Regional French newspaper La Nouvelle République announced it had filed a formal complaint after its republishing last weekend of cartoons from Charlie Hebdo magazine of Prophet Mohammed prompted threats against it on social media.
Italy has lodged a formal complaint with France over environmental protection restrictions imposed by the latter in the Alps, where the two countries share a common border, overlap an area that is Italian territory.
As the numbers of Covid-19 infections and hospitalisations soar in France, Prime Minister Jean Castex on Thursday announced 9pm-6am curfew measures, aleady in place in Paris and eight other cities to limit public socialising, will now include a vast swathe of the country, representing two thirds of the population.
Seven British nationals, including two minors, have been arrested after a car was driven at a gendarme outside the Israeli embassy in central Paris on Monday night.
At a ceremony in front of the Sorbonne University in Paris, teacher Samuel Paty, who was murdered last Friday by an Islamic extremist for showing cartoons of prophet Muhammad to pupils in a class on civic rights, was posthumously awarded France's highest honour for civil merit, the Légion d’Honneur, by President Emmanuel Macron.
In their daily briefing on Wednesday, France's health authorities reported 26,676 new Covid-19 infections, bringing the total to more than 950,000, while 700 more people were hospitalised and another 163 died from the disease bringing the total to 34,048.
French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking four days after a teacher was beheaded by a Muslim fundamentalist for having shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, on Tuesday said 'actions will be stepped up' against Islamist extremism and announced the dissolution of a pro-Hamas group he said was 'directly implicated' in the attack.
The father of a pupil at the school where teacher Samuel Paty had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a lesson on civic rights had exchanged mobile phone text messages with the teacher's killer before the attack in a north-west Paris suburb, according to reports on Tuesday.
The leaders of the main political parties, associations and trade unions joined demonstrations in solidarity with murdered teacher Samuel Paty on Sunday afternoon in Paris, Place de la République, and in many other cities including Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Nantes, Marseille, Lille and Bordeaux.
After being forced to close their establishments during the lockdown, theatre and cinema operators in the Île-de-France region and eight major cities now have to deal with the introduction on Saturday of a curfew from 9 pm, for at least four weeks.
