TotalEnergies and QatarEnergy will collaborate on the North Field South project, a section of the world's largest single gas field nin a deal that could boost gas supplies to Europe from the Gulf state within four years.
The four countries, grouped together in an 'Inclusive Vaccines Alliance', struck a deal this weekend with pharma group AstraZeneca to receive a Covid-19 virus vaccine under development by researchers at Oxford university in Britain, and which it is hoped will be available at the end of the year.
The French government has finally announced it will not supply the Libyan coastguard with six speedboats destined to be used against clandestine crossings to Europe after several NGOs mounted a legal challenge to the sale, arguing that France was contributing to human rights violations in Libya where captured migrants face notorious internment camps, torture and being used as slave labour.
French and German officials have made comments suggesting they are open to agreeing a delay to the UK's withdrawal from the European Union due on March 29th, as Prime Minsiter Theresa May prepares to return to parliament with a revised Brexit deal after surviving a 'no confidence' vote by MPs on Tuesday evening.
The sale to India by France of 36 Dassault Rafale jet fighters for close to 8 billion euros has become the centre of corruption allegations levelled against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his close friend, Indian businessman Anil Ambani, chairman of the Reliance Group which was handed the role of local industrial partner of Dassault to build parts for the jets despite no aeronautical expertise. The claim that Ambani was given the joint venture contract as a favour by Modi to save his struggling business is the subject of a complaint lodged this month with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation. Now Mediapart has obtained a Dassault company document in which a senior executive is quoted as saying the group accepted to work with Reliance as an “imperative and obligatory” condition for securing the fighter contract. Karl Laske and Antton Rouget report.
Indian political opposition groups this weekend called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to resign after a report in Mediapart on Friday in which former French president François Hollande's comments on an 8-billion-euro fighter deal with New Delhi suggested possible favouritism by Modi in the choice of the Indian partner in the joint venture.
Organisers of the cycling race agreed a promotional deal with winemakers in southern France furious at a sponsorship agreement with Chilean wine brand.
The deal is the first ever to commit all countries to cut carbon emissions, in a bid to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2°C by 2050.
