What next? bowling pins?

At 04h Paris time ITN filed this report from the festival of non-creative destruction:

In a 17th night of violence, 76 cars were torched around the country and a riot policeman was injured after being hit by a metal ball thrown from an apartment block in a suburb outside Paris, police said.

By 11 p.m. (2200 GMT) there were no reports of disturbances in central Paris, though Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was heckled when he inspected security forces in the Champs Elysees by people who called for his resignation, witnesses said.

A Petanque ball as a weapon. How bizarre. I suppose they’ll ban that now too.

The Times Online (UK) adds:

The 72-year-old head of state has been off balance ever since voters defied him by rejecting the European Union constitution in May. Even his lieutenants in the centre-right governing team seemed to be putting the boot in. “Chirac looks stunned, almost overtaken by events,” Jean-Louis Debré, president of the national assembly, was quoted as saying.

Chirac, a veteran of countless political battles, baffled his opponents by leaving it to a spokesman to announce the revival of a state of emergency law to quell the unrest.

His few defenders said Chirac was simply following a tradition among French presidents who like to hover loftily above the political fray. A less charitable interpretation was that he had become hopelessly out of touch.

Baffled, indeed. François Hollande was just re-elected as the head of the normally discombobulated Parti socialiste by a margin of 56%.