Libération’s headline is « Like father, like son » in reference to Ali Bongo’s victory in the Gabonese elections. Gabon is the country that best symbolises France’s cosy relations with its ex-colonies, the paper notes. According to the opposition, there was massive fraud in this election by the Bongo clan who has held power in the country for 41 years. The paper says Sarkozy seems to have supported Ali Bongo and asks, “Is France once again going to accept this democratic masquerade and approve the fraud of the Bongo clan?”

The French photographer and documentary film maker Christian Poveda was gunned down on Wednesday near the capital of Salvador, as the Catholic paper La Croix reports. For several years, Poveda had been working on projects concerning on maras – drug trafficking gangs in Central America largely made up of youths. He had just returned from filming in a suburb of La Campanera controlled by these gangs and overrun with violence. The director of the photojournalism festival Visa told journalists that Poveda had been warned by everyone of the danger of his work. But he was looking forward to his film coming out at the end of September after several years of work. This against casts the spotlight on this troubled region – 88% of cocaine in North America is said to come through Central America.

La Tribune publishes an opinion piece by Manuel Valls, one of the most high-profile renegades in the Socialist Party. He is critical of Ségolène Royal who broke with the party line this week in opposing Sarkozy’s plan for a carbon tax. Valls says the measure is a good one which perhaps needs tweaking but should be maintained. He questions Royal’s green credentials in light of her opposition to the bill.

Le Figaro says that the old French adage “Eat like a king in the morning, a prince at midday and a poor man in the evening” is being confirmed by research in the US. The journal “Obesity” has published studies showing when you eat is almost as important as what you eat. Experiments were done on mice showing that if they ate at night, they became obese. Mice with a more regular lifestyle who ate at regular hours did not put on extra weight.