Following a legal appeal by marine parks in France, the country's highest administrative court, the Council of State, has overruled a decision taken last year by outgoing socialist govenment environment minister Ségolène Royal which banned the future breeding of dolphins and killer whales in captivity, after the court decided it had not been properly redacted, .
French government colleagues of the budget and public accounts minister, Gérald Darmanin, have defended his right to remain in his post while awaiting the findings of an investigation into a complaint launched against him for his alleged rape in 2009 of a woman who had asked him for help in a legal case concerning her, an accusation he has denied.
The French finance ministry has launched an investigation into the legality of a sales promotion of hazlenut spread Nutella by a national retail chain which slashed prices by 70 percent, prompting fights and wild behaviour by shoppers in some stores, who witnesses said behaved 'like animals'.
The River Seine waters on Monday reached a peak in their rise of more than four metres, the highest since serious flooding in 2016, and which has caused the evacuation of about 1,500 people from their homes in the Greater Paris region and the closure of a busy commuter rail link through the capital.
The husband of a 29-year-old bank worker whose partially-burnt body was found last October in countryside near their home in Gray, north-east France, has been detained for questioning by police who until now have found no other suspects for her murder by strangulation.
Following heavy rainfall in northern France over recent weeks, the River Seine running through the middle of the French capital is expected to reach five metres above its average water level on Sunday evening, the highest level since June 2016, while about 650 people have been evacuated from their homes across the Paris region because of flooding.
Mohamed Bakkali, 30, who is accused of knowingly offering his Brussels apartment to attackers who took part in the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks in and around Paris which left 130 people dead, has been extradited to France, just as the Paris trial of Jawad Bendaoud, 31, continues into his alleged conspiracy with the Islamic State group cell which were housed in a property belonging to him in a suburb close to the French capital.
French justice minister Nicole Belloubet on Thursday presented an improved offer on pay and security conditions to unions representing France's 28,000 prison guards who last week began an open-ended strike following a series of assaults by inmates, notably including detained Islamic militants.
There were scenes of fighting and chaos in a number of stores of the Intermarché retail chain around France on Thursday as crowds of shoppers, some described as behaving 'like animals', grabbed jars of the popular chocolate hazelnut spread Nutella being offered at knock-down prices.
