French press review 02 May

Quite a variety of different front pages in the French dailies today.

Catholic La Croix and right-wing Le Figaro both give front-page prominence to the former head of the Catholic Church, Pope John-Paul II, who was beatified yesterday. Beatification is the intermediate step between being simply dead and being, officially, a saint.

"A gigantic force for good" is how the Catholic daily summarises the influence of the Polish pope, the man Mikhail Gorbatchov credited with the destruction of communism.

"Huge popular enthusiasm" is the Figaro headline, a reference to the estimated million-and-a-half people who flocked to Rome for yesterday's ceremonies. Among them was none other than Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, a man who is not currently given even an outside chance of beatification by the bookmakers.

Communist l'Humanité's front page is a bit of a contradiction: "Problems on all fronts", reads the headline, a reference to the complaints in the background at yesterday's sun-drenched marches to mark International Labour Day. But the crowds of protestors look as happy as Laurence, enjoying the festive atmosphere and the good weather.

The extreme right National Front were out in force yesterday as well. Libé says the new party leader, Marine Le Pen, making her first Mayday address to the faithful at the foot of the statue of Jean d'Arc here in Paris, having first warned all local party committees not to send any delegates in army uniforms or with skinhead haircuts.

Le Monde looks at suspicions of censorship at the publicly-owned France Television network. The whole operation is run by a man appointed by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Since his arrival, said appointee has sacked the organisation's head of news. And he has now killed off two weekly news magazines. The TV station says the decisions have nothing whatsoever to do with political censorship, and are simply a reflection of the decline of the audience for the two programmes.

Also censored, and not for political reasons either, are human attempts to establish contact with life-forms elsewhere in the universe. Since 2007, the Alien Telescope Array, based in California, has been analysing signals from deep space, hoping to find evidence that we are not the only inhabitants of everything that there is. The basic assumption, that anything out there would communicate in the same way that we do, with technological means at least similar to the one used by earthlings, is at least open to question, but that has not stopped the project from swallowing a total of 25 million dollars in just four years, with not a peep to report, not even an engaged tone or a request to leave a message.

But then, would hyper-intelligent amonia-breathing nitrogenous beings who live in temperatures of minus 2,000 degrees centigrade understand the question.

What is certain, is that the project needs at least 2.5 million dollars per year if it is to keep going. Microsoft financed the first four years, perhaps hoping to capture the software market to any intelligent populations discovered by the project.