More than a thousand doctors, scientists, and healthcare professionals have signed an open letter denouncing a proposed French law that could weaken the authority of the country’s independent health regulator and allow the return of long-banned pesticides.
French professional football, and in particular the top-level Ligue 1, is having to confront massive financial problems as the domestic season comes to an end. Indeed, from the collapse of a seemingly-lucrative deal with media rights company Mediapro to the Faustian pact later signed with Jersey-based private equity fund CVC, top-flight club football in France has completely lost its way in the space of just a few years. The root cause, as Mathias Thépot explains here, is that the game has become blinded by delusions of grandeur and undermined by a shaky economic model, leading to financial shortfalls which some of the weaker French clubs may struggle to survive.
French documentary-maker Marcel Ophuls, whose 1969 four-and-a-half hour, no-holds-barred masterpiece 'The Sorrow and the Pity' about wartime France was nominated for an Oscar, which he later won with 'Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie', a portrait of the former head of the Gestapo in Lyon, has died at the age of 97.
The French president's office sought to downplay the incident, which happened as he prepared to disembark from his plane after touching down in Vietnam.
Emmanuel Macron and his principal opponent, far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen, recently found common ground when commenting on two judicial affairs. In the case of Le Pen, it was about her conviction for embezzlement and a sentence that bans her for five years from holding public office. In the case of Macron, it was his refusal to back calls to strip former president Nicolas Sarkozy of his Légion d’honneur award after his conviction for corruption. Both cited the electoral choice by “the sovereign people” as superior to the laws in place. In this op-ed article, Fabrice Arfi, co-head of Mediapart’s investigations unit, argues that this anti-judicial populism, a sort of French Trumpism, is the result of a political and moral collapse that is not limited to one political camp alone.
Iranian director Jafar Panahi has claimed the Palme d'Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival for his powerful revenge drama It Was Just an Accident, capping a politically charged celebration of global cinema.
Nine men and a woman were on trial for a heist during the Paris Fashion Week in 2016, when the thieves, dressed as police, forced their way into the glamorous Hôtel de Pourtalès, bound the US star with zip ties and escaped with $6 million in jewels.
Following the unrest that took place in May 2024 in its Pacific Ocean territory of New Caledonia, the French state transferred seven high-profile activists accused of involvement in the disturbances to mainland France, amid much controversy. But at the same time the Paris authorities also secretly flew dozens of convicted criminals from their New Caledonian cells to serve in prisons around France, for reasons that still remain unclear. Some of these prisoners have since been released from jail, but now lack the financial means either to live in metropolitan France or to pay for the long flight back home. Rémi Carayol and Benoît Godin report on the fate of these abandoned “deportees”, most of whom are Kanaks, the indigenous people of New Caledonia.
Although Macron won’t be heading to China himself – having made a state visit there in April 2023 – his call to Chinese president Xi Jinping signals France’s intent to stay closely engaged with Beijing.
The government on Wednesday released a redacted version of a report on the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in France. For weeks, political and media attention has been fixated on the issue, driven by interior minister Bruno Retailleau, who is aware of the political gain he might reap from it. The document - which was presented to France's Defence and National Security Council - immediately led to a call from President Emmanuel Macron for new measures to counter what the authors call a “threat to national cohesion”. One of the expert witnesses questioned for the report was researcher Frank Fregosi. In an interview with Mediapart's Lucie Delaporte, the academic voices his concern over the impact of the document and the widespread climate of mistrust facing practising Muslims in France.
