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French health minister Olivier Véran on Wednesday evening announced new measures to contain the rapid resurgence of novel coronavirus infections across the country, including the shutting down of bars and restaurants in the southern city of Marseille, while stopping short of earlier reports of drastic measures for Paris, although bars and cafés in the capital will from Monday have to close business at 10pm. 

The celebrated chef Pierre Troisgros, head of France's greatest gastronomic dynasty who with his brother Jean helped found the nouvelle cuisine movement, died on Wednesday aged 92,

French singer and actress Juliette Gréco, whose career began in cabaret in the late 1940s and who became one of France's most acclaimed post-war stage and screen stars, a symbol of the Paris Left Bank intellectual set who continued to record and perform into her 80s, has died at her home in Ramatuelle, southern France, at the age of 93.

At the trial in Paris of 14 people accused of aiding the January 2015 terrorist attacks in the capital, Zarie Sibony, 28, gave a harrowing account of the four-hour siege at the kosher store where she worked as a cashier, when Amédy Coulibaly murdered four hostages and, she recalled, told his captives 'You are Jews and French, the two things I hate the most'.

Bernard Laporte, head of the French rugby federation, was questioned in police custody for a second day on Wednesday over allegations that he and two others placed pressure on the appeals committee of the French league to reduce a disciplinary punishment against rugby club Montpellier.  

Marika Bret said police bodyguards gave her ten minutes to leave her home and move into hiding because of the seriousness of threats to her, which came as the trial opened earlier this month of alleged accomplices of the January 2015 terrorist massacres at the Charlie Hebdo offices and a Jewish food store.

Amid the continuing resurgence across France of coronavirus infections, Paris and several other cities are to due be designated as highest-risk 'scarlet' zones by health minister Olivier Véran at a press conference later on Wednesday, government sources have said.

Fathers of newborn children are to be allowed up to four weeks of paternity leave, up from the previous two, the cost of which is shared by employers and the state welfare system.

The celebrated and prolific French-British actor Michael Lonsdale, whose cinema career spanned six decades and included star roles in films by directors Orson Welles, René Clément, Marguerite Duras, Alain Resnais and Louis Malle, and who also played villain Hugo Drax in the Bond film Moonraker and deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel in The Day of the Jackal, has died at his home in Paris aged 89.

The latest death toll amounts to a sizeable increase of 311 over the 31,274 published on Saturday, a difference that may reflect late arriving data for earlier fatalities.