During a one-day strike on Tuesday by French public sector workers over pay and budgetary cuts, a move aligning all nine public sector staff unions together for the first time in ten years, street protests across town and cities in France drew more than 400,000 people according to trades unions - and half that number according to interior ministry estimations.
Hospital staff, teachers and air traffic controllers were among millions of employees from the French public sector staging a one-day strike on Monday in protest over pay and budgetary restrictions, and notably a wage freeze for certain categories introduced by Presuident Emmanuel Macron, with street demonstrations held in several major towns and cities.
Two men, one of French nationality the other from Cameroon, due to be released this month from Fresnes prison near Paris after serving sentences for armed robbery and petty crime, have been placed under investigation for preparing to carry out terrorist attacks in France.
Apple boss Tim Cook, after meeting with the company’s suppliers and developers in northern France and visiting graves at the site of the Normandy landings, met with Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday, amid a drive by the French president and other European leaders to force a number tech and web-based giants to pay taxes where their activities are based.
An 36-year-old officer with the British border control agency Border Force was arrested in northern France along with three other Britons when handguns, ammunition, cocaine and heroin were found in their posession, in a joint operation into a suspected weapons and drugs smuggling ring by police in France and Britain.
The French government has said it will not recognise Catalonia as an independent state, ahead of an expected address by the region's pro-independence president Carles Puigdemont before the Catalan parliament on Tuesday.
A prolific veteran of French cinema, who starred in almost 150 films in an acting career that began in 1956, and who became one of the country's most popular film and theatre stars, had been hospitalised since August.
The French agriculture ministry estimates that the country's total wine production this year will fall to about 36.9 million hectolitres, or 4.9 billion bottles, down by almost 20 percent on last year due essentially to spring frosts and summer storms, with the Bordeaux region worst-affected.
The French carmamker has announced that 50 percent of its new vehicles will be powered by all-electric or hybrid engines by 2020, when it also hopes to be producing five million cars per year, almost two million more than in 2016, chiefly through increased sales in China and Russia.
A Paris court on Friday sentenced Christine Rivière, 51, nicknamed 'Jihadi Granny', to a maximum ten years in jail for 'association with criminals preparing a terrorist attack' after she encouraged her son's activities within the ranks of the Islamic State group in Syria, where she later joined him on several occasions.
