Staff at FRANCE 24 parent company France Médias Monde as well as France Télévisions and Radio France are striking on Monday against a proposed merger of France’s public broadcasting sector.
An international investigation called 'Dirty Payments', conducted by Mediapart and 20 other global media outlets, reveals the billions of euros in dubious transactions processed by the French online payments giant Worldline, a group run by the cream of France's elite. The probe shows how for ten years, and with complete impunity, the group handled these fraudulent or unethical payments on behalf of the worst figures in e-commerce: online swindlers, illegal casinos, shady pornography groups and prostitution websites. Following the initial publication of the revelations by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network, prosecutors in Belgium announced they were launching an investigation into alleged “money laundering” in relation to Worldline's Belgian operation. In a statement, Worldline said it would cooperate with the authorities in Brussels. Yann Philippin and Clément Rabu report.
Temperatures in Marseille have been nudging 40°C and city authorities have thrown open the doors to public swimming pools, offering free access to help residents cool off.
There have been accusations of anti-Semitism, calls for its dissolution, and now a parliamentary investigation has begun into its supposed “links” with Islamist organisations: criticism of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's radical-left La France Insoumise has reached unprecedented levels in recent times. In fact, the party now operates on the fringes of political debate, rather like the French Communist Party did in the last century. As such, the leftwing group represents a convenient and strategically-useful bogeyman for political rivals to attack, as some opponents have admitted. Pauline Graulle and Ilyes Ramdani report.
European Court of Human Rights condemned France for racially profiling Karim Touil, who was stopped by police three times in the span of ten days with no “objective and reasonable justification” back in 2011.
General Marcel Bigeard was a highly-decorated officer in the French Army who later became a politician. But in recent years his name has been closely linked with the widespread use of torture that some French soldiers carried out on prisoners during the Algerian War of Independence. In October 2024 the local council at Toul in north-east France where Bigeard was born erected a statue in his honour. Aggrieved at having a man associated with torture honoured in this way, some residents in the town are now seeking to get the monument removed and have just taken their case to the administrative court. They describe the statue's presence as a “slap in the face” for the victims of torture in Algeria. Laura Wojcik reports.
Public spending tied to the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris last summer reached almost €6 billion, auditors say. France is also due to host the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps.
In June 2024 President Emmanuel Macron caught many by surprise when he dissolved the National Assembly and called snap parliamentary elections. His aim was to strengthen his hand in the Assembly where his party and its allies lacked an absolute majority. However, the ploy backfired and the outcome of the new elections left the Assembly more politically divided than before, with even less chance of being able to produce a stable government with a full legislative programme. So, deprived of influence over major legislation, MPs now paradoxically find themselves swamped with a flood of largely small-scale bills on diverse issues. Though amid the apparent chaos some new parliamentary habits are beginning to take root. Pauline Graulle reports.
