Ian Bailey, 62, an expatriate British former journalist living in Ireland who was found guilty in absentia by a Paris court for the murder in 1996 in County Cork of French TV producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a crime he denies, has been ordered to be extradited to France by Dublin's High Court.
An Afghan rape victim who fled to France en-route for Britain was allegedly tracked down and stabbed in one eye in an assault by her husband while she waited in vain for official permission to join her sister, a British national, as part of a family reunion.
A day of strikes and demonstrations led by trades unions on Tuesday against the French government's planned overhaul of the pensions system mobilised strong support, with unions claiming a nationwide turnout in street marches of 1.8 million people, while interior ministry figures estimated the total numbers at 615,000.
In an open letter published in the press, 660 French public hospital doctors have threatened to resign unless the health ministry opens urgent talks to redress funding shortfalls that have caused severe disruption to services and the departure of staff towards the private sector.
Mario Sandoval, 66, who had been living since 1985 in France where he taught at the University of Marne-la-Vallée and at the New Sorbonne University, has been extradited to his native Argentina where he is wanted for crimes against humanity, including torture, during the country's 1976-1983 dictatorship.
Jean-Paul Delevoye, the High Commissioner for Pensions and one of President Emmanuel Macron’s most trusted allies, has resigned his post after failing to publicly declare more than a dozen posts he held in addition to his cabinet job, just as union-led strikes in opposition to the reforms he was charged with seeing through reach a hightened stand-off with government this week.
The CFDT union is opposed to transport strikes over Christmas period but will call for new actions in January if the government does not drop a key pension reform proposal.
Many travellers are reconsidering their holiday travel plans as unions stood united in their opposition to the government's plans to fuse the country's 42 pension schemes into a single, points-based system.
