The World
The new law maintains consensual sex outside marriage as a criminal act punishable by up to five years in prison, reduced from the old maximum punishment of death. A leader of the six-party religious alliance-which is threatening to create a political crisis by pulling its 53 members out of the 342-seat National Assembly-fretted that the legal changes will turn Pakistan into a "free-sex society."
Consider It a Political Aperitif
Is France ready for Madame la Présidente? On TV, yes. A six-part comedy-drama about the first female French president, L'Etat de Grace ("State of Grace"), created some buzz when it aired this fall. In reality? Stay tuned. On Friday, France's Socialist Party announced its candidate in April's presidential election: Ségolène Royal, 53, who becomes the nation's first female presidential candidate from a major party. She most likely will run against Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy from the center-right party of current President Jacques Chirac. Early polls put them neck and neck.
Royal, who has held several cabinet posts and is currently the equivalent of a governor in the western Poitou-Charentes region, brings star power more than political correctness. She has rankled her party's old-line leftists by, for instance, endorsing reform of France's troubled education system (many teachers are Socialist Party members) and questioning the 35-hour workweek. Unmarried, she lives with the father of her four children, Socialist Party leader François Hollande.
And in the life-imitates-art department, consider this scene from L'Etat de Grace: When the phone rings in Elysée Palace, fictional French President Grace Bellanger picks it up and says, in English, "Hi, Hillary."
With Bret Schulte and Aamir Latif in Pakistan
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