Following the expulsion earlier this week of 12 French officials from Algeria after an Algerian consulate official in France was placed under investigation for kidnapping, France has expelled 12 Algerian officials in retaliation.
Seven prisons across France were the target of shooting and arson attacks during the night of Monday to Tuesday, in what justice minister Gérald Darmanin said were intimidation attempts linked to the government crackdown on drugs trafficking.
Retired French surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, is standing trial on charges of raping and sexually assaulting 299 people, many of them child patients under his care. The trial, which began in February and is due to last until June, has heard the testimony of two of Le Scouarnec’s former surgeon colleagues, when the court focused on how the defendant, despite a conviction in 2005 for possession of child pornography, was able to continue operating on children. Both witnesses explained their failure to raise the alarm within their medical establishments was because it was “not our problem”. Hugo Lemonier reports from the court in Vannes, north-west France.
French culture minister Rachida Dati, 59, who is eyeing the post of mayor of Paris and who is targeted by an investigation into alleged corruption and influence peddling when hired as a 'consultant' for carmaker Renault, hid jewellery and watches worth more than 400,000 euros from a wealth register all ministers must complete before taking office, according to a press report.
Amid general distaste and even anger in France at Donald Trump's policies and provocative style - an opinion poll in March found 73 percent of thos polled no longer believe Washington to be an ally - US tourists in Paris tell the BBC how they're dressing down to avoid encountering animosity.
French far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen, who has appealed her conviction for diverting European Parliament funds for the benefit of her party, when she was handed a five-year ban from holding public office, which would prevent her running in presidential elections in 2027, has shed her previously adopted toned-down language and embraced a Trump-like fury against 'the system', now used as a byword for so-called plotting of the deep state and political judges.
French Prime Minister François Bayrou was this week further engulfed in controversy over whether he knew but kept quiet about complaints of sexual assault, including rape, and physical cruelty at a Catholic school in his political fiefdom, and where his wife was a teacher and several of his children were pupils. Bayrou has denied knowing of the allegations. A parliamentary committee of inquiry into the scandal at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram institution on Thursday heard the testimony, under oath, of a gendarmerie detective and magistrate involved in investigating early rape allegations, and who contradicted Bayrou’s claims of being unaware of the events. “For me, François Bayrou has lied,” commented a rapporteur for the committee. Antton Rouget reports.
A French court has ordered the online property rentals platform Airbnb to pay the local municipal authorities of Oléron, a small island off the Atlantic coast popular with holidaymakers, more than 8 million euros in unpaid tourist taxes.
President Emmanuel Macron said France plans to recognise a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a United Nations conference in New York in June, when it would become the first permanent member of the UN Security Council to do so.
An association representing private forest owners in France, many of who are smallholders, has warned of gangs of thieves who are secretly felling trees, mostly oaks, in isolated sites and then export them, principally to China.
As of the start of the new academic year in September, French 'collèges' - secondary schools for 11- to 15-year-olds - will require pupils to lock away their mobile phones during school hours following the reported success of local trials.
The trial of Nicolas Sarkozy and 11 others on corruption charges relating to the alleged funding of the former French president’s 2007 election campaign by the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi ended this week with the speeches of Sarkozy’s defence team. The four lawyers spoke for five hours calling for the charges against him to be thrown out and denouncing an “empty” case brought by prosecutors, who have requested Sarkozy be handed a seven-year prison sentence. Given the final word on Tuesday before the judges announce their verdicts in September, Sarkozy dismissed what he said was a “political and violent” prosecution case. Fabrice Arfi was in court on the day the curtain went down on an extraordinary trial.
The three-month trial of Nicolas Sarkozy and three of his former ministers on charges of corruption related to the alleged funding of his 2007 election campaign by the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi drew to a close in Paris on Tuesday, when the former French president, given the opportunity to deliver a final comment, described the prosecution case as being 'political and violent'.
French president Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday wound up a two-day visit to Cairo where he held talks with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah II on the situation in Gaza, when the three issued a statement calling for the 'immediate' return of a ceasefire.
A recycling plant in north-west Paris, treating the domestic waste of around 900,000 people, was completely destroyed by a fire that began in the early evening of Monday, sending thick clouds of smoke over the capital for several hours.
