French press review 29 July 2014

International news is raging while France settles into a summer slumber - and newspapers are struggling to fill their pages.

Leading paper Le Monde looks into why the Ebola virus has no vaccine. A French medical expert weighs in on the issue in a front-page interview, saying that the only way to contain the outbreak now is to diagnose cases faster.

According to the paper, the pharmaceutical industry hasn't bothered much with developing a cure because there's been few profits to be made so far. This may change with the latest epidemic bringing death tolls far above anything seen over the past four decades. For the moment though the main priority is treating those who are already sick and working out how to stabilise their health.

Conservative Le Figaro tracks the arrival of Air Algérie's black boxes from Mali.

The paper says information about the crashed flight might take weeks to unravel. French investigators are working at full speed and under international pressure but any analysis will have to be combined with evidence from the ground. Investigating the sight of the crash is also a logistical nightmare - and getting there has not been easy. French troops on the ground have been joined by UN forces and Togolese soldiers.

Le Figaro comments that President François Hollande has been hogging the limelight on the Air Algérie issue. Reacting fast and publically to disasters was a media strategy apparently used by former president Nicolas Sarkozy. And Hollande has perfected it to a tee. He has made three official declarations in the past three days, all related to the downed flight. Le Figaro scorns these efforts to appear in control, saying it's a poorly disguised attempt to distract the French from pressing economic concerns.

And speaking of morose economy, Libé reviews this year of lay-offs, with hundreds of

workers in the autoindustry and other sectors struggling to make ends meet. The paper looks at what Dutch company Philips left behind after moving away four years ago - not much. Thousands of despondent workers have not yet bounced back from lack of jobs in the area.

Communist paper L'Humanité is concerned with peaches. Every summer France and Spain race to dominate fruit markets and usually France loses to Spain's cheaper prices. L'Huma says the Spanish are cheating - transporting peaches to large markets in France without setting an official price, so as to be more competitive locally. This practice is forbidden in France and French farmers are outraged by the foul play this summer, unable to beat Spanish steals.

And Simone de Beauvoir makes the front pages of Libé, in their summer series on inspiring leaders.

Annette Levy-Willard writes a letter to the famous feminist, who died in 1986. She tells the story of how her meeting with de Beauvoir in the United States over a bottle of whisky inspired her to become a journalist. According to her, Beauvoir's works are timeless because the fight for gender equality is not over. History is often one step forward, two steps back.