Socialist Valls backs independent centrist Macron

In this powder-keg presidential race, a new spark set France’s political class alight Wednesday as former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls shirked party allegiances to back the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron. But Valls’s support may be somewhat of a poisoned chalice for the neophyte frontrunner. Valls’s endorsement, ostensibly to the detriment of Socialist nominee Benoît Hamon,…