"Death toll reaches 8 in blast at building in Paris suburb" | Associated Press September 02, 2014
PARIS — The death toll in the partial collapse of a four-story apartment building in a Paris suburb rose to eight Monday after emergency crews pulled the bodies of a man and a woman from the rubble.
Fire Department spokesman Gabriel Plus said the bodies were found Monday in Rosny-sous-Bois, a town northeast of the capital.
Officials said there was no longer any danger in the neighborhood after an explosion sheared part of the building Sunday, scattering scraps of metal and household belongings.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve of France said a gas leak is believed to be the cause of the explosion.
Cazeneuve said the nation was providing support to the families and victims. He said the 22 people from the remaining two thirds of the building have been given alternative lodging.
The entire structure was declared uninhabitable.
Speaking from La Rochelle at a socialist party conference on Sunday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed his concern about the disaster and pledged support for the victims.
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Related: House Hollande
That is also collapsing.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Hot off the presses!
"France’s former first lady details life with Hollande in tell-all book" by Helene Fouquet | Bloomberg News September 04, 2014
PARIS — The former first lady of France, Valerie Trierweiler, says President Francois Hollande sought to win her back after his infidelity prompted her to overdose on sleeping pills.
In a 320-page tell-all book titled ‘‘Merci Pour Ce Moment’’ (“Thanks for the Moment”) to be released Thursday, Trierweiler, 49, talks of the flowers and text messages he sent and the dinner invitations he made after his affair with actress Julie Gayet resulted in their breakup.
‘‘He tells me he wants to win me back like I was an election,’’ she writes, according to excerpts published Wednesday in Paris Match magazine, where she is a columnist. ‘‘Does he believe what he writes? Or am I the latest whim of a man who hates losing?’’
The book’s publication comes as Hollande slides again in opinion polls. His popularity has fallen back below 20 percent, near France’s historical low for a president.
Related: Hollande Most Hated President in French History
That's saying the French have seen through this banker's wolf in $ociali$t clothing, just like Greece did.
With joblessness rising for three straight years and a government mutiny forcing him to reshuffle his Cabinet, revelations about his private life come at a particularly difficult moment.
And don't leave out the expansion of French forces in Africa (and now in Kurdistan, Iraq). I'm sure the diversion of money isn't lo$t on the French people who really do seem to be on the ball as far as populations go.
The former first lady lays out in detail how she popped a large dose of sleeping pills on the day she was informed of Hollande’s infidelity. She was devastated as the news became public, she said.
‘‘I want to sleep, I don’t want to go through the hours that’ll follow,’’ she wrote. She was hospitalized for eight days after the news reports of the affair.
In the book, Trierweiler gives details of the couple’s personal life at the Elysee palace, recounting how Hollande’s rise to power altered their relationship. There was little room for privacy, she says, citing an instance when an adviser walked into their bathroom.
Join the rest of us whose communications and movements are being scooped up and laid bare. This bitching by the elite for a structure they created is offensive.
The columnist also writes of the early days of her nine-year-long relationship with Hollande. She was a political journalist and he was still with his former partner Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children and now France’s Energy and Environment minister.
And you are surprised, stunned, and devastated he cheated on you? Really? How naive! Or this all an act.
The president has not made a public comment on the book. The government spokesman Stephane Le Foll shrugged off any potential consequences from the publication.
He's already so low I doubt this salacious fluff will matter.
‘‘In the current environment in France and with the responsibilities we face, we have no time to lose,’’ he said on the all-news I-tele channel.
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