France's Finance Minister Antoine Armand aims to bring the public deficit down to five percent of GDP next year, with a longer-term goal of reducing it below the EU's three percent limit by 2029.
A 14-year-old boy has been arrested in the southern French port city of Marseille on suspicion of shooting a cab driver in the head after he reportedly refused to wait for the teenager while he carried out a drugs-related revenge killing for the fatal stabbing of a 15-year-old.
President Emmanuel Macron said France was not delivering weapons to Israel and called for other countries to do the same, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a swift retort against any move for an arms embargo, telling Macron 'Shame on you'.
In two separate incidents overnight Friday, a two-year-old infant was crushed to death and two men and a woman were found unconcious, reportedly drowned, in overloaded dinghies attempting to cross the Channel from France to Britain.
Hundreds of people turned out on Sunday for a silent march in the southern French village of Mazan in support of Gisèle Pelicot, 72, whose ex-husband and 50 other men are accused in an ongoing trial of raping her while she was unconcious after being secretly administered with sedatives by her spouse.
French jihadist Peter Cherif, 42, has been sentenced by a Paris court to life imprisonment for his active membership of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen from 2011 to 2018, during which time he allegedly trained his Paris childhood friend Chérif Kouachi, who later joined with his brother Saïd to carry out the shooting massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in the French capital in January 2015.
After expressing his intention of “personally” involving himself in seeking a solution to the crisis in France’s South Pacific territory of New Caledonia, where tensions were ignited earlier this year after a move by president Emmanuel Macron to reform the electoral register to the detriment of the pro-independence movement of the indigenous Kanak people, the new French prime minister, Michel Barnier, was forced into a U-turn by Macron, who doggedly refuses to recognise errors in his approach to the crisis, in which 13 people have died. Ellen Salvi reports.
Michel Blanc, who began his acting career in comedy before taking on serious roles and screenwriting and directing, winning two awards at the Cannes Film Festival, died in a Paris hospital on Friday from complications following a heart attack.
Under the rules of a treasure hunt launched in 1993 in a picture book, Sur la Trace de la Chouette d’Or (On the Trail of the Golden Owl), whoever solved 11 riddles and found the bronze replica owl buried somewhere in France was entitled to exchange it for the gold-and-silver original, worth almost 300,000 euros.
Robert Bourgi, 79, who for decades worked as an intermediary for the Gaullist conservative movement in its dealings with leaders of former French colonies in Africa, and notably the organisation of secret cash payments from despots for French election campaign spending, has published his revealing memoirs.
Bruno Retailleau, the new French interior minister in Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government, has, barely ten days into the job, prompted controversy over his outspoken views that “the sovereign people” should have primacy over the constitutional state which, he says, “is neither inviolable nor sacred”, while complaining that a “jungle of judicial regulations” prevent the authorities from being able to deal effectively with immigration. Jérôme Hourdeaux reports on the consternation of public law experts over Retailleau's comments.
French Prime Minister Michel Barnier, appointed in September, presented his government's programme before parliament on Tuesday, when he made clear tackling public sector debt through spending cuts and greater taxation would be his priority.
The trial of France’s far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen along with 24 others from her Rassemblement National party on charges of embezzling European Parliament funds opened in Paris on Monday, at the start of what is programmed to be two months of hearings. The defendants are accused of operating a fraudulent system by which full-time party workers in Paris were remunerated as parliamentary assistants to the party’s MEPs. If found guilty, Le Pen, who is identified by the prosecution of playing the central role in the alleged scam, could be barred from holding public office, which would scupper her expected bid for the presidency in 2027. Michel Deléan reports.
Chemicals used in pesticides that are banned in France, some of them outlawed 20 years ago, have continued to be produced in the country and are sold abroad where environmental and public health legislation is less strict, according to a joint investigation by French public broadcaster France Télévisions and Swiss NGO Public Eye. The practice is perfectly legal thanks to a loophole in legislation which is still in place despite a government pledge two years ago to remove it. Amélie Poinssot reports.
A Paris lawyer acting on behalf of women who say they fell victim to sexual assaults by the disgraced late billionaire businessman Mohammed Al Fayed when they worked at his luxurious Paris hotel, the Ritz, is to file a request next week that French prosecutors open an investigation into the claims.
