The biological children of French rock star Johnny Hallyday, who died in December from lung cancer, are locked in a bitter and very public battle against the late singer's wife Laeticia who, along with the couple's two adopted daughters, has inherited all his wealth and royalties,
Tariq Ramadan, 55, a prominent Islamic scholar and preacher and a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, who was placed in preventive detention earlier this month as part of a French judicial investigation into two separate accusations of rape, was transfered from prison to hospital this weekend for treatment of complications from multiple sclerosis.
Award-winning cellist Ophélie Gaillard was robbed by a knife-wielding thief of her 18th-century cello, estimated to be worth 1.3 million euros, outside her home in the Paris suburb of Pantin on Thursday, but after an impassioned appeal for its return relayed by social media she received an anonymous call to inform her it had been placed in a car in front of her house, where she found it.
Michel Fourniret, 75, who is serving a life sentence for seven murders, has confessed to the 1990 unsolved killing in Burgundy of British student Joanna Parrish, 20, and that of 19-year-old Marie-Angèle Domece, who disappeared without trace in the same region in 1988.
The French unemployment rate has seen the steepest fall since the financial crisis began, dropping to 8.9 percent in the last quarter of 2017, down from 9.6 percent in the third quarter, the first time it has been recorded at below 9 percent since 2008, according to official figures from the INSEE national statistics office.
A planned day of strike action on March 22nd by public sector workers in protest at President Emmanuel Macron's plans to cut 120,000 jobs from the public payroll during his term in office will be joined by railworkers, one of the biggest trades unions, the CGT, announced on Friday.
A preliminary investigation opened last month after a woman filed a lawsuit accusing budget minister Gérald Darmanin of raping her in 2009 has been dropped after no evidence was found of 'coercion, threat, surprise or violence' the Paris prosecution services announced on Friday.
The French-founded international medical aid organsiation MSF (Doctors Without Borders) said it was prompted by the growing scandal engulfing British NGO Oxfam to reveal that it investigated 24 allegations of sexual harassment or abuse last year and which resulted in the dismissal of 19 of its staff.
A French prosecutor on Wednesday said former army dog-handler Nordahl Lelandais, the chief suspect in the disappearance of a nine-year-old girl from a wedding reception in the French Alps last August, has confessed to 'unintentionally' killing her and led police to a snow-covered ravine where her remains were found.
At the end of a three-week trial in Paris, Jawad Bendaoud, 31, was on Wednesday acquitted of charges of knowingly sheltering members of the Islamic State gang which carried out the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks in and around the French capital which left 130 people dead, while Bendaoud's two co-defendants were given jail sentences.
