Yvan Colonna, 61, a militant Corsican nationalist who was attacked by a jihadist prisoner in a mainland jail this month while serving a life sentence for the 1998 shooting murder of France's top state official on the Mediterranean island, has died after several weeks in a coma.
The French lawyer for the family of retired Argentine rugby player Federico Martin Aramburu, who was shot dead at the weekend after an altercation in a Paris bar, has spoken of their 'unspeakable pain' following the 'heinous crime'.
In a test of 136 home rental agencies in France, the association SOS Racisme, whose members pretended to have property to rent, found that close to half agreed to apply racial criteria for choosing tenants.
A French judge has suspended on medical grounds the life sentence handed to Corsican nationalist Yvan Colonna for the 1998 assasination of a senior state official and who remains in a coma since he was severely beaten by a fellow prisoner in a mainland jail earlier this month.
Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking re-election in next month's French presidential elections, has unveiled his manifesto in which he pledges tax cuts totalling around 15 billion euros, pension reforms which would raise the retirement age to 65, centralising the welfare system and obliging the jobless to carry out volunatry work, a tightening of immigration laws and investment in public services in the education, defence and justice sectors.
French interior minister Gérald Darmanin, visiting Corsica where rioting has followed the serious assault in a mainland jail of a nationalist figure by a fellow prisoner, has said that Emmanuel Macron, if re-elected in presidential elections next month, could offer autonomy to the Mediterranean island which has been under rule from Paris since the 18th century.
Amid increasing numbers of refugees arriving in France from war-ravaged Ukraine, the municipal authorities in Paris have set up special provisions for integrating Ukranian children into the city's schools.
Despite the return of a rise in recorded daily numbers of Covid-19 infections, the French government has announced the suspension as of March 14th of most of the restrictions introduced to contain the epidemic, including mask-wearing in many public places or the requirement of a valid vaccine pass to access restaurants and leisure venues.
Latest opinion poll surveys of voting intentions in the April French presidential elections show Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical-left LFI party, as having overtaken the conservative candidate and closing the gap with the two far-right candidates, raising speculation that he could yet reach the second-round playoff against Emmanuel Macron, who retains a comfortable lead over all his rivals.
The French presidential office, the Élysée Palace, has said that during a conference call on Saturday between Russian President Vladimir Putin, France's president Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin showed no willingness to end the war with Ukraine.
