Ziad Takieddine, a key accuser of former president Nicolas Sarkozy in the case over alleged illegal campaign financing from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, died Tuesday aged 75, two days before the verdict in the ex-head of state's trial in France.
President Emmanuel Macron made the announcement in New York where France and Saudi Arabia are hosting a one-day summit at the UN General Assembly focused on plans for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
As France prepares to recognise Palestine at the UN, town halls across the country are caught up in a row over whether or not to raise the Palestinian flag in solidarity.
Bernard Arnault, 76, boss of luxury goods firm LVMH, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at 156 billion dollars, has dismissed a wealth tax demanded by the French leftwing to soften the social blow of proposed budget cuts as a 'desire to destroy the French economy', while he attacked the economist behind the favoured model for the tax as being 'a far-left activist' with 'pseudo-academic expertise'.
France's hardline conservative caretaker interior minister, Bruno Ratailleau, has warned mayors intending to fly the Palestinian flag from their town halls to mark France's recognition of a Palestinian state at a UN General Assembly meeting on Monday that they will face legal action.
The 11th-century work depicting the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 was secretly moved on Friday from its home at the the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Normandy, but only a short distance as the fargile, 224 feet-long work, believed to be the work of nuns in Canterbury, needs very careful transport before its arrival at the British Museum in London, where it is due to go on display for nine months from September 2026.
Nobel prizewinner Ernaux and Irish author Rooney are joined by US-Vietnamese writer and Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, and 17 others to urge French President Emmanuel Macron to reopen a residency scheme for welcoming to France artists from Gaza.
A lawyer acting for French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte said she will produce photographic and other evidence to prove she is a women in a defamation suit case that pits the couple against US rightwing influencer Candace Owen, who has repeatedly claimed Macron's wife was born a man.
UPDATE: French unions leading one-day strikes and demonstrations across France on Thursday in protest against significant cuts announced in public spending, claimed a total of around one million people took to the streets nationwide, while the interior ministry figures said the total was just half of that, with little serious violence reported.
