deaths

A gendarmerie report into the deaths of 27 migrants whose boat sank in the Channel en route to England from France last November has found that the Calais coastguard failed to respond to several earlier distress calls, opening the possibility of prosecution proceedings, according to French press reports.

The British government has announced the launching of a detailed investigation into the drowning last November of 27 people, three of whom were children, during their clandestine crossing of the Channel from France to England, following legal action by lawyers acting for several of the victims' families who suspect 'serious failings' in rescue operations.

At least 31 migrants attempting to cross the Channel to Britain have died after their dinghy capsized on Thursday afternoon in seas close to the French port of Calais, where a search for survivors is continuing into the night. 

The two patients who had contracted the Delta variant were aged 42 and 60, and whose health status was marked by a number of risk factors; neither were vaccinated.

A legal case brought by a 79-year-old French-Vietnamese woman against US firms that manufactured the highly toxic herbicidal cocktail known as Agent Orange, massively employed by US forces during the Vietnam War, causing deaths, diseases and malformations of those exposed to the chemical, has been dismissed by a French court on the grounds that the companies were acting 'on the orders' of the US government, which was engaged in a 'sovereign act'.  

Two groups of walkers in the alpine Savoie region of eastern France were separately struck by avalanches on Saturday, when seven of the ramblers were killed and one saved by rescue services.

At least four people, believed to be Iranian nationals and including two children aged 5 and 8, were drowned after their boat bound for Britain and carrying at least 19 people capsized in difficult weather conditions in the Channel after they embarked in a clandestine crossing from France.

Two French soldiers died and a third was wounded after an explosive device was triggered beside their armoured vehicle in the north-east of Mali, bringing the total number of French military personnel killed since anti-terrorist operations in the country and Sahel region began seven years ago to 45.

A French public health official also said there are 2,516 people needing life support.

Two bodies identified as those of a 17-year-old Iraqi Kurd and that of a 22-year-old Iraqi man were found washed up on a beach in northern France on Monday close to an inflatable boat believed to have been used in an attempt to cross the Channel to Britain.

Four officers of France's Foreign Legion are on trial for alleged manslaughter over the deaths of six recruits in an avalanche in January 2016 while on a training exercise in the French Alps.

The mysterious deaths of livestock on some French farms, which remain unexplained despite a recent scientific study, are being blamed by some farmers on electromagnetic fields created by nearby wind turbine installations and mobile phone transmitters.

Two couples and a child were found dead in an apartment in the town of Pau, south-west France, after neighbours reported smoke coming from inside it and seeing blood on a window.