This year's commemoration is also paying homage to former President Charles de Gaulle, 80 years after the historic appeal he made to opponents of France’s Nazi occupiers that gave birth to the French Resistance.
In a Twitter post in English by the French foreign affairs ministry announcing the composition of France's new government, it detailed that former culture minister Franck Riester was now the new 'minister for foreign trade and attractiveness', prompting widespread mockery and an official correction of his title to the little more convincing 'minister for foreign trade and economic attractiveness'.
On the 80th anniversary of the date when the notorious Vichy regime took power in German-occupied France, Jim Wolfreys, a senior lecturer in French and European politics at Kings College London, analyses the reactionary currents in French politics and society it drew upon, and its legacy.
A 59-year-old bus driver in the south-west French town of Bayonne who was beaten and left brain dead by a group of men passengers on Sunday allegedly in a row over their refusal to wear face masks as required by law, died on Friday in hospital.
French economy and finance minister Bruno Le Maire said plans to introduce a national tax on digital tech firms, including Google, Facebook and Amazon 'will be unchanged' unless an international agreement on the subject is reached by the end of 2020, despite US threats of slapping retaliatory tariffs on French products like wine, cheese and luxury goods.
Paris prosecutors have announced the opening of a nationwide investigation into fraudulent claims, amounting to millions of euros, by organised crime gangs for state payment of salaries for employees furloughed by the Covid-19 epidemic during the two-month lockdown on public movement in France which began mid-March.
