In a speech on the eve of the Bastille Day military parade, and hot on the heels of a rare public appearance of his chief of military staff who warned that France had become Russia's primary target in Europe, President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday announced a steep increase in military spending, saying 'There are no more rules, it’s the law of the strongest that wins'.
The French president said the EU should be ready for a trade war and to stand up to his US counterpart who, before his threat this weekend to impose 30% tariffs on EU goods, had been expected to approve a 10% tariff agreement with the bloc.
Pro- and anti-independence representatives from France's strife-torn Pacific Ocean territory of New Caledonia, meeting together near Paris, have reached agreement on a new status for the archipelago, to be submitted for parliamentary approval, which would allow islanders dual French and New Caledonian 'nationality', creating greater powers for the local parliament, while also opening up the right to vote to those who have settled in New Caledonia for ten years or more.
Financial weekly magazine Challenges reports that an unprecedented number of wealthy people were asking to be removed from its yearly ranking of the richest individuals in France over fears that detailing their fortune would attract criminal interest.
For the yearly Avignon Festival, the largest performing arts festival in Europe, held every summer in the former papal city in southern France, rising summer teperatures have become an existential threat, when days sweltering under more than 40 Celsius are no longer a rarity, causing serious effects on audiences and workers.
The sails of the red windmill on top of the landmark Moulin Rouge cabaret in the Montmartre district of Paris are back rotating again more than a year after they collapsed to the ground, an event celebrated by a street party of the venue's dancers performing the high-kick can-can dance that made its fame in the late 19th century.
The very first Birkin bag, a design collaboration between French fashion house Hermès and the Paris-based late British actress and singer Jane Birkin, has been sold at a Sotheby's auction for 8.58 million euros (10 million dollars) to a Japanese buyer, a record price for a handbag.
At a joint press conference in London, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, who was wrapping up a three-day state visit to the UK, announced their agreement over a pilot scheme for migrants reaching Britain in small boats whereby some arrivals would be detained and returned to France while the UK would accept an equivalent number of asylum seekers.
Lawyer Maxime Tessier, 33, a defence counsel for former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, who was handed a 20-year jail sentence in May for variously raping and sexually assaulting 299 victims, mostly child patients, died in an apparent suicide overnight on Tuesday. Amid the shocked reactions to Tessier’s death, which one psychiatrist said may have been the result of vicarious trauma caused by the horror of Le Scouarnec’s crimes, a number criticised the lack of psychological support offered to lawyers faced with such harrowing cases. Hugo Lemonier and Mathilde Mathieu report.
French police on Wednesday raided the headquarters of Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National party as part of an investigation into suspected illegal funding of its election campaigns in 2022 and 2024, a move described by the party's chairman, Jordan Bardella, as 'a serious attack on pluralism and democratic choice'.
Wildfires that reached the edges of the port city of Marseille were still active on Wednesday but no longer advancing, according to the local prefecture which confirmed firefighters and police officers were among 97 people injured, 24 of whom were admitted to hospital, while 750 hectares of land was burnt by the wind-fuelled flames.
On the second of a three-day state visit to the UK, French President Emmanuel Macron met for talks on Wednesday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer whose office announced the pair had agreed to 'make progress on new and innovative solutions' to stem the number of England-bound migrant crossings of the Channel from France.
A fast-spreading wildfire has reached the periphery of Marseille, where around 1,000 firefighters are engaged in preventing it entering the Mediterranean port city where they are 'waging guerrilla warfare, hoses in hand' according to the local mayor.
The French president on Tuesday addressed several hundred MPs and guests at the start of a three-day state visit to Britain, the first of a European leader since Brexit, when he spoke of a new Europe beyond the boundaries of the 27-member EU bloc, one in which France and Britain were at its core, and argued that the two countries must end 'excessive dependencies on both the US and China'.
French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Britain on Tuesday at the start of a state visit accompanied by his wife Brigitte, when the couple were hosted by King Charles at Windsor Castle before beginning wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Keir Stamer, with the issue of clandestine crossings of the Channel from France high on the agenda.
