An estimated 800 people on Wednesday joined a march through the village of Pont-de-Beauvoisin in south-east France in hommage to Maëlys de Araujo exactly four months since she vanished from a local wedding reception, while a man suspected of her killing and that in April of a soldier continues to deny his involvement.
Most of the MPs representing French President Emmanuel Macron's new centrist party LREM are political novices, and a number are complaining of their comparatively reduced salaries and long working hours, prompting the party's parliamentary group leader to tell them to keep their “useless babble” and “qualms” to themselves.
A total of 97,000 security personnel from the police and armed forces are being deployed across France over the Christmas period in what the interior ministry described as “the context of a still-elevated terrorist threat”.
Skiers stranded for hours on broken-down gondolas at the at the Chamrousse resort resort in the French Alps, swaying in the wind at heights of up to 25 metres above ground, were rescued after helicopters dropped rescuers who winched the passengers safely to ground.
A wild truffle has been found growing beneath a hornbeam tree on the roof garden of a Mercure hotel close the Eiffel Tower in central Paris, an extraordinary discovery given that the usual habitat of the much sought-after mushroom, which commands thousands of euros per kilo, is normally limited to certain regions of southern Europe.
A French oyster farmer has found overnight success with his offer of oysters flavoured with lemon or shallot, sweet wine, ginger or raspberry, and after two months of production is shipping up to two tonnes per day as far afield as China.
French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has visited Benghazi to revive UN talks between rival groups controlling the west and east of Libya, when he was barred from visiting a migrant detention centre.
Dairy group Lactalis has issued a second recall of its infant formulas sold in France and more than 47 other countries after the discovery of the source of contamination of products at its north-west France plant by the Salmonella Agona strain, which is known to have infected at least 16 infants.
Friends of French nationals Hu Jiamin and his wife Marine Brossard, who were arrested together by plain clothes police during the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism Architecture after painting a mural there in tribute to the late Chinese activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, say they cannot reach the couple and have no idea where they are being held.
French police have begun reopening unsolved cases of murders and disappearances in and around the French Alps after the arrest of 34-year-old former army doghandler over the disappearance in the region of a girl aged 9 has now led to the discovery of evidence suggesting his involvment in the nearby murder of a soldier.
