At a rally that drew around 7,000 supporters in Paris on Sunday, the 54-year-old conservative candidate in April's presidential elections, Valérie Pécresse, sandwiched in opinion polls between two far-right candidates and well adrift of outgoing president Emmanuel Macron, gave a hardline speech pledging to crackdown on immigration and to fight so-called 'woke culture' in the cause of building 'a new France'.
More than 50 people were arrested and several hundred fined as a so-called 'freedom convoy' of vehicles reached Paris in protest over France's Covid-19 vaccine pass requirements for access to a number of public venues.
Before his meeting in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin on Monday, Emmanuel Macron refused to submit to a Russian PCR test for Covid over fears that his DNA could be extracted, sources close to the French president told news agency Reuters.
Virologist Luc Montagnier, who, together with his colleague Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, was awarded the Nobel Prize for isolating the human immunodeficiency virus that was later found to cause Aids, and who since caused controversy with unsubstantiated claims, notably over the causes of autism and the origins of Covid-19, has died at his home near Paris at the age of 89.
The Indonesian government on Thursday signed a deal for the immediate purchase from France of six Rafale fighter jets, with an option for a further 36, to replace an ageing air force fleet of mostly US F-16s and Russian Sukhois, and to a backdrop of rising US-China tensions in the Asian region.
Building work began on Thursday to erect a 180-metre-tall triangular office block in Paris, which will be the third-tallest site within the French capital, and which Green party councillors have described as an 'aberration' that carries a 'catastrophic carbon footprint'.
In a U-turn on his previous promise of reducing nuclear power in France's energy mix, President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday announced the building of six new nuclear reactors, studies for a possible further eight, and plans to extend the lifespan of existing plants, as part of a programme for France to become carbon 'neutral' by 2050.
Taking inspiration from the so-called 'freedom truck convoys' blocking cities in Canada, opponents in France of a Covid-19 vaccine pass that is required for access to many public venues have set off from around the country in road convoys towards Paris, where the police authorities have banned their planned rally in the capital this weekend.
The 'One Ocean Summit' has openend in Brest, north-west France, bringing together world governments, NGOs and maritime transport businesses for a three-day conference seeking to establish new international regulations to tackle issues that include pollution of the seas, notably by plastics, illegal and excessive fishing, and carbon emissions from shipping.
Salah Abdeslam, 32, believed to be the only surviving member of a group of Islamic State terrorists which carried out a series of massacres in Paris on November 13th 2015, has told a Paris court that he hurt no-one in the attacks and had at the last minute decided not to detonate his explosive suicide belt.
