World: POHER PULLS AHEAD IN FRANCE

EVEN the politicians in Paris seemed bemused by spring. None of the candidates for the presidency of France chose to dwell on the fact that just a year ago Paris was a city of barricades and rebel banners, with bloody encounters between baton-wielding riot police and angry students and workers. The speeches, calm, serene, struck a tranquil note, as if the candidates were dreaming of the summer holidays scarcely two months away. Charles de Gaulle, presumably brooding in Ireland over his rebuff in the referendum, no longer cast his long shadow.

In the first...