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French press review 14 April 2017

What the main presidential candidates have to say about the question of religion. And about the nation's dangerously overcrowded prisons. What's at stake for Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sunday's referendum? And is there life on one of Saturn's moons?

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The main story and editorial in conservative paper Le Figaro wonder about the impact on French national identity of the drive by the majority of presidential candidates to seduce Muslim voters.

Obviously, religious extremism is a key subject for many electors. Le Figaro compares the positions of the five leading candidates.

Centrist Emmanuel Macron is in favour of training Muslim imams in French universities to ensure that they are fully in tune with republican values. The crucial question of the clash between such values and certain versions of the message of Islam remains wide open.

Conservative François Fillon wants to fight against what he calls "political Islam," that branch of religion which wants to promote political change, and which Fillon insists ranges from the debate about the wearing of the Muslim headscarf all the way to outright terrorism.

Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is against any "community" within the broader French community . . . she wants everyone to play by the same rules, speak, pray and preach in French, wear French gear. She wants to close all Salafist mosques, and promises to examine more closely the way religious groups use state funding.

Socialist Benoît Hamon is in favour of a strict application of the 1905 law making the French republic a completely a-religious entity. He believes that law protects equally the right of one girl to wear shorts and another to wear the headscarf.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the hard left is against any use of the principle of the equality of all religions as a stick with which to beat Muslims. He hopes to separate the spheres of religion and politics. Which would, given the sad and blood-stained record of human history, be something like a miracle.

What the contenders have to say about overcrowded prisons

Left-leaning Libération looks at what the contenders have to say about jail, finding that the big five are all in favour of locking more people up. And this, despite the fact that some French prisons are housing two and a half times their intended population, that many buildings are past their sell-by date, and that prison officers are at the end of their tether.

What's at stake in Erdogan's risky referendum?

Le Monde devotes its main story and editorial to next Sunday's referendum in Turkey.

Basically, voters are being asked to give the Turkish president virtually dictatorial powers. If the result of Sunday's vote is "yes", Recep Tayyip Erdogan will have exclusive executive power and an even stronger grip on the judiciary.

The president has been planning this for a long time. He does not intend to lose.

Still, says Le Monde, with just two days to go, those mighty barometers of public confusion, the opinion polls, have the "yes" and "no" camps virtually side-by-side.

And this despite the purges of the army and civil service in the wake of last year's supposed coup, which enabled Erdogan to put most of his political opponents behind bars and has made campaigning for a "no" vote a risky business.

Le Monde says a lot of ordinary Turks, despite a broad admiration for the man who has supervised real economic progress, are worried about their nation's drift towards effective dictatorship. A lot of foreign investors are worried too.

Win or lose, Erdogan's risky bet may turn out to be costly.

Ingredients necessary for life found on Saturn moon

And, just in case you're fed up to the teeth with what's happening here on earth, Le Monde's science pages report that the Cassini probe has found all the essential ingredients necessary for the emergence of life on one of the moons of the planet Saturn.

Just to be absolutely clear: not life, but the essential ingredients IF life is, eventually, to emerge. There are three such ingredients, at least for life as we understand it. They are: liquid water, a source of energy to drive the metabolism of the little beasties swimming around in it, and a chemical stew including carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur, nitrogen and phosphorous. As far as those reading the data coming back from Cassini are concerned, Saturn's tiny satellite known as Enceladus ticks all the boxes.

We're not talking little green men, either. Single-celled blobs would be fine things, according to the researchers. So we're not quite on the verge of a war of the worlds. Unless, of course, the single-celled blobs have the grand-mother of all bombs.

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