The left-leaning paper Libération is covering the defeat of the far-right Front National party in a bye-election in the northern French town of Hénin-Beaumont. The FN had got 40% of the in the first round of these elections last weekend. The left and right formed an alliance in order to beat the FN and they did so by the skin of their teeth with 52.4% of the vote against Marine le Pen’s 47.6%.

Marine le Pen is the daughter of the FN leader Jean-Marie le Pen who lost out to Jacques Chirac in the second round of the French presidential election in 2002. She criticised the lies and slander of her adversary in the last days of the election. “They wanted to instil fear in the electorate with a stigmatisation (of the FN),” she commented. The FN is pretty adept at using fear as an electoral technique itself, in particular on issues such as immigration…

Libération goes back over the recent failures of the FN. It had held the town halls of four French towns in the nineties. This would have been the fifth. One town it ran for a period was Vitrolles where policies included subsidising the birth of a French child. This perverse policy was overturned by the French courts. The party also renamed streets in the town. Avenue François Mitterand became Avenue de Marseille. Rue Nelson Mandela became Rue de la Provence.

On each occasion they lost control of the city hall in the next election - a damning indictment of their actual ability to manage the day-to-day affairs of local governance.

Le Parisien carries an article on the debate due to take place tomorrow in the National Assembly on introducing work on Sunday in France. This is the fourth version of the bill; there has been a lot of opposition to it, even within the ruling UMP party. As a result, the initiative has had to be watered down considerably.

Sunday work will only be generally introduced on an optional basis in certain French cities: Paris, Lille and Marseille.

Theoretically there will be five Sundays per year when shops all over the country can open.

However in designated tourist zones, it will be authorised to open all year round. One problem this will inevitably lead to is the definition of ‘a tourist zone’. It’s not clearly defined.

Another issue - workers will be paid double for Sunday work but will that continue to be the case over time? If there is a normalisation of Sunday work, double pay may not be maintained. Some see this simply as a sweetener to push through the reform.

Le Figaro is reporting a French Army cover up for a major blunder made by the Algerian Army in the 1990s.

In 1996, seven French trappist monks were assassinated by machine gun in the Atlas Mountains in Algeria. At the time, the Islamist movement was blamed. There were frequent clashes between the Islamic Group Army (GIA) and the Algerian government during this period. A French General based in Algeria at the time has now revealed the shooting was carried out by an Algerian Army helicopter. He cites official Algerian sources. The shooting seems to have been a mistake by the Algerian Army where they confused the monks for Islamist militia.

The French General was asked not to mention this at the time by the French authorities. It seems that the French Army aided Algeria in covering up this blunder.

The front page of the sports paper, l’Equipe, shows the 15 grand slam titles that Roger Federer has now clocked up as a result of his win yesterday against Andy Roddick in the Men’s Singles Final at Wimbledon. He now has the honour of holding the greatest number of Grand Slam titles. It had been Sampras with 14. It was a nail biting finish going to a fifth set tie breaker which Federer eventually won 16-14. With this victory and his victory at the French Open, he takes back the world number one spot from Raphael Nadal.