French President Emmanuel Macron, who for several days has dodged answering questions about his security advisor Alexandre Benalla caught on video assaulting May Day demonstrators, has cancelled a public appearance with crowds along the Tour de France cycle race scheduled for Wednesday, while his interior minister Gérard Collomb was quizzed by MPs about the May 1st events.
Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga walked a tightrope 35 metres off the ground in front of a crowd of hundreds of people in Montmartre in north Paris, at the foot of the Sacré-Cœur basilica.
Michael Blanc, now aged 45, was arrested on Boxing Day in 1999 with 3.8 kilogrammes of hashish hidden inside scuba diving canisters, which he claimed he was unaware of, and after becoming a cause célèbre in France notably through the determined campaign of his mother who fiercely protested his innocence, narrowly escaped the death penalty before finally arriving back in Europe.
Le Perthus, a community of 586 people near the Spanish border in south-west France, receives so much income from parking fees paid by tourists that the French state audit body, the cours des comptes, has advised it should cancel council and property taxes.
French President Emmanuel Macron's personal security aide Alexandre Benalla, who was revealed this week to have assaulted May Day demonstrators while wearing a police helmet and armband ID during what was supposed to be a mission of observation of crowd control police, has been fired and taken into custody for questioning as the scandal spread to allegations of a cover up involving France's interior minister and senior presidential staff.
Magistrates investigating separate rape allegations against the prominent Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan have refused his lawyers' request to overturn his placement under investigation after discrepencies were revealed in the acount of one of his accusers, and have maintained his preventive detention in prison which began in February.
After France's ambassador to Washington, Gérard Araud, wrote a letter of protest to US-based TV comedian Trevor Noah over his claim that because of the black players in France's football team 'Africa won the World Cup', Noah, a black South African, has publicly replied 'I am not saying it as a way to exclude them from their Frenchness, but using it as a way to include them in my Africanness'.
The French railways operator SNCF has unveiled plans to renovate its Gare du Nord station in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics, including changes to the Eurostar terminal in order to meet what it described as “the challenges of reinforced border controls due to Brexit”.
After numerous reports by women on social media of how they fell victim to groping and forced kisses during mass street partying to celebrate France's World Cup victory on Sunday, Paris police authorities have urged victims to file complaints.
A French Senate report has found that last year 300 helicopters out of France's total military fleet of 467 were 'immobilized', a problem the report said 'prevented the conduct of certain missions, particularly in France', while warning that the pressure on service personnel is leading to their exhaustion.
