. An Associated Press Television News crew saw at least five torched cars and a burned-out tourist bus near a housing project. Groups of youths set street fires, sometimes fueling them with garbage cans or a mattress in one case and hurled stones...

About 40 rioters in a Paris suburb hurled Molotov cocktails at police and firefighters and torched cars in a rampage prompted by the death of a teen fleeing police. The interior minister called Monday for calm after the overnight violence. One person fired at police with a handgun during the rioting in a housing project in Bagnolet on the eastern edge of Paris, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said in a statement. No injuries were reported. The latest eruption of tensions in France's suburbs broke out after an 18-year-old riding his motorcycle through the project tried to flee a document check...

Update: The French press reported that the Interior Ministry released a final "verified" count of 1,147 vehicles burned in France over New Year's Eve. The number is up 30.64% from last year's total, 878. REUTERS - At least 445 cars were torched over the night of New Year's Eve in France, a 20 percent rise on last year, but there were relatively few clashes with police, the Interior Ministry and police said on Thursday. Car burnings are regular occurrences in France but the registering the New Year's Eve total has become something of a tradition since they achieved symbolic status...

Mayor blames 'gangs' for Paris high school night of violence 4 days ago PARIS (AFP) — Paris Mayor Bernard Delanoe blamed "organised gangs" on Saturday for clashes overnight near the Eiffel Tower between police and high school students celebrating the end of their final exams. Twenty-nine people were arrested, and 22 kept in custody, after the unrest in the Champ de Mars park in the well-to-do Seventh District that pitted police firing tear gas against "250 to 300 youths". About a dozen neighbourhood shops were damaged, and two police officers slightly injured, said Alain Gardere, who is in charge of...

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France — More than 1,000 police raided housing projects outside Paris in an early morning sweep Monday, detaining 33 people in a bid to find rioters who led an outburst of violence here last year, a prosecutor said. Police were mobilized for raids in Villiers-le-Bel and in the neighboring towns of Sarcelles, Gonesse and Arnouville as part of the investigation into the November riots, according to police. Marie-Therese de Givry, prosecutor of Pontoise, said a total of 33 people were arrested, raising the number from some 20 cited earlier by police. Most of those detained, aged 19 to 31,...

Police raided housing projects Monday in a Paris suburb in a pre-dawn sweep aimed at finding rioters who led an outburst of violence here last year.

PARIS, January 1 (RIA Novosti) - Vandals burned down 372 cars in France, or about the same number as last year, French news radio France Info said on Tuesday citing police sources. Vandalism ahead of and during big holidays has become a bad tradition in France in the past few years. However, police said last night was relatively quiet, with 259 people arrested for hooliganism and 4 policemen receiving light injuries. "Globally, last night was relatively calm, without any serious incidents. There were few clashes with police while tension in troubled neighborhoods was considerably less pronounced than in previous years,"...

PARIS - Vandals torched 372 cars as France celebrated the New Year, down on the figure last year after a night the police described as "relatively calm". Cars are burned fairly regularly in France and the image of vehicles in flames in poor suburbs became symbolic of riots in 2005 when angry youths set fire to thousands of cars. There is usually an increase in the number of cars torched on New Year's Eve compared to other days of the year. "The night was relatively calm, without notable incident, there were very few direct clashes with the security forces," said...

Couldnt sleep so I turned on the live reports from CNN.com I cant imagine looting a bank or lighting a train on fire if a Presidential candidate was killed here.....the smoky skies remind me of the scenes from Paris and the rest of France from Mooselimb Yutes.

Last week, saw another battle in the near-civil war that is going on between French police and so-called immigrant "youths" who burned everything in sight, including schools, libraries and, of course, automobiles. These rioters must be aiming for a new record in 2007 after having set fire to 45,588 cars in 2005 and 44,157 in 2006. Low-intensity conflict in the streets, with rioters shooting at policemen and members of the fire brigade as in France, is probably one definition of multicultural utopia. Ever since the Berlin Wall came down, most of those on the left have forsaken communism in favor...

A quote from the French judge, Jean de Maillard (Vice-president of the Superior Court of Orléans, and a professor at the Institute of Political Science in Paris), 28 November 2007 [here is an English translation] When two schools, a library, a police station, a garage and several other buildings on a list already forgotten are set on fire, not to mention dozens of vehicles each day, we are used to it. It has become almost a routine. However, the second night of Villiers-le-Bel marks an escalation that the media and the government would probably prefer to hush up, but which...

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France (Reuters) - Six teenagers went on trial in southern France on Monday over the torching of a bus in 2006, hearing the testimony of a young woman who was severely burned in the incident. The trial again highlights the problem of urban violence in France, a week after youths in a suburb north of Paris clashed with police and set fire to shops, cars and public buildings in two consecutive nights of unrest. The six youths facing trial are suspected of being part of a gang of eight who attacked a bus in the southern port city of...

IN retrospect, it was not a good idea to have left his pistol at home. Called to the scene of a traffic accident in the Paris suburbs last Sunday, Jean-François Illy, a regional police chief, came face to face with a mob of immigrant youths armed with baseball bats, iron bars and shotguns. What happened next has sickened the nation. As Illy tried to reassure the gang that there would be an investigation into the deaths of two teenagers whose motorbike had just collided with a police car, he heard a voice shouting: “Somebody must pay for this. Some pigs...

<p>IT'S not just the renewed violence in the Muslim ghettos outside Paris creating concern in the French capital. The area around the elegant Champs-Elysees has become dangerous, like the old Times Square, with nightclubs, sex shops and violent drunks.</p> <p>This week, France's National Crime Observatory reported assaults were up 32 percent last year, and violence without theft up 93 percent, in the 8th Arrondissement. Last week, a key police official warned that the Champs had become a center of racketeering and prostitution.</p>

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France (AP) - French officials point to a host of causes—poverty, unemployment, the influence of criminal gangs—for riots that erupted this week. But there's one taboo issue that officially colorblind France has been unable to confront: race. The violence, like riots that spread nationwide for three weeks in exposed how parts of France have divided along color lines, with blacks and Arabs trapped in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods—like Villiers-le-Bel, in the northern suburbs of Paris, where gangs attacked police and burned cars and buildings this week. "Among the rioters, the very large majority come from immigrant backgrounds," said Douhane...

Sarkozy blames Paris riots on 'thugocracy' By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 8:04pm GMT 29/11/2007 Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, has risked inflaming tensions in Parisian suburbs by declaring violence this week was the result of a "thugocracy" of criminals, not social deprivation. His words came after three nights of violence sparked by the deaths of two teenagers in a crash with a police car. President Sarkozy said the riots in the suburbs of Paris had nothing to do with a social crisis At least 120 policemen were injured in the rioting that followed the accident in Villiers-le-Bel,...

Sarkozy issues warning to riotersMr Sarkozy called shooting at officers "completely unacceptable" 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. He also met families of the teenagers killed in a collision with a police car and pledged to hold a judicial inquiry. Mr Sarkozy then headed into crisis talks with key ministers to prevent the spread of three nights of rioting. There was a decrease in...

In the past, I've repeatedly written about the various epithets the PC Mainstream Media utilizes to avoid pointing to the real identity of the participants in riots, murders, and hijackings. "Somali Pirates" is one of my fave Al-Qaeda terrorist euphemisms, for example. But, now, there's the 2007 resurgence of the annual Muslim riots in France. Muslims torch and maim and slash and murder. And yet, no-one--at least no-one working for FOXNEWSMSNBCCNNABCNBCCBSAPREUTERSWASHPOSTNYTIMESDETROITNEWSISTAN--can bring themselves to call a spade a spade--a barbaric Muslim a Muslim. Paris Riot 2007 Islamic Crescent Paris Riots 2007 As I've written, FOX News once did this, but...

PARIS: The rituals and acts of rage have an eerie sameness to them: roving gangs of angry youths clashing with the riot police in France's edgy suburbs, the government appealing for calm, local officials and residents complaining that their problems are ignored. Two years after an orgy of violence in which rioters in more than 300 suburbs and towns torched cars, trashed businesses and ambushed the riot police and firefighters, Villiers-le-Bel and several nearby suburbs of Paris similarly have erupted in violence and destruction. In one sense, the unrest seems to be more menacing than during the early days of...

The French authorities deployed 1,000 police to a northern Paris suburb Tuesday to prevent a third night of youth riots amid signs that the violence could be spreading. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon visited the restive suburb of Villiers le Bel, where the death of two teenagers Sunday touched off two nights of violence that have left at least 120 police injured.Nine people were detained in Villiers ahead of Fillon's visit, police told AFP, and at least one shop was on fire later in the evening.Earlier, a court jailed eight youths over the clashes with police Sunday and Monday. Four...

Boys' moped deaths ignite riot in Paris suburb By Peter Allen in Paris Last Updated: 1:59am GMT 26/11/2007 Rioting broke in one of Paris's tinder box suburban housing estates last night after two young boys were killed when their moped collided with a police car. The scenes are reminiscent of the disturbances in 2005 which led to two months of serious rioting across much of France Molotov cocktails were thrown, and cars and plastic bins set on fire following the tragedy in Tolinette, a notoriously crime-ridden district of Villiers-le-Bel, some 20 miles north of the centre of the French capital....

If last year’s riots Paris riots were horrific, they weren’t surprising. The banlieue, suburbs like St. Denis, Poissy, and Clichy-sous-Bois, are pockets of concentrated immigrant poverty and faceless, block-style building long regarded as tinderboxes for trouble. Paris has begun building more affordable housing within its borders to reduce social isolation of those outside. Besides offering public-housing tenants an alternative to the banlieue, the move addresses the city’s own growing squatter population, which suffered from a slew of fires in the city’s outer rings at the end of the summer. While approximately eight in 10 lodgings in some peripheral neighborhoods are...

MARSEILLE, France — France's interior minister sent extra riot police to patrol the southern port city of Marseille on Sunday after a group of marauding teenagers torched a bus, seriously burning a young passenger. French police have braced for a surge of violence this weekend, as Friday was the first anniversary of the start of riots in poor neighborhoods where many immigrants and their French-born children live. In scattered violence Saturday, 46 people were taken into custody, most of them in the suburbs around Paris, and two police officers were slightly injured. The most serious violence was the bus attack...

A woman has been seriously burned and three others are suffering from smoke inhalation after youths set fire to a bus in the French city of Marseille. A group of teenagers reportedly forced open the doors of the vehicle and threw flammable liquid inside before fleeing. There have been several attacks on buses over the past week, coinciding with the one year anniversary of riots in poor suburbs across the country. The riots were sparked by the deaths of two teenagers in the capital, Paris. Minor skirmishes were reported in Paris on Saturday. An additional 4,000 officers had been deployed...

Police injured as violence flares in suburbs of Paris By Colin Randall in Paris (Filed: 31/05/2006) At least 100 youths, many brandishing baseball bats, clashed with police in a new outbreak of violence in the same Parisian suburbs in which nationwide rioting started last autumn. The disturbances, which were described as "violent and intense" and left several policemen injured, extended from late on Monday night into the early hours yesterday. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets after coming under attack, while Xavier Lemoine, the centre-Right mayor of Montfermeil, one of two affected suburbs, was left fearing for the lives...

POLICE sent reinforcements to the troubled suburbs of northern Paris yesterday after a night of rioting revived fear of a return to the violence that raged through France’s immigrant housing estates last year.In another sign of continuing racial tension, the Government also ordered an inquiry into an anti-Semitic black group that staged an aggressive march through the Jewish quarter of the capital. Seven policemen were injured on Monday night in the town of Montfermeil. Rubber bullets and stun grenades were fired at youths, many of whom were masked and wielding baseball bats. About 100 youths hurled projectiles and petrol bombs...

France's far-right political party, the National Front, has emerged stronger than ever from the civil unrest that has plagued the country in the past six months, a new survey shows, suggesting that the party could play a major role in the presidential election next year. The National Front's outspoken and vehemently anti-immigration leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has had occasional bursts of support before: four years ago, he made it to the runoff for president, losing to Jacques Chirac. But after riots by second-generation immigrant youth last fall, Mr. Le Pen's approval rating in polls surged five percentage points, to 21...

TEN STUDENT protesters were injured yesterday after a Paris motorist, angry that they had blocked a road, drove his car into them. The driver only escaped following police intervention after his car was overturned and he was dragged out by the demonstrators. The incident near the Sorbonne University laid bare some of the frustration surrounding the government's new plan for getting more young people working and the opposition of students and unions to the scheme. On Paris's Left Bank, protesters disrupted traffic by picnicking on a busy boulevard. They were heading away when a frustrated motorist tried to burst through...

"France: Riots again,”...last week. The title could be the same this week. Riots are starting to become a way of life in France, or maybe it's the sign of something more sinister. Last November it was cars, warehouse, and schools in flames. Now it is casseurs randomly smashing in storefront windows and administering random beatings. The country of arrogance was very sick. Muslim youngsters living a thug's life of radical Islam, violence and drugs; widespread anti-Semitism; high rates of unemployment. Nothing has changed since the riots of November. No politician is offering real solutions. France is still on the verge...

Police fought running battles with rioters in central Paris last night as youths attacked officers with bangers, bottles and concrete at the end of a mass demonstration against a youth employment law that has caused a political crisis for Jacques Chirac's ruling party. Trade unionists and student leaders said up to three million people took to the streets across France yesterday - the second time in eight days that the country has seen its biggest street demonstrations in almost 40 years. The protests, including one by hundreds of thousands of students and scholars who marched through central Paris, were mainly...

Post your observations here. Richard Miniter was on FNC and said that even if an employee is caught on videotape stealing from their employers, they cannot be fired.

Violent Youths Threaten to Hijack Demonstrations in Paris By ELAINE SCIOLINO PARIS, March 29 — The images are unnerving: hooded, swift-footed youths infiltrating protest rallies in the heart of tourist Paris, smashing shop windows, setting cars on fire, beating and robbing passers-by and throwing all sorts of objects at the riot police. They are called the casseurs — the smashers. With more huge marches planned for next week as part of a continuing protest over a new jobs law, the casseurs are the volatile chemical that could ignite an even bigger crisis for the government than the impasse over the...

Opponents of France's new youth labour plan are hailing protests that have millions in recent weeks as a huge success. But not everyone is celebrating. Spare a thought for the long-suffering businesses located along the march routes. "They broke two of our windows," says Nathalie Gosselin, owner of the Paris bar Le Reveille Matin. Her establishment is located near Place d'Italie, where most of the demonstrations originated. During a recent protest "thugs hit the shop windows on their way up the avenue, and hit the demonstrators on their way down". Mrs Gosselin, who heads the local shopkeepers' association, says members...

As darkness fell at Place de La Republique, the acrid smell of tear gas drifted through the early evening air. It mingled with a distinct smell of cannabis as the shouts and jeers of the crowd echoed around this historic square in what has become a Paris springtime of discontent. These, though, were not the peaceful marchers of earlier in the day but youths who had come intent on violence, seeking running battles with police. Earlier in the afternoon, hundreds of thousands of protesters had gathered at Place d'Italie in the south of the city. But the festival atmosphere quickly...

France, the birth-place of socialism, is now living socialism's logical end-game. Mobs in the streets of France, led by university students, are smashing store-fronts, burning automobiles, barricading streets, and their labor union buddies are threatening a syndicalist general strike. The occasion for this fulmination is the proposed enactment of a first-job contract law that would permit businesses to fire a worker under the age of 25 for any reason during his first two years of employment. These reactions are idiotic. Students are rioting against legal action to make it easier for them to get jobs, a process with limited prospects...

BRITONS have been warned: Stay away from riot-torn Paris. The Foreign Office says the French capital — which has been rocked by violent demos — is too dangerous. Protests against a new employment law have erupted into riots, with fierce fighting in the shadow of famous tourist spots like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral. Cars have been set alight, shops looted and gangs of youths and masked men swinging baseball bats and wooden planks have had running battles with riot police who have used water cannon and tear gas.The Foreign Office alert is a huge blow to France,...

A young man hits a car set ablaze by demonstrators in Paris, during a rally part of a nationwide protest over the government's contested youth job plan, the First Employment Contract (CPE). Some 420 people were arrested across France, a third of them in the capital, during protests against a youth jobs programme, mainly for violence, vandalism and attacks on security forces, police said.(AFP/Eric Feferberg)

Fox has just been covering student rioting in Paris over a new job measure. If anyone has more details, please post.

PARIS -- The French government deported a Malian involved in autumn rioting on Thursday _ the first expulsion stemming from the weeks of violence that swept across France's troubled suburbs _ and was preparing to send home another six foreigners. The deportation of the man made good on promises issued by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy during three weeks of car burnings, riots and other violence that began Oct. 27. "I was widely criticized for saying ... that I would apply the law by expelling those (foreigners) who participated in the riots," Sarkozy said on LCI television. "Well, a first one...

In the French prisons there is a whole network of extremist muslims, who use their time in prison to find new recruits. That was in a report by the French secret service (RG). The ones who convert to islam are dangerously fanatic, so says the report. The French newspaper Le Figaro has reported on the disaster. It is the first official investigation of the spread of islam in prisons. According to the secret service, there are around 175 radical inmates who preach their hatred and murder inside the prisons. The prisoners who are in there for terrorist offences are the...

PARIS. -- The French have had two months to sort out the lessons of last fall's riots in predominately Muslim neighborhoods. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin says the rioting was caused by racial bias, lack of business opportunity and insufficient education for immigrant children. He vows tax breaks for business, better education for immigrant children and tougher enforcement of antibias laws. For this conclusion, the French media, more left-wing than the American press, praised him. The founder and leader of France's Front National (FN) party, 77-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, has reached the opposite conclusion, as might be expected of a...

PARIS -- A gang of more than 20 youths -- thought to be North African immigrants -- terrorized hundreds of train passengers in a rampage of violence, robbery and sexual assault on New Year's Day, French officials said yesterday.     The five-hour-long criminal frenzy was "totally unacceptable," French President Jacques Chirac told reporters. "Those guilty will be found and punished, as they deserve."     

PARIS -- A gang of more than 20 youths -- thought to be North African immigrants -- terrorized hundreds of train passengers in a rampage of violence, robbery and sexual assault on New Year's Day, French officials said yesterday. The five-hour-long criminal frenzy was "totally unacceptable," French President Jacques Chirac told reporters. "Those guilty will be found and punished, as they deserve." The gang of between 20 and 30 youths boarded the train, heading from Nice on the French Riviera to Lyon, in eastern France, early on Jan. 1, as it carried 600 passengers home from New Year's Eve partying...

French Riviera gang terrorises passengers in two-hour train rampage By Colin Randall (Filed: 05/01/2006) Hundreds of passengers were terrorised by a mob of youths rampaging through a train on the French Riviera. One young woman was sexually assaulted, travellers were robbed of phones and cash, and carriages were wrecked in the two-hour assault, it emerged yesterday. Up to 40 youths involved in the attacks had taken advantage of a special fare of about 80p to travel from Marseilles and Avignon to celebrate the New Year in Nice. They were part of a larger group of 100, many drunk from their...

French insurance companies have announced they will file claims against the government for partial reimbursement of settlements of €200 million payable for damage incurred during the November riots. The media are too busy gushing with new-found multicultural faith to comment on the figure, or even to notice that insurance companies apparently expect the government to protect property--its own and that of its citizens. The €200 million were tossed out and lost in the shuffle. And no one thought to compare them with the $145 million mentioned in passing as the sum needed to feed starving West Africans. It is difficult...

Rowdy revelers in France torched 425 vehicles overnight in scattered New Year's Eve unrest that has become an annual problem in troubled neighborhoods, the national police chief said Sunday. Last year, 333 cars were burned. Police Chief Michel Gaudin also said there were no major clashes this year between youths and police overnight, as had been feared. In what has become an annual tradition every New Year's Eve, youths set several hundred cars ablaze in France as festivities get out of hand. Police were especially cautious this time because of the wave three weeks of rioting and car burning that...

Hundreds of thousands of people crowded on to the Champs Elysees in Paris to see out the old year and usher in the new. There was high security along some two and half kilometres of the street, but as the clock struck 12 partygoers appeared to have nothing but having a good time on their minds. The night did not passed off completely peacefully, however. Less than two months after several suburbs in the capital and other cities saw sustained rioting, cars were again set on fire and youths threw stones at firefighters. Police say 343 vehicles were burnt before...

Even though the French government put large numbers of police on the streets in Paris and surrounding towns, the new year has begun with riots. 340 cars have been set alight, and the police have arrested more than 260 rioters....

PARIS, France (AP) -- Rowdy revelers in France torched 425 vehicles overnight in scattered New Year's Eve unrest that has become an annual problem in troubled neighborhoods, the national police chief said Sunday. Last year, 333 cars were burned. Police Chief Michel Gaudin also said there were no major clashes this year between youths and police overnight. Police were particularly vigilant this time because of the three weeks of rioting and arson that took place in October. A state of emergency imposed during the rioting is still in effect, and 25,000 police were on alert for the holiday. Police took...

Youths threw stones at firefighters and burned cars in scattered unrest during New Year's Eve celebrations in France, where police were mobilized to prevent a repeat outburst of rioting that broke out this fall. Surveillance helicopters and about 25,000 French police were on alert for the holiday. Every New Year's Eve, youths set hundreds of cars ablaze as festivities get out of hand. Police are being especially cautious this time because of the wave of rioting and car-torchings that broke out for three weeks starting in late October. A state of emergency imposed during the rioting is still in effect....