The Financial Times reports that France's new prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, on Wednesday promised his government would respond to voters' “suffering, impatience, and anger” by devoting all its efforts and spare budget funds to cutting unemployment.

In a speech to parliament he said France faced an exceptional moment in its history after voters had damned the whole political class by rejecting Europe's constitutional treaty in a referendum last month.

Mr de Villepin said he had heard voters' grievances, expressed in the referendum debate, and vowed to set France on a new course putting it back to work. “In a modern democracy the debate is not between the [economically] liberal and the socialist, it is in truth between stagnation and action. I resolutely choose the course of action.” The prime minister, who had previously promised to restore French confidence within 100 days of taking office, announced several measures to increase labour market flexibility and stimulate job creation.

The government would introduce less onerous work contracts for small companies and improve unemployment benefits and vocational training. But it would compel jobseekers to take reasonable offers. Unemployment stands at 10.2 per cent.

Mr de Villepin said his intention was to adapt France's model of social protection, defending it from rampant market forces. “The French people know and say with force that globalisation is not an ideal; it cannot be our destiny.” The new measures would cost the government an additional €4.5bn in 2006, he said.

The government would not exceed its budget deficit limits and would press ahead with its privatisation programme by selling minority stakes in EDF, the electricity company, Gaz de France, and road companies.

The finance ministry said the initial public offering for Gaz de France would be launched on June 23, with a market debut set for the start of July.

Mr de Villepin admitted there was “narrow” room for budgetary manoeuvre and abandoned a promise made by President Jacques Chirac this year to resume income-tax cuts in 2006.

The former interior and foreign minister, who has never held elected office, received a tepid reception from MPs in the ruling UMP party and hostility from opposition socialists.

François Hollande, Socialist leader, said Mr de Villepin's response was inadequate to the scale of the crisis. “You are the product of a system in power for more than 10 years that is, today, at the end of its reign. You are the illustration of a political mechanism founded on irresponsibility. You do not have the confidence of the country, you will therefore not have ours.” The disillusion confronting French leaders was highlighted by an opinion poll in Le Parisien newspaper. Some 79 per cent doubted Mr de Villepin could assuage voters' concerns about unemployment in 100 days. Overall, 65 per cent were pessimistic about the political outlook over the next six months.

In an feature titled: The innovation chain: How the value of a kilo of silicon is multiplied 63m times, the FT says -

The process of enhancing the properties of silicon - the world's second most abundant element - into the form required for a microchip is probably the single most telling example of industrial innovation of the past half century.

Many of the 50 to 100 key physical and chemical transformations in the process have required big technical breakthroughs involving the work of tens of thousands of scientists and engineers over several decades. They now contribute to a global electronics industry with sales of more than $1,000bn a year.

In the case of the microprocessors seen in most desk top computers, most are made by made by Intel, the US company that is the world's biggest maker of these devices. The cost of the chips varies according to the customer and how many are bought. However, a rough average price is about $200, for which the customer gets approximately 0.15g of silicon.

The first stage in the transformation process is the mining of quartzite, an off-white, sugary mineral which contains silicon dioxide. It is found around the world, particularly in parts of Europe and South America. When quartzite - the main source of the silicon used in microchips - is dug from the ground it is worth roughly 2 cents a kilo. During the stages of transformation from mining to processing in a microchip plant, the value of 1kg of silicon is increased 63m times.

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.There is probably no better example of how value can be added to basic materials from mining of the material, through huge expertise in science and technology, in the form of billions of dollars of investment in equipment, to prodigious intellectual capital. Creation of added value in this way is one of the main requirements for economic growth.

The important stages of the overall process are shown below. The calculations of how value is added are not meant to be exact and involve various simplifications.

For instance, quartzite is not pure silicon and contains oxygen plus other impurities. So the exact value of the silicon contained in 1kg of the mineral is slightly less than the 2 cents that the purchaser pays for 1kg of quartzite.

At the stage of the process where silicon wafers are transformed into microchips - the most technically demanding of all the processes - other materials such as phosphorus and metals including aluminium are added. That dilutes slightly the amount of silicon in the final microchip.

In this stage, huge expense is required to upgrade the properties of the silicon in a 300mm diameter wafer. Wafers of this size are the main starting point for chip production itself, while some wafers of smaller dimensions are also used.

The wafer itself is likely to cost a microchip maker such as Intel only about $170, with the seller being one of the large wafer producers such as Shin-Etsu of Japan or Wacker of Germany.

However Intel is likely to spend between 20 and 30 times as much as the cost of the wafer itself on the processing steps required to create in the surface of a 200sq mm sliver of silicon hundreds of millions of circuit patterns. The patterns are needed to give the finished device its electronic properties.

A modern microchip plant, equipped with some of the world's most complex manufacturing equipment, costs up to $3bn.

For all the ubiquity of the microchip, many of the companies involved in the different processes in its manufacture are far from household names.

They include Elkem of Norway, the biggest producer of the metallic silicon produced from quartzite in an early stage of the transformation, and Tokuyama of Japan and Hemlock, a US/Japanese company based in the US.

The New York Times reports that Airbus, the European plane maker, was hoping to throw a lavish party next week on its home turf in France, but it may have to keep the balloons and bunting under wraps for the time being.

At the Paris Air Show, which begins Monday, Airbus would have liked to announce its new midsize plane, the A350, as well as a new management team. It also planned to show off its superjumbo, the A380.

But on Wednesday, the controlling shareholder of Airbus, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, or EADS, disclosed it would not sign off on the A350 until the end of September. It made the decision along with Airbus's other big shareholder, BAE Systems of Britain.

EADS said that it was still confident of the A350's prospects. But Rainer Ohler, a spokesman for the French-German company, said, "We need to be absolutely sure of how to manage the A350, with all the other programs we are pursuing." EADS, he said, did not want the timing of its decision to be dictated by an industry trade show.

Airbus will face plenty of other questions in Paris. Its other aircraft in development, the A380, has had production glitches, which have forced the manufacturer to delay its delivery to airlines by up to six months. (It is still expected at the show).

And Airbus, based in Toulouse, France, has not settled a continuing boardroom dispute, as its French and German shareholders continue to squabble over which side will wield more influence.

Beyond all that, Airbus is enmeshed in an escalating trade battle with its archrival, Boeing. The United States and the European Union have filed lawsuits at the World Trade Organization, accusing each other of improper public financing of new aircraft, especially the A350.

Executives at Airbus said Wednesday that they expected to announce more than 100 orders for the A350 - up from 10 today - but the absence of a formal commitment to actually build the airplane took some of the shine off the project, especially as it is intended to be a head-to-head rival to Boeing's midsize fuel-efficient jet, the 787.

"Timing is enormously important," said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm in Fairfax, Va. "How long is Boeing going to have a clear shot at the market?"

Boeing has booked 266 orders for the 787, known as the Dreamliner. It plans to deliver it in 2008, two years ahead of the A350. Questions surrounding the A350 have given Boeing an early edge; it has won orders from traditional Airbus customers like Northwest Airlines and Air Canada.

The market for medium-size jets - those with 245 to 285 seats - is clearly large enough to accommodate both planes. In its annual market forecast, released in London on Wednesday, Boeing projected that the world's airlines would order 5,600 midsize planes over the next 20 years.

That would dwarf the market for jumbo jets, which Boeing forecasts will be 900 planes, with only 450 of them having more than 500 seats. The A380, which is designed to supplant the 747, will have 555 seats. Boeing's skepticism is hardly surprising, since it chose not to build a rival to the A380.

Buoyed by the success of the 787, Boeing's vice president for marketing, Randy Baseler, told reporters in London that his company would overtake Airbus in deliveries in two or three years.

Airbus officials concede that the 787 is selling briskly, though they attribute much of that to discounting from Boeing. In an interview in April, John Leahy, the chief commercial officer of Airbus, said Boeing was hoping to intimidate Airbus into canceling the A350.

"This is either going to turn into a great coup for them, or the charge of the light brigade," Mr. Leahy said.

How the A350 will be financed remains an unanswered question, in light of the trade dispute. Airbus insists it can build the plane without state aid, yet it has applied to France, Germany, Britain and Spain for loans to cover a third of the project's 4 billion euro ($4.9 billion) cost.

EADS, in a letter last month to the European Union's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, offered to end "launch aid" for Airbus planes, provided it was part of a comprehensive agreement on other indirect aid, like Pentagon research funding, which it says benefits Boeing.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Mandelson, Claude Véron-Réville, said that the letter, which was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, "did not refer to any freeze or standstill in launch aid for the A350." The decision to finance the plane, she said, would be made by the countries.

The NYT also reports that On Tuesday, almost immediately after Rick Wagoner, the chairman and chief executive of General Motors, said he planned to cut 25,000 jobs at the company, analysts were saying it was not enough. But on Wednesday, investors pushed G.M.'s stock up. Were they both right?

The analysts remain cautious because G.M. has purged hundreds of thousands of American jobs over the last three decades but has not yet found the formula for lasting success in a world that includes Toyota and other foreign competitors. The analysts said they saw the job cuts, laid out at G.M.'s annual meeting in Delaware, as a first step. But they are still looking for a fuller strategy from Mr. Wagoner.

"When you look past the initial surprise that anyone has to feel looking at such a large number, it comes to seem there's really nothing new going on," said Scott Sprinzen, an automotive industry analyst with Standard & Poor's, which downgraded G.M.'s debt rating to below investment grade last month.

The new round of cuts, he and other analysts have said, are not far out of line with G.M.'s current pace of job reductions, which the company had been achieving largely through buyout and early retirement offers.

"I think, looking at the situation, any observer could conclude that there's more they need to do," Mr. Sprinzen said.

But it is a start, if a painful one, and on Wednesday investors appeared to have some confidence that Mr. Wagoner has a game plan. Before the market opened, news came that a tender offer by the billionaire corporate raider Kirk Kerkorian, which expired Tuesday afternoon, fell 9 million shares short of the 28 million shares he was seeking to buy at $31 apiece. Mr. Kerkorian will control 7.2 percent of G.M., rather than the 8.8 percent he sought, according to a statement from Tracinda, his privately held investment firm.

Analysts saw this as a clear sign that many G.M. shareholders thought they could do better. Himanshu Patel, an analyst at J. P. Morgan, said in a research note that Mr. Kerkorian's inability to find more sellers of G.M. stock at his price was "somewhat surprising," and suggested that "most holders who wanted to sell out at or below $31 did so."

The news buoyed G.M.'s shares, which rose 4.2 percent, to $32.02, on Wednesday. That is an improvement from the 12-year low of $25.60 they hit in April, but far short of the nearly $55 high they reached last year.

Coming on the heels of Mr. Wagoner's announcement, Brian Johnson, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein, said in his own research note that the outcome of Mr. Kerkorian's tender offer suggested "investors showed their support for the restructuring case" laid out by Mr. Wagoner.

That case includes nearly $2.5 billion in annual cost cuts that Mr. Wagoner said would occur after the proposed job cuts are phased in by the end of 2008. Those cuts involve closing an unspecified number of plants, which will require the agreement of the United Automobile Workers union. G.M.'s current contract with the union, which protects existing plants, expires in 2007.

Mr. Wagoner also said G.M. was considering "strategic options," for its financing division, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, suggesting that the company could be looking at ways of unlocking the value of the division, which has been G.M.'s main profit center in recent years.

Further, the company reiterated that it is rededicated to making cars and trucks that are more appealing.

"What we've got at G.M. now is a general comprehension that you can't run this business by the left, intellectual, analytical side of your brain," Robert A. Lutz, G.M.'s vice chairman and product development chief, said at the shareholder meeting. "You have to have a lot of right side, creative input. We are in the arts and entertainment business, and we're putting a huge emphasis on world-class design."

Mr. Lutz promised that a new wave of G.M. cars and trucks over the next three years would prove his point. Certainly, cutting jobs alone will not make G.M.'s Chevrolets, Buicks and other models sell more briskly, and it creates a new wave of retirees to collect pension checks and continue to take advantage of G.M.'s enviable health benefits.

G.M. has made cuts before. In 1986, the company said it would close 11 plants employing 29,000 people. In 1992, the company laid out a plan to cut more than 70,000 jobs and close 21 plants in the United States and Canada. Since 2000, the company has cut 30,000 jobs in the United States, including salaried workers. Still, G.M.'s share of its critical home market has fallen from nearly half to about a quarter in the last 25 years.

At this point, Joe Phillippi, president of Auto Trends Consulting in Short Hills, N.J., said the company could not trim any more jobs, given its current production plans.

"They've got a lot on their plate, and I think these are probably the manning levels they're going to need at this point to get all these products launched," he said.

Mark Oline, the managing director of Fitch Ratings, which also downgraded G.M.'s debt below investment grade last month, said the job cuts were not out of line with what analysts expected, given G.M.'s normal reductions in recent years. He also said job cuts alone would hardly solve G.M.'s problems. G.M. needs to get comprehensive cuts in health care costs to begin a turnaround, he said.

"It would be difficult for G.M. to retain the credit profile they have now if they are not able to address health care costs prior to the contract negotiations in 2007," he said. Getting the union to agree to reopen the contract, Mr. Oline said, will be difficult. Union leaders have indicated they will not reopen the contract but will make modest adjustments within the confines of the current agreement.

Rob Hinchliffe, an analyst at UBS Securities, said "achieving a reduction in health care costs is clearly the key for G.M.," because it would make it cheaper to move people into retirement. G.M. is the nation's largest private provider of health care benefits, covering 1.1 million Americans.