French presidential front-runner François Hollande headed into the last round of his battle with Nicolas Sarkozy with both of the candidates threatened by the shadow of scandal.

A POWERFUL union leader threatened France with a general strike yesterday over a contested jobs plan that sparked violent protests in Paris over the weekend.

Immigration, as well as unemployment, are at the top of the agenda of France’s new government, which has the task of pulling the nation out of a crisis of confidence.

President Jacques Chirac today met his beleaguered prime minister, who was widely expected to be fired after France roundly rejected the European Union’s first constitution in a referendum that threw the Union’s future into disarray.