As France tentatively moves towards lifting restrictions imposed to contain the coronavirus pandemic, including the re-opening of restaurants, cinemas and museums and a shorter overnight curfew, Prime Minister Jean Castex claimed the country was 'coming out of this health crisis', above all through vaccinations.
A legal case brought by a 79-year-old French-Vietnamese woman against US firms that manufactured the highly toxic herbicidal cocktail known as Agent Orange, massively employed by US forces during the Vietnam War, causing deaths, diseases and malformations of those exposed to the chemical, has been dismissed by a French court on the grounds that the companies were acting 'on the orders' of the US government, which was engaged in a 'sovereign act'.
French serial killer Michel Fourniret, 79, dubbed 'the ogre of the Ardennes', who was serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for the murders of eight girls and women, who was expected to stand trial again for four other murders, including that of British student Joanna Parrish, died in a Paris hospital on Monday.
Following an open letter by semi-retired French generals claiming that France was facing a civil war, notably because of Islamic extremism, published last month in Valeurs Actuelles, the hard-right magazine has now published a second open letter on the same theme, this time by active members of the military.
Two groups of walkers in the alpine Savoie region of eastern France were separately struck by avalanches on Saturday, when seven of the ramblers were killed and one saved by rescue services.
Speaking from the Portuguese city of Porto on the sidelines of an EU 'social summit', French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday accused what he called 'the Anglo-Saxons', an apparent reference to both the US and the UK, of blocking exports of anti-Covid-19 vaccines and their raw materials.
The British government said the row between French fishermen and the authorities in Jersey over post-Brexit restrictions on vessels from France operating off the Channel island, and which led to around 60 French boats sailing in protest into the Crown dependency's main port, was 'resolved for now' but that 'we remain on standby'.
The latest edition of the French dictionary Le Petit Larousse has added an exceptional number of new words which have come into common use through the Covid-19 crisis.
A 31-year-old French mother died after she was shot in the legs and set on fire in a street near Bordeaux by her estranged husband who was arrested by police soon after the attack.
A 36-year-old police officer has died after he was shot during an operation against drug dealers in the centre of the south-east French town of Avignon on Wednesday.
