Via the BBC: France to vote on emergency laws

The French Senate is set to pass emergency laws a day after the lower house of parliament voted for a three-month extension.

The laws allow local authorities to impose curfews, conduct house-to-house searches and ban public gatherings.

Violence continued across France overnight but fewer cars were set on fire than during previous nights.

Nationwide, 163 cars were burnt - almost down to the levels seen before the riots began last month.

At the height of the violence, more than 1,400 vehicles were destroyed in a single night.

According to a sidebar in the BBC story, the tally is now: 8.973 care burnt, 2,888 arrests and 20 nights of riots.

And, nobody expects the polygamy card, but here you go:

Meanwhile, senior officials from President Jacques Chirac’s centre-right party have suggested that polygamy is one factor in the riots, arguing children of polygamous families have less of a father figure and are more likely to live in overcrowded conditions.

“Polygamy… prevents people being educated as they should be in an organised society. Tens of people cannot live in a single flat,” Bernard Accoyer, leader of the Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) in the National Assembly lower house of parliament, told French radio.

Polygamy is illegal in France but until 1993, it was possible for immigrants to bring more than one wife from their home country to join them.