French President Emmanuel Macron has announced moves to help higher education students cope with the social and financial disruption of their lives by lockdowns and curfews amid the coronavirus epidemic, promising the provision of one-euro meals for all and subsidies for psychological counselling in recognition of serious income and mental health problems caused for many isolated students.
The awards for the 2021 Michelin Guide for France were based on reviews of restaurants that have spent much of the past year completely closed, a director explaining that its anonymous reviews were squeezed into a reduced six-month period between lockdowns.
Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, said the council's members have agreed a ten-point charter that 'states clearly that the principles of the Muslim faith are perfectly compatible with the principles of the republic', and which was applauded by French President Emmanuel Macron as 'a truly foundational text for relations between the state and Islam in France'.
Former French prime minister Édouard Balladur, 91, is to stand trial on Tuesday on charges he funded his 1995 presidential campaign with secret kickbacks from French arms sales abroad, as part of a scandal that has been dubbed 'the Karachi affair'.
The French government has called for the 'immediate release' of Alexei Navalny, principal opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, after he was arrested in Moscow on his return to Russia on Sunday after recovering in Germany from a poisoning attack that nearly killed him.
An outpouring of accounts of incest posted in French on Twitter under the hashtag #Metooinceste was reported this weekend, following the publication of a book in France revealing how high-profile political sciences academic, constitutionalist and media figure Olivier Duhamel sexually abused his stepson, and how the family and friends covered up the scandal.
A French police disciplinary hearing has recommended that two officers who were involved in the 2017 arrest of a 22-year-old black man in a Paris suburb when he was allegedly deliberately attacked with a truncheon intoduced into his anus, causing life-changing injuries, should be given no more than a reprimand, according to French media reports.
A 12-hour curfew beginning at 6pm that was recently introduced in regions of eastern France where the return of the coronavirus epidemic took a significant hold has now been extended to all of France, beginning on Saturday and for a renewable two weeks, while visitors to the country from outside the EU face new restrictions including a seven-day isolation period even if they recently tested negative for the virus.
French investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reports that no obvious evidence of work exists to justify the employment as a well-paid parliamentary assistant in 2002-2003 of Nicolas Sarkozy's then wife Cécilia, who was hired by Sarkozy's stand-in as Member of Parliament after he was appointed interior minister.
French economy and finance minister Bruno le Maire hinted on Wednesday that his government would block the proposed takeover by Canadian group Couche-Tard of France's supermarket chain Carrefour, the country's largest private sector employer, citing its required approval of such moves concerning strategic sectors.
