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French press review 26 March 2015

The Germanwings plane crash, the French army and French radio are in the newspapers today ...

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Centrist Le Monde headlines with "European Emotion over an unexplained crash". This, of course one of our top stories relating to the A320 Germanwings crash which lasted eight minutes. Right-leaning Le Figaro leads with the story that France is to beef up its army. Libération follows the story of the strike at Radio France, whilst Catholic daily La Croix carries indepth analysis of the economy following the publication of figures from February. The daily looks into why unemployment figures are increasing despite a better economic outlook. Communist daily L'Humanité reveals its fears that the right is plotting to demolish social programmes in the different départements, or administrative districts of France.

Firstly a brief note in L'Humanité about the village where that Germanwings crash took place. According to the paper, the town hall in the village of Seyne-les-Alpes which has a population of 1400 people, has received 200 offers from residents to house families of the victims of that crash visiting the scene of the disaster. L'Humanité hails this solidarity.

A photo of President François Hollande visiting the picturesque village in the Alps features on the front page of Le Figaro. The main article, however, in the right-wing paper  rejoices in the news that France is to boost its land army. Its editorial is rather grandly entitled "A change of era". This is the story that France is to boost from 100,000 to 110,000 the number of army personnel by 2017.Le Figaro opines that it is high-time that Hollande and the defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian stop what it describes as the haemorraging of the armed services. A re assessment of the country's security situation is necessary, says the paper, now that France is faced with the "internal enemy," described by Prime Minister Valls in the wake of the January attacks in Paris on a satirical magazine and a kosher supermarket. Le Figaro hopes that this move will inspire other European partners to do likewise.

Left-wing Libération looks closer to home, specifically RFI's old home in Paris, the Maison de la Radio, where workers from the national stations have been on strike for eight days. Shock waves instead of sound waves are currently emanating from the iconic round building. Libé's editorial is entitled, simply "trust" and describes how the arrival of CEO Mathieu Gallet a year ago was sold as a sort of big bang to shake up Radio France. But this has gone horribly awry amid problems such as the cost and management of the building's renovation and budget cuts.

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