Up To Date france

Political pundits are predicting that the French president’s party will take a hit in regional elections this month.

With Sarkozy’s popularity at an all time low, commentators are predicting that the upcoming ballot will leave the opposition Socialist party in control of the majority of France’s regional governments.

Voters are expected to turn out to the polls on Sunday and to vent their frustration on a number of issues including the country’s mounting public debts and unemployment levels that are currently at their highest in 10 years, with a quarter of male school leavers currently out of work.

The slump for Sarkozy’s UMP is being seen as an opportunity by parties who have, until now, been seen as outside chances at the ballot box.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit leader of the Europe Ecologie party, who place environmental issues at the heart of their manifesto, told reporters: “Sarkozy thought he could do anything at any moment, all the time, and he figured out that it is not true.

Jerome Fourquet of the polling agency Ifop, which carried out a number of the survey which revealed Sarkozy’s falling popularity said the recent debate on national identity had not influenced many voters with jobless figures remaining the top issue for many voters.

He said: “Employment is the No. 1 issue. I don’t think French people, every morning when they wake up, wonder about what it means to be French.”

An exhibition chronicling the iconic work of late designer Yves Saint Laurent has opened in Paris.

The retrospective, looking at a career that spanned four decades opened yesterday at the Petit Palais museum in the French capital.

The exhibition will look at the life of the man born Yves Mathieu Saint Laurent in Algeria in 1936 whose career in fashion began designing outfits for paper dolls as a child and progressed through the Dior fashion house to the eventual launch of his own line in 1961.

The show was opened by Saint Laurents long time business and life partner Pierre Berge who said: “Saint Laurent spent his life thinking about women and their bodies.”

The city is currently awash with memories if the revered couturier with a number of books and biographies currently hitting the shelves, including one called Requiem pour Yves Saint Laurent by Laurence Benaim, the editor of Ferench Fashion magazine Stiletto who met Sant Laurent while covering fasion for a French daily newspaper.

Speaking in advance of the opening of the exhibition Ms  Benaim told reporters: “He was the absolute embodiment of the French couturier. He was a symbol of elegance, in a sense the heir of both Chanel and Dior.

“He proved that beauty had no borders. The burning sun of the Mediterranean was within him.”

Other upcoming Saint Laurent centred projects include an album of Saint Laurent-inspired songs and an upcoming film about his life and love with Pierre Berge titled L’Amour Fou.

Nicolas Sarkozy has told a conference in Paris that leading economies must contribute more to help save the world’s forests.

The French president was addressing the leaders of 63 nations at the one day event in the French capital.

The conference included the heads of the more powerful industrial nations as well as representatives from the countries that are home to some of the world’s most important forests such as those in Indonesia, the Amazon and the Congo.

Global leaders have already pledged $30 billion over the next three years to try and tackle the ongoing issue of deforestation and the part of the aim of the conference was to try and reach agreements on how the money should be disbursed.

But the French president told the gathered politicians that more money would need to be raised in order to tackle the issue head on. He added that funding should come from both the public and private sector.

“Those who don’t want to do anything are those who don’t want to pay,” he told the gathered assembly.

French environment minister Jean Louis Borloo added: “”Lots of things are happening everywhere, but there is no visibility, no transparency, there is no pilot. We need to know who is doing what and how.”

Gabon environment minister Martin Mabala said: “Forests are a planetary asset and no longer the concern of individual countries.”