In the Papers

Issued on: 12/10/2009 - 07:30Modified: 12/10/2009 - 12:11

IN THE PAPERS

Advertising

Left-wing daily Libération devotes its front page to exclusive revelations concerning French nuclear waste. While EDF, the main French electricity company, insists that its nuclear waste is in a "closed cycle", mostly recycled or disposed of safely, a Libération journalist has found that large amounts of depleted uranium are in fact left out in the open air at a centre near Tomsk in Siberia. The uranium is supposedly to be recycled at some point in the future, but the technology is not yet ready to do so. Russian environmentalists have cried foul.

Meanwhile Le Figaro leads on another Russia-related exclusive: an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev. Reflecting on the events of 1989 20 years on, the last Soviet leader seems to be saying he had predicted the fall of the Berlin wall. In any case, he says that Soviet intervention in Eastern Europe in 1989 would have led to World War Three, and he doesn't regret letting those regimes fall. What he does regret, however, is underestimating his opponents in the Kremlin, who ultimately brought him, and the Soviet Union, down, in 1991.

This press review also looks at the ongoing scandal surrounding culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand, via Le Parisien, Le Quotidien de la Réunion, and Libération again.