Ten men and three women aged between 18 and 30 went on trial at a Paris court on Thursday accused of online harassment and, for eight of them, making death threats, in abuse that targeted a teenage girl who posted videos critical of Islam on Instagram and who has since been living in police protection.
At least three people may have died as a consequence of delays caused by a national outage of emergency phone lines across France beginning Wednesday afternoon and lasting until early Thursday.
French President Emmanuel Macron this week began a six-week 'tour de France' with a trip to the south-west of the country, presented by his staff as an attempt to better understand the grass-roots concerns of the nation but which political observers regard as the beginning of his campaign for re-election in 2022.
An armed former soldier who went on the run in woodland in south-west France at the weekend after an incident at his ex-partner's home, when he also fired at police, was reported to have been seriously wounded in a shoot-out with gendarmerie officers during his arrest on Monday.
At a news conference with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria, the French head of state said Africa made up around 20% of the world’s need for vaccines but only 1% of vaccine production.
French statistics agency INSEE revised its GDP reading sharply down from +0.4% to -0.1%, saying data from the construction sector had been much weaker than its earlier figures had suggested.
