TALENCE, France (Reuters) – To understand why Mitt Romney persists in the face of rejection, opposition and indifference from his own party, look no further than the two and a half years he spent in France, getting up at 6:30 a.m. every day to venture forth and have doors slammed in his face for 10 hours.

The fresh-faced Latter-Day Saints who came to France in the late 1960s to preach the message of Jesus Christ — of whom Republican presidential candidate Romney is the best known — discovered a secular and sceptical populace, and few willing converts.

TALENCE, France (Reuters) – To understand why Mitt Romney persists in the face of rejection, opposition and indifference from his own party, look no further than the two and a half years he spent in France, getting up at 6:30 a.m. every day to venture forth and have doors slammed in his face for 10 hours.

The fresh-faced Latter-Day Saints who came to France in the late 1960s to preach the message of Jesus Christ — of whom Republican presidential candidate Romney is the best known — discovered a secular and skeptical populace, and few willing converts.

PARIS (Reuters) – Urban guerrilla ‘Carlos the Jackal’ smiled and flashed a clenched fist salute on Monday when he went on trial for deadly Paris bomb attacks he is accused of mounting at the height of his “anti-imperialist campaign” in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I am a revolutionary by profession,” Ilich Ramirez Sanchez declared to a special terrorism court of judges, his bluster clearly undiminished by two decades served in French prisons since his 1994 capture in Khartoum by French special forces.

PARIS (Reuters) – France will announce up to 8 billion euros in cuts and tax hikes on Monday, imposing more pain on voters to shore up its credit rating and hold down its deficit in a make-or-break gamble for President Nicolas Sarkozy six months before an election.

Sarkozy’s center-right government says extra savings are urgently needed to keep France’s finances from going off the rails, since it cut its growth forecast for next year to 1 percent from 1.75 percent last week.

PARIS, Nov 6 (Reuters) – France will do all it can to reach
its revised target of 1 percent growth for next year, Finance
Minister Francois Baroin said on Sunday, a day before the
government is due to announce up to 8 billion euros in new
budget tightening for 2012.

Last week, France lowered its growth projections for next
year to 1 percent from 1.7 percent — raising the need for
further belt-tightening measures by the centre-right government
of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

PARIS (Reuters) – Gray hair and a paunch have replaced the beret, leather jacket and dark glasses but Carlos the Jackal’s defiance remains intact before he stands trial in France for a series of bombings in the 1980s.

The international revolutionary from Venezuela, born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, built a career as one of the world’s best known guerrillas after a hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers in the name of the Palestinian struggle in 1975.

PARIS (Reuters) – In the early hours of the morning, shadowy figures crouch behind the concrete blocks, bulldozers and rubble of one of the biggest building sites in central Paris to set their traps.

The lights from the nearby St. Eustache church cast a yellow glow over the ravaged landscape as the silent trappers place tuna and raw beef inside the wire cages and then step away to wait for the stealthy approach of their prey: feral black cats.

PARIS, Oct 17 (Reuters) – For the first time in its history,
luxury conglomerate LVMH has provided a peek into its
exclusive workshops, design showrooms and wine cellars — to
reveal the hundreds of hands and delicate workmanship behind its
expensive brands.

Seeking to “reveal the true nature of high quality,”
according to LVMH, the company opened up 25 of its brands to the
public on Saturday and Sunday.

PARIS, Oct 11 (Reuters) – French transport workers went on
strike and unions held rallies on Tuesday against measures to
curb the public deficit, but the much lower turnout than in last
year’s pension reform protests may reassure the government as
elections loom.

Five unions, including the CFDT and the prominent CGT
syndicate, the two biggest groups, organised about 200 street
rallies and strikes across France against President Nicolas
Sarkozy’s budget-cutting measures.

PARIS/BRUSSELS, Oct 5 (Reuters) – Belgium and France expect
to finalise by Thursday a rescue plan for Dexia that
would sever the bank’s French lending business and may
nationalise its Belgian arm.

Battered in recent weeks by heavy exposure to Greece and
problems accessing wholesale funds, Dexia’s shares hit an
all-time low on Tuesday, prompting shareholders Belgium and
France to come to its rescue.