French President Emmanuel Macron has reappointed his close ally Sébastien Lecornu as prime minister, just five days after the latter resigned from the post. The future of his minority government, the fourth since the results of snap parliamentary elections called by Macron last year, already seems seriously compromised, with a no-confidence vote already expected in prliament. In this op-ed piece, Mediapart political correspondent Ilyes Ramdani argues that Macron’s dogged determination to repeatedly establish a government in his political image, to the exclusion of the leftwing alliance which emerged victorious in last year’s election, is leading France to the cliff face, and that even his own camp are questioning his intransigent behaviour.
In an interview with Mediapart, former Israeli prime minister and ex-chief of general staff of the country's military, Ehud Barak, details his view of the so-called Trump plan for an end to the war in Gaza, argues why Benjamin Netanyahu must go, why both sides in the conflict must compromise, and why the only conclusion to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies in a two-state solution.
In July 1985, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk in the New Zealand port of Aukland, when one of the NGO’s photographers was drowned, in an operation by France's forein intelligence agency, the DGSE, to prevent Greenpeace from campaigning against French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. Paris vehemently denied involvement, but was eventually forced to admit responsibility for the attack. Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel, who at the time worked for French daily Le Monde, whose revelations forced the resignations of the DGSE boss and his defence minister, reports here how the principal culprit, then French president François Mitterrand, got away with his crime.
The verdicts and sentences were announced on Thursday at the end of the trial of Nicolas Sarkozy and 11 co-defendants over their roles in the alleged funding of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election bid by the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi. The ten-year judicial investigation, and Mediapart’s own investigations over a period of 14 years, have seen ups and downs along the way, and here and there some surprising outcomes. Graham Tearse looks back on the different developments and how the “Gaddafi-Sarkozy funding affair” became an epic legal marathon.
Bernard Arnault, 76, boss of luxury goods firm LVMH, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at 156 billion dollars, has dismissed a wealth tax demanded by the French leftwing to soften the social blow of proposed budget cuts as a 'desire to destroy the French economy', while he attacked the economist behind the favoured model for the tax as being 'a far-left activist' with 'pseudo-academic expertise'.
France's hardline conservative caretaker interior minister, Bruno Ratailleau, has warned mayors intending to fly the Palestinian flag from their town halls to mark France's recognition of a Palestinian state at a UN General Assembly meeting on Monday that they will face legal action.
The 11th-century work depicting the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 was secretly moved on Friday from its home at the the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Normandy, but only a short distance as the fargile, 224 feet-long work, believed to be the work of nuns in Canterbury, needs very careful transport before its arrival at the British Museum in London, where it is due to go on display for nine months from September 2026.
Nobel prizewinner Ernaux and Irish author Rooney are joined by US-Vietnamese writer and Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, and 17 others to urge French President Emmanuel Macron to reopen a residency scheme for welcoming to France artists from Gaza.
A lawyer acting for French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte said she will produce photographic and other evidence to prove she is a women in a defamation suit case that pits the couple against US rightwing influencer Candace Owen, who has repeatedly claimed Macron's wife was born a man.
UPDATE: French unions leading one-day strikes and demonstrations across France on Thursday in protest against significant cuts announced in public spending, claimed a total of around one million people took to the streets nationwide, while the interior ministry figures said the total was just half of that, with little serious violence reported.
Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar), a 1943 portrait by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso of his muse and lover Dora Maar, was apparently bought from Picasso at his wartime Paris studio in 1944, and was never again seen in public until very recently.
After days of delays due to legal challenges, the first of migrants chosen, under a bilateral treaty established in August, to be sent back to France from where they arrived in clandestine crossings of the Channel, in return for an equal number entering the UK by a legal route, was deported on Thursday.
Newly appointed French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu faces his first major test on Thursday when a nationwide turnout of 800,000 is expected in protests warning against expected budget cuts, a movement involving all the major trades unions.
A study published this week by two French health agencies details a well-above-average exposure to pesticides of residents who live close to vineyards, as illustrated in urine and hair samples, and others of ambient and household air, dust and home-grown vegetables. The study was originally prompted by an unusual cluster of child cancer cases discovered in a wine-growing area of south-west France, one of which concerned Lucas Rapin (pictured) when he was aged five, and who now lives with the debilitating side effects of his successful treatment for leukaemia. Amélie Poinssot reports on the findings of the study, and hears from Rapin and his mother about their arduous experience.
The first deportations of migrants to France from Britain under the so-called 'one in, one out' scheme agreed between London and Paris, whereby a rejected asylum seeker is returned to France in exchange for a candidate for asylum, were this week held up due to last-minute legal challenges.
