Unbeknown to some locals and kite surfers who enjoy the warm Mediterranean waters above, part of the remains of ancient Olbia, a settlement first founded by the Greeks in the C4th BC and made into a port by the Romans in the C1st AD, lie just a few metres from the shore near Hyères in southern France, where it finally sank below rising sea levels 1,400 years ago.
Reacting to a message posted on Twitter by US President Donald Trump, in which he goaded his French counterpart over current social unrest in France, foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said 'I say this to Donald Trump and the French president says it too: leave our nation be'.
The continuing street demonstrations and blockades in France mounted by the so-called 'Yellow Vest' movement demanding an end to falling living standards for lower-income earners has become a 'catastrophe for our economy' said French finance minister Bruno Le Maire as he visited parts of Paris where commercial premises and vehicles were vanadlised during weekend protests.
Seven Trappist monks who were murdered in Algeria in 1996 were among 19 Catholic clergy killed in the country during an insurgency by hardline Islamists to be beatified on Saturday by the Vatican – the first step in the Church's process to award a person sainthood.
French President Emmanuel Macron is to address the nation next week after a fourth day of nationwide protests by the so-called “yellow vests” movement against the falling living standards of low- and middle-income earners was held on Saturday in Paris and major towns and cities, when the interior ministry said a total of almost 1,400 people were arrested and 118 others injured amid scenes of vandalism and looting by troublemakers who joined the marches.
The so-called 'gilets jaunes' (yellow vest) movement, now shaking French President Emmanuel Macron's government, cuts across age, job and region and includes members of the working and middle classes, the worst-affected by the rising cost of living in the country.
Ahead of what are forecast to be a major demonstrations on Saturday by a grass-roots movement of often violent protest over the living standards of middle-income earners, France's interior minister has announced 'large-scale security measures' in Paris, including the deployment of armoured vehicles, in face of what he said has become a 'monster' that has escaped the control of those who initiated the nationwide contestation.
One day after announcing a six-month freeze on the eco-tax that first prompted nationwide protets against his government's economic policies, and just hours after French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said he was prepared to reconsider the tax if other solutions could be found, the Elysée Palace said that Philippe and President Emmanuel Macron “both wished the increase in the carbon tax be removed” from the budget for 2019.
