President Emmanuel Macron said France was not delivering weapons to Israel and called for other countries to do the same, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a swift retort against any move for an arms embargo, telling Macron 'Shame on you'.
In two separate incidents overnight Friday, a two-year-old infant was crushed to death and two men and a woman were found unconcious, reportedly drowned, in overloaded dinghies attempting to cross the Channel from France to Britain.
Hundreds of people turned out on Sunday for a silent march in the southern French village of Mazan in support of Gisèle Pelicot, 72, whose ex-husband and 50 other men are accused in an ongoing trial of raping her while she was unconcious after being secretly administered with sedatives by her spouse.
French jihadist Peter Cherif, 42, has been sentenced by a Paris court to life imprisonment for his active membership of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen from 2011 to 2018, during which time he allegedly trained his Paris childhood friend Chérif Kouachi, who later joined with his brother Saïd to carry out the shooting massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in the French capital in January 2015.
Michel Blanc, who began his acting career in comedy before taking on serious roles and screenwriting and directing, winning two awards at the Cannes Film Festival, died in a Paris hospital on Friday from complications following a heart attack.
Under the rules of a treasure hunt launched in 1993 in a picture book, Sur la Trace de la Chouette d’Or (On the Trail of the Golden Owl), whoever solved 11 riddles and found the bronze replica owl buried somewhere in France was entitled to exchange it for the gold-and-silver original, worth almost 300,000 euros.
Robert Bourgi, 79, who for decades worked as an intermediary for the Gaullist conservative movement in its dealings with leaders of former French colonies in Africa, and notably the organisation of secret cash payments from despots for French election campaign spending, has published his revealing memoirs.
French Prime Minister Michel Barnier, appointed in September, presented his government's programme before parliament on Tuesday, when he made clear tackling public sector debt through spending cuts and greater taxation would be his priority.
A Paris lawyer acting on behalf of women who say they fell victim to sexual assaults by the disgraced late billionaire businessman Mohammed Al Fayed when they worked at his luxurious Paris hotel, the Ritz, is to file a request next week that French prosecutors open an investigation into the claims.
French President Emmanuel Macron has arrived in Canada from New York, where he had addressed the United Nations, for a set of meetings with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau on subjects as diverse as strengthening the influence of French culture and language and issues surrounding artificial intelligence.
