Day Seventeen

While the rioting has largely spared Paris itself, the city of Lyon wasn't nearly as lucky. 'Teens' defied the curfew, but rioters vandalized shops and damaged vehicles.

Ten people were arrested in France's second city after 50 youths attacked stalls and damaged vehicles, police and witnesses said, adding that the situation later calmed down.

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.

Well, that 76 car metric is disputed by another report, which suggests the total was 374 cars. Why the discrepancy? Well, the French media have come out and said that they wouldn't accurately report the car torch metric. Some in the media have even said that they would lie about the car torchings if only to help Chirac stay in power.

The French are in serious trouble because the rioters are ignoring the curfew.

Police overnight said the situation across France was "much calmer" than on previous nights.

More than 370 cars were burned overnight, down from 502 the previous night. A further 212 people were arrested.

In the southern town of Carpentras, a nursery school was torched and a burning car was pushed up to an old people's home, causing panic among residents.

There were disturbances in the cities of Toulouse and St-Etienne, and two riot police were injured.

Riots are not lessening when the number of goons arrested is among the highest during the 17 days of rioting. Were those goons arrested during rioting or as a result of investigations into the previous days of rioting? We're not told.

UPDATE:
Captain Ed continues to focus like a laser beam on the media coverage of the riots, and how they're spinning furiously to try and explain away the violence that continues unabated. Some media outlets say that torching cars is a national pasttime for France (to the tune of 80 cars a night on average), while others say that the rioting is the police's fault (for instigating and then not being sensitive enough to the rioters).