The French interior ministry estimated around 84,000 people took part in nationwide 'yellow vest' marches on Saturday in protest at falling living standards for low- and middle-income earners, the same amount as last weekend and a show of force in the face of government measures aimed at appeasing the movement.
Ahead of a planned visit to Egypt later this month by French President Emmanuel Macron, an Irish human rights NGO has highlighted the serious violations of the labour rights of Egyptian workers employed in the construction of French-designed battleships at naval yards where staff from France's Naval Group company have a permanent presence.
Emmanuel Macron led the second of a nationwide series of consultations with France's mayors on Friday, at Souillac in the south-west of the country, an initiative officially aimed as an exchange over citizens' complaints and aspirations which was prompted by the ongoing 'yellow vest' movement, supporters of which gave the president a rowdy reception as he arrived for the meeting.
The wife of Meng Hongwei, the Chinese boss of Interpol, the international police coordination body based in the south-east French city of Lyon, whose husband went missing after a visit to his home country in September, has applied for asylum in France and fears for the safety of herself and her children.
Alexandre Benalla, the disgraced former security aide to President Emmanuel Macron who last year was placed under investigation for assault and impersonating a police officer after video emerged of him beating people on the sidelines of May Day marches in Paris, was taken into police custody on Thursday for questioning over his alleged illegal obtention and use of diplomatic passports since leaving the Élysée Palace last August.
In a landmark move last year, President Emmanuel Macron recognised that communist mathematician Maurice Audin was tortured and killed by the French military in Algiers in 1957 during the bloody Algerian war of independence, lifting an official taboo on the case, but despite the president’s pledge to release confidential archives about the period, researchers question whether the truth will ever emerge about thousands of other unexplained disappearances.
French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe on Thursday announced a 50-million-euro contingency plan in the case that Britain would leave the European Union on March 29th without a trade agreement, which he described as 'less and less unlikely', which includes the building of infrastructures around transport hubs to deal with delays in commercial traffic and the recruitment of around 600 extra staff in customs and veterinary services.
French and German officials have made comments suggesting they are open to agreeing a delay to the UK's withdrawal from the European Union due on March 29th, as Prime Minsiter Theresa May prepares to return to parliament with a revised Brexit deal after surviving a 'no confidence' vote by MPs on Tuesday evening.
A court in Lyon has ruled that safety risks were not properly taken into account when a version of Bayer's weedkiller Roundup, Pro 360, which contains the suspected carcinogen glyphosate, was allowed to go on sale in 2017, prompting its removal from sale across France.
Reacting late on Tuesday to the British parliament's rejection of Prime Minster Theresa May's Brexit deal with the EU, French President Emmanuel Macron said it was most likely that the UK would seek a better deal and that 'maybe we’ll make improvements on one or two things', but warned that the British would be the 'first losers' in a no-deal brexit, and that 'we won’t, just to solve Britain’s domestic political issues, stop defending European interests'.
