You can watch the French press review live on France 24 at 7.10am, Paris time, Monday to Friday.

Unedited television script

Struck by lightening, swept away by rising river waters,… an appalling series of catastrophes hit French soldiers in Afghanistan this past weekend.Le Parisien recounts the details – three soldiers were killed during a strom while moving through the Afghanya valley in a pre-dawn raid. One was hit by lightening while two drowned and in an unrelated incident a fourth French soldier died when his armour-plated car fell into a ravine on the road between the Afghan capital, Kabul, and Tora, to the north. Five others were injured in the crash.

Once again the France’s military commitment in Afghanistan and the strategy of Western powers in Afghanistan is being called into question. Sarkozy says these accidents change nothing regarding France’s commitments in Afghanistan
The Socialist Party is calling for a parliamentary debate on the matter saying the war is ‘deadly’ without clear objectives and without any exit strategy.

Regional papers are also running the story on their front page. Le Télégramme; Afghanistan – a series of catastrophes

The Catholic paper La Croix sent a report to the Northern ports of Calais and Dunkirk, a week after the destruction of a migrant camp known as “the jungle”.

The justification for breaking up this camp was to impede people trafficking rings operating in France’s northern ports. Afghans and other migrants pay thousands of euros to people traffickers in order to gain access to the UK.

Yet Vincent Lemoir of the Salam Association says
“We don’t yet know where [the migrants] are sleeping but the people traffickers have no problem finding them. This is the paradox; the more we distance them, the more we isolate them and the more they find themselves in the hands of the traffickers.”

In Dunkirk just 40 km away, migrants there are getting worried – word has spread about the destruction of the Calais camp. Aid workers say they’re afraid to arrive at one of the Dunkirk camps to find all of the migrants gone. Inevitably they will set up camp somewhere else in the region but the difficulty is that it’s harder to get aid to them if they constantly move around.

Essentially, la Croix argues that the destruction of the “jungle” camp has changed very little.

“Does Carla Bruni really influence Nicolas Sarkozy?” asks France Soir. There is speculation that the First Lady convinced her husband to scrap DNA testing for immigrants who claim they’re coming to France to join family already here.

In 2007 when this measure was first discussed, Carla Bruni – then just a singer – spoke of her “indignation”. She referred to herself as an “extremely privileged immigrant” and asked , “What would I have done if DNA testing had been imposed on me in order to come join my parents from Italy?”

The leader of the far-right Front National party, Jean-Marie le Pen has said, “Do we dare to believe that Nicolas Sarkozy scrapped this measure because he met a certain Italian singer?”

Responding to this speculation, Sarkozy insists that he is “old enough to no longer be someone who is under influence!”

Does this suggest that he was once under influence? His previous wife Celia - who was France’s first lady for a few months - was notoriously influential in terms of Sarkozy’s entourage. She is said to have screened everyone who had access to Sarkozy.

As for the influence of wife number three, Sarkozy’s meeting with the Dalai in Poland and his appointment of Frédéric Mitterand as Culture Minister are also attributed to the persuasive powers of Carla Bruni.

A remarkable feat is recounted in Le Parisien / AUjourd’hui en France. 50 year old Thierry Corbalan swam the 15km stretch between the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. I’m already impressed but all the more so seeing as he has no arms – Corbalan had both his arms amputated after a car accident when he 29 years old.