Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in London.

I'm Tim Franks.

Coming up on the programme, we'll bring you the latest on the powerful earthquake,

which has struck the Tibet region of China, with rescuers searching now through the night for survivors in a remote and freezing region.

More on that in 30 minutes.

First, though, we're heading to France, with two stories that have, in their own, but perhaps linked ways, powerful symbolism. In a moment, the 10th anniversary commemorations of the Islamist

gun attacks in Paris. And before that, the news that broke shortly before we came on air

that the far-right French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen has died. He was 96, a convicted racist and an

anti-semit, a man who was both seen as a pariah, and yet whose influence and reach can still be

felt today.

Le Pen founded France's National Front Party in 1972.

He came to international attention 30 years later when he led a surprise challenge for the presidency

reaching the second round, the runoff of the election, before losing heavily to Jacques Chirac.

His daughter, Marine Le Pen, has both followed in his footsteps

and also tried to distance herself from him.

She renamed the party, calling it National Rally,

and she succeeded in turning it into a major force in French politics.

Here's Andrew Harding.

He was for years the most divisive figure in all of France.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, his surname like a bullet, ricocheting through French politics.

Le Pen was born in rural obscurity, but he studied law and then became a soldier, fighting in the wars that marked the end of France's colonial empire.

In the 1970s, Le Pen founded the extreme right National Front.

...