A two-day informal meeting of EU leaders hosted by France in Versailles began on Thursday, when they made clear that there could be no fast-track offer to Ukraine of joining the bloc.
While hospital admissions in France for patients with Covid-19 fell slightly this week, the number of people who have tested positive for infection by the virus that causes the disease has begun to rise again.
Six days of street protests on the French island of Corsica over the serious assault in a mainland prison of nationalist figure Yvan Colonna, serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of a prefect and who was left in a coma by a fellow prisoner jailed for jihadist activity, turned to rioting overnight Wednesday, when law courts and a bank were targeted.
Four men were on Wednesday handed sentences of between eight years and life in prison for having helped or encouraged the 2016 murder, claimed by the so-called islamic State group, of Father Jacques Hamel, 85, whose throat was slashed during mass in his church in northern France by two 19-year-olds who were shot dead by police.
Far-right French presidential election candidate Éric Zemmour said he agreed that Ukrainian refugees should be given visas to enter France 'if they have family' in the country, but that 'Arab or Muslim immigrants are too unlike us'.
French interior minister Gérald Darmanin has accused the British authorities of 'a lack of humanity' over their 'completely unsuitable' arrangements for Ukrainian refugees in the French port of Calais where, he said, a lack of consular services led to 150 refugees trying to cross the Channel being told to seek visas in Paris or Brussels.
Macron found Putin "very determined to achieve his objectives", including on "what the Russian president calls the 'de-Nazification' and the 'neutralisation' of Ukraine", said Élysée official.
The four French MEPs — Nicolas Bay, Hervé Juvin, Jean-Lin Lacapelle, and Thierry Mariani — went to Russia to observe parliamentary elections last September even though there was no formal mission to do so.
