On November 3rd France's armed forces minister Sébastien Lecornu visited French troops who have been deployed in Romania as part of a NATO mission. However, despite the upbeat photo opportunities, some of the soldiers stationed there complain of logistical failings, a lack of food and poor living conditions. Justine Brabant reports.
A joint investigation by The Sunday Times and the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has reported that a group of Indian hackers were hired to spy on journalists and other individuals “who threatened to expose wrongdoing” over the awarding to Qatar of this year’s football World Cup. Among the “dozen” people reported to have been targeted are former UEFA president Michel Platini, French senator Nathalie Goulet, and Mediapart journalist Yann Philippin. Qatar denies any involvement in the hacking operation. Fabrice Arfi and Michaël Hajdenberg report.
In early June 2022 state officials signed an order obliging an Algerian doctor who has been working in France for seven years to leave the country within 30 days. This order was finally annulled by a court at the end of September but while he waits for a new visa to be issued the doctor is still prevented from working. Meanwhile his prolonged absence hastened the closure of cancer ward beds at the hospital where he was an intern. Camille Polloni reports.
In this particularly poor area of south-east Pakistan, several towns and villages are still under water nearly three months after the monsoon rains this summer which caused widespread and massive flooding. As Mediapart's Nejma Brahim reports from the province, poverty and illness are rife among those left homeless, some of whom feel abandoned to their fate.
Active investigations in a mammoth and unprecedented nine-year judicial probe into the suspected illegal funding of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign by the regime of late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi drew to a close this month, leading to a second legal phase before charges are brought and a trial ordered. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske detail the principal conclusions of the investigations and the roles of the key suspects in this extraordinary and complex case.
The war in Ukraine has both demonstrated and heightened the dependence of European countries on US military support, while also creating divisions in their defence strategies, notably between Germany and France. In this interview with Justine Brabant, retired French army lieutenant general Jean-Paul Perruche, who served at a senior level in NATO and as director general of the European Union military staff, offers his analysis of the challenges now facing Europe. He argues why it must build a structure to allow for common military autonomy with pragmatic plans to deal with future threats. “It’s really quite pitiful that we are incapable of doing anything, whereas we have four times the budget of the Russians,” he says. “It’s tragic.”
President Emmanuel Macron has launched a series of national consultations aimed at a possible reform by the end of next year of current legislation in France which prohibits euthanasia and assisted suicide, and limits medical intervention to the administration of deep sedation only in the final stages of a patient’s illness. In the meantime, those already in deep suffering from incurable degenerative diseases and who wish to end their lives before the worst stages have only the option of doing so in countries which allow euthanasia or assisted suicide, notably Belgium and Switzerland. Sarah Boucault reports.
French aerospace group Dassault Aviation, designer and maker of the Rafale multi-role fighter plane and the Falcon business jet, has instructed its staff on how to respond to, and notably how to avoid directly answering, prickly questions over its weapons exports to "dictatorships" and its sales of private jets for carbon-rich travel by the wealthy few. Justine Brabant and Mickaël Correia reveal here the group’s bullet-point internal documents on how to evade the issues, and detail the hypocrisy of its PR campaign.
The shocking sequestration, rape and murder in Paris last week of Lola, a 12-year-old girl whose body was found in a trunk in front of her apartment building home, has been transformed by the far-right and conservative hardliners into a political row over immigration policy after it was revealed that the arrested suspect is a young Algerian woman who since August was the subject of an expulsion order. The controversy snowballed this week, forcing the government onto the defence despite an appeal by Lola’s parents that no political gain should be made of the atrocious crime. Lucie Delaporte and Christophe Gueugneau report.
President Emmanuel Macron's government is facing a potentially difficult week, haunted by the fear that the ongoing petrol crisis could lead to a wider social crisis. On Sunday the leftwing opposition staged a protest against the cost of living. Then on Tuesday a number of trade unions have called a day of national strikes over pay and the right to take industrial action. Ilyes Ramdani takes the temperature ahead of what could be a tumultuous few days in French politics.
