What the French interior ministry calls a 'proccupying' rise in anti-Semitic acts since 2016 appears to be prompting a flight of Jews from some areas around Paris with a predominently Muslim population, while Muslim representatives say talk of a 'new anti-Semitism' is a nonsense that ignores Islamophobia among Jewish communities.
For the second quarter in a row, France's gross domestic product expanded only 0.2 percent, crashing down from the 0.7 percent rate averaged in 2017, while consumer spending, the country's main growth engine, is faltering, having contracted in the second quarter for the first time in almost two years.
The far-reaching scandal surrounding Emmanuel Macron's former security aide has deeply bruised the young French president's aura of modernity and candour, reports The Guardian from northern Burgundy.
In his first interview since prompting the worst crisis of Emmanuel Macron's presidency, disgraced security aide Alexandre Benalla said 'my case has been used to settle scores' and accused 'politicians and police' of using him as 'weak link' with which to hurt the French president.
French President Emmanuel Macron, during a visit on Thursday to south-west France, said the political scandal in which he is mired after a close aide was caught wearing police insignia beating up a young man during May Day marches was 'a storm in a teacup', adding that 'it doesn't affect me much'.
Gendarmerie services said Rédoine Faïd, 46, a convicted gangster who escaped jail for a second time in a hijacked helicopter on July 1st, was spotted in a car "observing a service station", but managed to avoid arrest after fleeing the scene and dumping his car in a shopping centre where it was found to contain explosives and false number plates.
While French President Emmanuel Macron made his first comments on the scandal which broke last week over his wayward personal security official Alexandre Benalla, police on Wednesday searched the latter's former office at the presidency.
Ukranian Femen feminist protest movement co-founder Oksana Shachko, 31, whose militant actions angered several authoritarian regimes, has been found dead inside her Paris flat, where she reportedly left a suicide note.
France 24 presents a timeline of the crisis into which Emmanuel Macron's presidency has been thrown in a turbulent week following revelations of the extraordinary powers given to his personal security advisor, Alexandre Benalla, who was caught on video footage beating up a May Day demonstrator in Paris while passing himself off as a police officer.
Police used tear gas to disperse farmers protesting about the loss of rights for agricultural land who blocked the Tour de France stage on Tuesday with bales of hay and sheep, but the spread of the gas vapours meant several riders needed medical treatment from the doctor’s car at the rear of the peloton.
