This Sunday, more than 180,000 voters will cast their ballot to find out whether New Caledonia will stick with France or become its own independent state.
French President Emmanuel Macron, on an official visit to Lithuania, on Tuesday offered to mediate for a "peaceful transition" of power in neighbouring Belarus, meeting with exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and calling for new 'free elections under international observation' following the crisis in Belarus prompted by the contested August re-election of strongman president Alexander Lukashenko .
French prosecutors said a Pakistani national detained after an attack on two people with a meat cleaver last Friday outside the former Paris premises of Charlie Hebdo is aged 25 and not 18 as he first claimed, and that he told investigators he went to the location, believing it to be still the site of the magazine, to attack staff and set fire to their offices in retaliation for the re-publication of cartoons depicting Islam's Prophet Mohammed.
After growing protests by restaurant and bar owners angry at imposed early closing hours for their businesses in Paris and other cities considered to be hotspots of a rapid rise in novel coronavirus infections, the French government on Tuesday announced they will receive emergency relief funding, an extended period of payment to laid-off staff, and tax breaks.
French environment minister Barbara Pompili has announced the beginning of a 'process' for the prohibition of keeping wild animals in captivity, notably for public entertainment such as in circuses or aquatic shows, and an end to mink rearing for the fur trade.
Hospitals in Paris and Marseille have begun delaying operations to free up space for the fast-rising numbers of patients arriving with Covid-19 infections.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday notably slammed Hezbollah but also the whole of the ruling Lebanese political class, saying he was 'ashamed' of their inability to put an end to the political deadlock in the country, prone to a social and economic crisis, in an ill-tempered news conference after Saturday’s resignation of its prime minister-designate and which has halted his own intervention in the former French procetorate.
An 18-year-old of Pakistani origin arrested on suspicion of carrying out an attack with a meat cleaver on Friday against a man and a woman outside the former premises of Charlie Hebdo magazine said he mistakenly believed they were journalists from the magazine, according to judicial sources, and acted in revenge for its republication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed ahead of the trial opened this month of alleged accomplices of the jihadists who carried out the January 2015 shooting massacre in and outside the offices that left 12 dead.
The French government's attempt to contain a significant resurgence of infections of the novel coronavirus, with measures including early closing of bars and restaurants, is facing strong opposition in the southern city of Marseille and its neighbouring region, with local politicians and proprietors warning of a popular revolt.
