Jean Marie Le Pen

All eyes will be on the right when French voters go to the polls across the country Sunday in the second and final round of voting to choose mayors and council members. In the initial round, last Sunday , the anti-immigrant extreme right, whose national leader is Jean-Marie Le Pen, managed just about 6% of the vote nationwide. (The ruling conservative coalition of French President Jacques Chirac won 49%, better than in the last election but not as well as conservatives had hoped.

The National Assembly approved a new anti-racism measure today widely believed to be aimed at Jean-Marie Le Pen and his far-right National Front party. Under the bill, anyone convicted of practicing or promoting racial discrimination could be barred from holding any elected office or government job for five years. The governing Socialists have blamed Le Pen and his colleagues for creating a climate of racial animosity.

The trial of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen opened, with prosecutors saying he should receive a five-month suspended prison sentence and a $14,530 fine for saying that the Nazi occupation of France was "not particularly inhumane." Le Pen's trial on charges of "justification of war crimes" and "contesting crimes against humanity" is based on a 2005 interview with right-wing weekly magazine Rivarol. He denies any wrongdoing and did not attend the trial.

After several months of searching France for a friendly site, extreme right-wing political leader Jean-Marie Le Pen finally found a place willing to host the annual festival for his National Front Political Party, scheduled this weekend. Rejected by a Paris race track and even by the political leaders of his hometown because of his anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant political message, Le Pen will instead hold forth on the grounds of a sprawling park on the western edge of the capital.

Supporters of right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen beat up Arabs and leftist students Saturday during a motorcade demonstration calling for the restoration of the guillotine in France. "The National Front picked a fight with groups of Arabs and blacks," said a crepe salesman in the downtown Boulevard des Italiens, who said his clients were among those hurt. The trouble began when scores of cars driven by backers of Le Pen's far-right National Front blocked the bustling boulevard.

Extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen returned home Thursday from Iraq with 55 freed hostages and accused unnamed Western governments of "wanting to keep hostages in Iraq in order to start a war." Le Pen, accompanied by several European Parliament members belonging to right-wing parties who accompanied him to Baghdad, landed in the eastern French city of Mulhouse aboard a special Boeing 727 Iraqi Airways jet.

A gibe about gas ovens, tossed into a political speech by French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, has reignited charges that the National Front chief is an incorrigible anti-Semite with Nazi leanings. Le Pen, denounced last year for saying the Holocaust murders of 6 million Jews were a mere "detail" of history, dropped the explosive remark on Friday into a characteristic verbal attack on a Socialist government minister, Michel Durafour. "Monsieur Durafour . . .

So you thought you had tax worries. Consider now the plight of some celebrities who recently discovered they owe anywhere from $5,000 to more than $200,000 to the state of New York. Singer Deborah Harry, for example, owes $241,354 from royalties on her recordings, the New York Post reported, and transsexual tennis player Renee Richards owes nearly $33,000.

At least 200,000 protesters marched in Paris and other French cities Saturday in a persistent show of anger at far-right presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen's surprise success in the first round of voting last weekend. Protesters in the capital chanted "Down with the National Front"--Le Pen's nationalist, anti-immigration party. Some beat on drums. One held a sign that read simply, "I'm ashamed."

Far-right French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, who called the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust a "minor detail" of World War II, Wednesday canceled a trip to Britain and was found guilty by a French court of provoking a public disturbance.