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.
French President Emmanuel Macron has arrived in Canada from New York, where he had addressed the United Nations, for a set of meetings with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau on subjects as diverse as strengthening the influence of French culture and language and issues surrounding artificial intelligence.
Frenchs rail operator SNCF and Germany's Deutsche Bahn are to begin a daily, daytime high-speed rail service linking the Gare de l'Est in Paris with the Berlin Hauptbahnhof in around eight hours, with stops along the route both ways at Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, and Frankfurt Süd.
One of the 49 men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot, who was unkowingly sedated by her husband who offered her to other men for sex, said that when he first began touching her, the absence of reaction led him to believe she might be dead.
A study by an environmental group has shown that the bed of the Gerardmer lake in the Vosges mountains of eastern France, a popular site for bathers, contains unexploded munitions from the first and second world wars, and even the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, causing high levels of TNT explosive in the waters, as well as metals like iron, titanium and lead.
The revelation that a 22-year-old Moroccan man suspected of murdering a 19-year-old woman student in Paris, before burying her body in a shallow grave in nearby woods, had failed to leave France as ordered after serving a prison sentence for rape has sparked calls for a toughening of deportation measures.
