Frenchs rail operator SNCF and Germany's Deutsche Bahn are to begin a daily, daytime high-speed rail service linking the Gare de l'Est in Paris with the Berlin Hauptbahnhof in around eight hours, with stops along the route both ways at Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, and Frankfurt Süd.
One of the 49 men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot, who was unkowingly sedated by her husband who offered her to other men for sex, said that when he first began touching her, the absence of reaction led him to believe she might be dead.
A study by an environmental group has shown that the bed of the Gerardmer lake in the Vosges mountains of eastern France, a popular site for bathers, contains unexploded munitions from the first and second world wars, and even the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, causing high levels of TNT explosive in the waters, as well as metals like iron, titanium and lead.
The revelation that a 22-year-old Moroccan man suspected of murdering a 19-year-old woman student in Paris, before burying her body in a shallow grave in nearby woods, had failed to leave France as ordered after serving a prison sentence for rape has sparked calls for a toughening of deportation measures.
Tensions were running high on Tuesday in the France's Pacific Ocean territory of New Caledonia, where the pro-independence, indigenous Kanak people lament every September 24th which marks French annexation of the territory in 1853, and where unrest this year has claimed the lives of 13 people.
New PM has ended up with a government that includes a mix of holdovers from the last government and several conservative newcomers including Bruno Retailleau - a staunch conservative known for his hardline stance on immigration - as interior minister.
Authorities are banning demonstrations in four municipalities after violent protests over rising living costs led to the imposition of a curfew earlier this week.
