Football club PSG announced it was reinforcing security around the homes of its players after intruders broke into the house of the father of team captain Marquinhos and the apartment of winger Angel Di Maria while the two were playing a match on Sunday.
During a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem, French President Emmanuel Macron loudly reprimanded Israeli security officers who he accused of violating rules that prevent them from entering the Crusader-era Church of St Anne, which is considered French territory.
The main 'counter summit' to the recent G7 gathering took place miles away from the French resort of Biarritz, towns were locked down, and some protestors were banned from the area. The result was low-key, small-scale opposition to the meeting of international leaders, representing an undeniable success for the French presidency. Christophe Gueugneau and Elisa Perrigueur report.
The town of Biarritz in south-west France is already the scene of unprecedented security measures ahead of the G7 summit to be held there next weekend, with some locals complaining that its summer season economy is being hit, while the authorities, fearing violent protests, have ordered that a counter-summit organsied by leftwing groups should be held 30 kilometres away in Hendaye, on the Spanish border.
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, reacting to sharp criticism of policing during Saturday's 'yellow vest' anti-government demonstrations in Paris which saw buildings, stores, restaurants and newsstands torched in the capital's centre, announced on Monday that the Paris police chief has been sacked, that future rallies in established trouble spots around the country may be banned, while he also approved wider use by police of the controversial LBD rubber bullet weapons which have left more than two hundred injured, many of them seriously, during the three months of rolling protests.
Ahead of what are forecast to be a major demonstrations on Saturday by a grass-roots movement of often violent protest over the living standards of middle-income earners, France's interior minister has announced 'large-scale security measures' in Paris, including the deployment of armoured vehicles, in face of what he said has become a 'monster' that has escaped the control of those who initiated the nationwide contestation.
Violent clashes between prison guards and riot police erupted on Friday outside the vast Fleury-Mérogis prison near Paris on the fifth day of national industrial action by jail staff across France protesting at undermanning and security, as news emerged that inmates had attacked and wounded staff in a prison in Corsica.
A total of 97,000 security personnel from the police and armed forces are being deployed across France over the Christmas period in what the interior ministry described as “the context of a still-elevated terrorist threat”.
Meeting in New Delhi on Friday, Indian defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and he French counterpart Florence Parly agreed to increase anti-terrorism cooperation defence ties, including greater industrial and research involvement by India in French weapons sales to the country, notably in an expected second order of Dassault Rafale fighter jets.
A group of eight Greenpeace militants broke into a nuclear plant at Cattenom in north-east France early on Thursday, where they let off fireworks in a filmed protest to highlight what the organisation says are inadequate security measures to prevent malicious attacks.
The legislation, which inscribes into law tough security measures borrowed from the state of emergency powers introduced after the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks and due to end on November 1st, has been approved by the National Assembly, the lower house, before a final text is agreed with the upper house, the Senate, later this month.
As voting in the first of a two-round presidential election begins in France on Sunday, the shootings in central Paris on Thursday which left one police officer dead and two others wounded, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, terrorism has led the agenda of the closing campaigns, notably among rightwing candidates.
