The traditional May Day marches across France to celebrate International Workers’ Day brought out 750,000 people nationwide, according to the country’s principal trades union, the CGT. The largest rally was held in Paris, where the union claimed 250,000 turned out – 48,000 according to the police. While the real figure most certainly lies somewhere between, observers agreed that it was a larger number than showed up in 2011, encouraged at least in part by the clement weather and the final stage of the Left hopes will be a victorious presidential election campaign. American Paris-based photographer Thomas Haley, who has been following the French presidential election campaign with a series of picture reports for Mediapart, joined the festive crowds marching through the capital.
Paris is arguably the most sung about city in the world and now, for the first time in its history, an exhibition in sound and picture has been dedicated to the hundreds of songs and ballads about the capital reaching all the way back to the 16th century. Illustrating the enduring crush of generations of musicians for Paname, the popular nickname for Paris recurrent in 20th-century songs, the show is mirrored on an internet site that offers a virtual singing tour of the capital. Antoine Perraud reports.
The works of New York-based Egyptian artist Youssef Nabil are a stunning mix of photography and painting. He uses a technique of hand colouring monochrome photographs, learnt from specialists in his native Cairo, to produce haunting portraits ranging from Yemeni fishermen to cinema stars. Often meticulously staged, as if telling a story, his carefully-crafted pictures contain an unusually intense and captivating quality. A retrospective exhibition of his works is now on show for the first time in Paris, at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. Hugo Vitrani reports.
Former French President Jacques Chirac (pictured) was on Thursday given a two-year suspended prison sentence for embezzling public funds when he was mayor of Paris to finance his political party and advisors for his presidential election campaign strategy. Chirac, 79, is the second French head of state to be tried by a court of justice, after the country's wartime collaborationist Vichy government leader, Marshal Philippe Pétain, in 1945. Michel Deléan reports.
Earlier this summer, thousands of Paris' ethnic Chinese community took to the streets of Belleville, a district in the north of the capital, to call for increased security in the wake of escalating violence against them, including regular street assaults and robberies. The extent of the violence has alarmed community leaders and there is growing anger among this normally discreet population at what is perceived as insufficient concern by the authorities. Carine Fouteau talks to Emmanuel Ma Mung, a France-based expert on international migration and the Chinese diaspora, about the economic and social issues that are turning a once calm multi-cultural neighbourhood into a powder keg.
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