WORLD IN BRIEF : FRANCE : Assembly Approves Anti-Racism Law

In a move widely believed aimed at right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French National Assembly approved a strict anti-racism law that would bar anyone convicted of promoting racism from holding elected office for five years. The law also would classify as a crime the propagation of “revisionist” history questioning the existence or extent of the Holocaust. The bill now goes before the Senate. Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, has advocated deportation of North African immigrants and called the Nazi gas chambers “a detail” of history.