succeed
Jacques Chirac as president.
Mr de Villepin has been accused of failing to stop a corruption inquiry into Mr Sarkozy, knowing the accusations against his rival to be false. But the judge said there was no proof that Mr de Villepin had acted
in bad faith
. Mr de Villepin said he held no grudges and that he was
looking forward to
serving the French people.
"Justice was done. After several trying years, I have been recognized as innocent. At the current moment, I'm thinking of my family, which has experienced day after day of rumor and
suspicion
. I
pay tribute to
the courage of the court, which has allowed justice and law to triumph over politics."
The American author JD Salinger has died at his home in New Hampshire at the age of 91. He won lasting international fame with his novel "The Catcher in the Rye" written in 1951. Charles Scanlon reports.
JD Salinger was a hero to generations of
adolescent
s, who identified with the youthful protagonist in his classic novel The Catcher in the Rye. The story of teenage alienation had generated some controversy in the 1950s for its use of swearwords and references to casual sex and prostitution. More than half a century later, it still sells more than 200,000 copies a year. JD Salinger rejected the fame that the book brought him and did no interviews in the last three decades of his life.
Charles Scanlon reporting there on the death of the American author JD Salinger.