Keyword: paris

One positive effect of the Covid-19 lockdown on public movement in the French capital was a reduction in traffic noise, and since the lifting of the measures the ressurgence of motorised bike noise, often the result of owners removing silencers, is now the object of  tentative policing.

The self-financed central-Paris museum dedicated to the works of Auguste Rodin, hit hard by almost four months of closure due to the Covid-19 virus epidemic, is seeking financial relief through an allowance established by the sculptor himself that it may sell up to 12 replicas of select works, cast in bronze, every year.

The Louvre museum in Paris reopened on Monday after a shutdown of nearly four months due to the Covid-19 virus pandemic, estimated to have cost 40 million euros in lost revenue, with visitors required to wear masks and to observe individual distancing markers which kept one of its most popular exhibits, Leonardo's Mona Lisa, unobscured by the crowds it attracted before the health crisis.  

Rifaat al-Assad was convicted of embezzling Syrian state funds to buy homes and offices worth €90m (£80m) to build a French property portfolio.

France has long sought social justice through a commitment to universal ideals, but a younger generation is demanding recognition of racism  - and remedies for it.

Doctors, nurses and administrative staff marched without incident in the capital and other French cities to demand the government keep its promise to overhaul France's hospital system in response to the coronavirus crisis.

As protest demonstrations were again held around the world on Saturday in a gathering momentum following the death in the US of George Floyd, a black man suffoctaed by a Minneapolis police officer, thousands of people joined marches across French cities to highlight cases of police violence, including in Paris where two banned rallies blocked the centre of the capital.

Following the death in New York on Sunday of Bulgarian-born contemporary artist Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, better known simply as 'Christo', whose installations incuded wrapping in fabric the Reichstag building in Berlin and the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris, it was announced on his Facebook page that his plan to wrap the Arc de Triomphe monument in the French capital, a project he had said he held dear since the 1960s, will go ahead next year.

More than 400 doctors, nurses and ancillary staff wore scrubs and banged trays and pans to demand better funding for the Robert Debré hospital, which French media report is in financial difficulty.

Crowds of mostly young people in Paris gathered together with drinks and without masks at sites beside the River Seine and the Saint-Martin canal to celebrate the end on Monday of the lockdown on public movement, prompting the capital's police prefect to ban alcohol consumption at the locations for fear of a spread of the Covid-19 virus.

After two months of a general confinement of the population, France lifted the lockdown on public movement on Monday, allowing businesses and shops to re-open and free movement within a 100-kilometre radius of people's homes, but in the Paris region, where the number of Covid-19 cases remain high - if steadily fewer - employers are encouraged to keep staff working from home where possible.

Amid instances of people flouting confinement measure introduced last month to contain the Covid-19 virus epidemic, Paris City Hall has tightened restrictions on the movement of residents, which until now prohibited all non-essential mobility except for brief exercise close to home, with a ban on jogging between 10am and 7pm.

Antoine Vieillard-Baron, head of the surgical and medical intensive care unit of the Ambroise Paré hospital in Paris said on Friday that urgent measures were underway to increase available beds for patients seriously ill from Covid-19 coronavirus infection ahead of an expected peak of the epidemic in early April.

Following the closure of all fenced parks in Paris, the authorities have now closed green spaces in central Paris and also walkways along the River Seine, citing a lack of observance of the lockdown measures aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus epidemic, while the Rivierra city of Nice has closed its celebrated seafront Promenade des Anglais amid rumours of impending curfew measures.

An exodus from Paris of the wealthy with second homes or those with provincial families to welcome them, hoping to enjoy greener environments with which to live out the nationwide home confinement order issued to contain the spread of the coronavirus, is causing concern in some relatively unaffected regions that the fleeing Parisians are bringing the virus with them.