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French press review 6 November 2014

Obama's loss of both houses to the Republicans, Hollande reaches the half-way point in his five-year term, racism in the French football and the cost of the French refugee system dominate the front page stories of French dailies.

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We'll start inside Le Monde with The Yamazaki. And what, you might reasonably ask, is that?

It's a whisky, rated the best in the world by the prestigious Whisky Bible which has just published it annual honours list. The Yamazaki is a single malt distilled in Japan. And if that's not enough to put the wind up your kilt, know that, for the first time in the twelve years of the Whisky Bible's existence, no Scotch whiskey is good enough to get into the top five.

Le Monde reveals that Masataka Taketsuru, one of the minds and pallets behind The Yamazaki, studied in Glasgow and returned to Japan with a Scottish wife. Och the noo! as they sometimes say in downtown Kyoto.

There are a couple of unhappy presidents on this morning's front pages.

Le Monde gives the honours to Barack Obama with a main headline saying that voters in the United States have decided to turn the page, leaving the hopes of America's social liberals in tatters. Worse says Le Monde, Obama's loss of both houses to the Republicans means that the final years of his presidency are likely to be dogged by further failures and embarrassments.

Already the public statements of mutual respect and support are beginning to sound false, with Obama saying he intends to see his reform of the US immigration system pushed through, despite Republican resistance. The president can try to enforce his will by presidential decree, but the Republicans have warned that they would regard that as a hostile act, and they could subsequently challenge the new law in the courts.

Expect to see a lot of smiling and handshaking over the next two years in Washington, but there will be blood.

The other unhappy leader is François Hollande, who today reaches the half-way point in his five-year term. There won't be any celebrations.

The latest Harris opinion poll shows 92 per cent of the French electorate dissatisfied with their president.

Catholic La Croix gives the man the front-page honours, with a headline reading "Hollande facing hardship". What about the rest of us? you might be tempted to ask. La Croix repeats the unhappy facts: Hollande's governing majority is deeply divided, the economic outlook is bleak at best, very few people believe the president really knows what he's doing, or has the authority to see it through. Tonight, he'll go on national television and attempt to convince the French that things will get better over the remaining 30 months of his rule. La Croix says the question of whather he can actually last that long is now being openly debated.

Communist L'Humanité wonders if disaster can be prevented before the end of Hollande's five-year term, which might sound like the same question but isn't.

The communist daily looks at attempts by various currents on the French left to redirect the socialist effort, not by divisive in-fighting but by returning to basic principles. Which would be all very fine if the economic climate would, itself, return to basic principles.

Left-leaning Libération looks at the beautiful game, wondering how deeply racist French football really is.

The question relates to the storm of protest which followed recent comments by the manager of Bordeau football club to the effect that African players are cheap and combative but might be lacking in technique, discipline and intelligence.

Libé says it's clearly wrong-headed to understand the comment as a denial of intelligence to African players, but the daily does admit that there's disquiet on the racial question in the French footballing edifice, and that this sort of debate reveals just how deep the problem lies.

And then there's conservative paper Le Figaro, worried in its main story about the explosion of costs associated with the French refugee system.

According to Le Figaro, the number of people claiming refugee status in France increased by 85 per cent between 2007 and 2013. This has meant huge increases in hotel bills and the amounts spent on temporary assistance.

According to the right-wing paper, the French system is nothing but an expensive way of promoting illegal immigration.

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