THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Voting booths were set up all over France for the more than 600,000 Algerian citizens living there. Despite death threats against anyone who voted from the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), a savage, militant offshoot of the Islamic Front, the Algerian government pegged the combined voter turnout at 75 percent. Marlowe notes that violence from Algeria's bloody war, in which as many as 1,000 people are killed every week, has spilled over into France, where the GIA is believed responsible for a series of bombings this summer. Its dramatic hijacking of an Air France flight last December fanned fears that the war could destabilize all of North Africa.