Intent on playing a high-profile role in helping Lebanon out of economic and political collapse, french President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Beirut on Monday, his second trip since the devastating chemicals blast in the capital on August 4th and just hours after Lebanese diplomat Mustapha Adib was named as the Middle East country's new prime minister.
France's defence minister Florence Parly has confirmed that a French army lieutenant-colonel, whose identity was not released, has been arrested for passing secret information to Russia, which reportedly happened as he prepared to leave France to return to his post with NATO's southern command headquarters in Naples.
French far-right weekly Valeurs Actuelles published a cartoon depicting black radical-left Member of Parliament Danièle Obono as a slave with a chain around her neck, prompting widespread outrage across the political spectrum at the vile racist jibe.
France has registered a steady buildup in numbers of corornavirus infections over recent days, which health authorities have described as 'very proccupying', while a slight rise in intensive care patients in hospitals suffering from the Covid-19 disease brought the total across the country by Saturday evening to 400.
After a post-lockdown record level of new coronavirus infections in France registered on Wednesday, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Thursday that the wearing of face masks to contain transmission of the virus is to be made a legal requirement in all public spaces in Paris, adding that 'The spread of the epidemic could become exponential if we do not react quickly'.
A total of 14 defendents are to stand trial in Paris beginning next Wednesday on charges related to the murderous January 2015 terrorist shooting attacks in and around the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, at a kosher supermarket and upon a police officer which together claimed the lives of 17 victims.
French education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer has announced that every adult in all types of French schools, which are due to reopen at the beginning of September, must wear a face mask to limit transmission of the coronavirus, overturning an earlier decision to exempt teachers at primary schools from the requirement.
As new admissions of Covid-19 patients to hospitals and intensive care units continued on an upward trend in France over recent weeks, Prime Minister Jean Castex has appealed for 'a sense of responsibility' to encourage young aduts to observe social distancing and mask-wearing after widespread flouting of the measures during the summer holiday period.
French police admit they are baffled by a series of often fatal knife attacks across the country on horses and ponies, in which body parts are removed, raising fears of a string of satanic rituals or a macabre online challenge.
The French subsidiary of Facebook, which employs 208 people, is to pay the French tax authorities 106 million euros in back taxes and penalties following an audit of its activities over the period 2009-20018, and which appears to be centred on a dispute over where the company declared local sales revenue.
