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French press review 6 May 2017

Elections, local, parliamentary and presidential, dominate this morning's menu but French electoral law restricts what we can report during the weekend of the presidential election.

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Le Monde points out that the presidential election camapign officially came to an end at midnight and that all political communication is thus illegal. Don't buy a French daily paper . . . they're all breaking the law!

Parties and individuals are forbidden from doing any last-minute campaigning.

No opinion poll results can be published today. Unless the publisher wants to pay a fine of 75,000 euros.

A lot of nothing discovered near Saturn

So our first story this morning comes from Saturn, where the American Cassini probe has spent the last few days plunging through that planet's famous rings.

The surprising thing is that in the space just under the rings, which are a mixture of gas, ice, rocks and dust, there is surprisingly little of anything, Le Monde reports. Cassini's minders have been surprised by the emptiness of a hitherto unexplored region, where they haven't been able to find as much as a speck of dust.

The probe is expected to make a further 20 plunges through Saturn's rings, before its final descent into the planet's atmosphere later this year.

May sitting pretty after local landslide

Le Monde looks to the United Kingdom where Theresa May's Conservatives hammered Labour and the far-right United Kingdon Independence Party in yesterday's local elections. Le Monde says it's a dream result for the Tories, with just five weeks to go to the general election. And a total nightmare for the left.

Losers all round as Algeria chooses stagnation

Left-leaning Libération looks to this week's other election, in Algeria, and describes the outcome as a complete defeat for democracy.

There were only losers, says Libé, even if the ruling coalition maintains its absolute majority in parliament, with just some minor adjustments to the balance of power between the coalition partners.

Political stability is a fine thing, says Libération, but in Algeria the situation has long passed the stage of caricature. Several local papers were able to publish the results - with a remarkable degree of accuracy - before a single vote was cast.

Only 38 percent of Algerians bothered to vote, a warning to those who currently hold power that a majority of young Algerians no longer believe in politics.

Support for the various Islamic parties, sharply divided on the question of participation in the governing coalition, appears to have stagnated. They'll probably have 60 seats in the new assembly, roughly the same as in the outgoing parliament.

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