http://www.comcast.net/news/index.js...07/258994.html
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Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight and a 61-year-old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday.
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Chirac said unemployment runs as high as 40 percent in some suburban neighborhoods, four times the national rate of just under 10 percent, Vike-Freiberga said. On Sunday night, vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles, and clashes around the country left 36 police injured, setting a new high for overnight arson and violence since rioting started last month, national police chief Michel Gaudin told a news conference.
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Attacks overnight Sunday to Monday were reported in 274 towns, and police made 395 arrests, Gaudin said.
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About 4,700 cars have been burned in France since the rioting began and 1,200 suspects were detained at least temporarily, Gaudin said.
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The growing violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society's margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimination and despair _ fertile terrain for crime of all sorts as well as for Muslim extremists offering frustrated youths a way out.
France, with 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe.
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I think the reasons for the violence are more than
just the unemployment rate, but I do think that is the main reason. I mean, 40% dependending on race and ethnicity? And everyone thought America was the home of racism and inequality...
Politics aside, I really hope that Chirac can get things under control and the violence stops. There are a lot of innocent people getting hurt.