In an open letter published in the French press on Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron urged mainstream parties to bridge political divides and propose a coalition government, infuriating the leftwing alliance that garnered most votes in the parliamentary elections and which is demanding that the French president to let it govern.
In an open letter published in the French press on Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron urged mainstream parties to bridge political divides and propose a coalition government, infuriating the leftwing alliance that garnered most votes in the parliamentary elections and which is calling on the French president to let it govern.
The 56-year-old wife of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been placed under investigation on suspicion of having taken part in a plot to convince a key witness in the probe into Libyan funding of her husband's 2007 election campaign to withdraw his account of ferrying cash from the Gaddafi regime to Sarkozy and his chief of staff.
While French President Emmanuel Macron is due to fly to Washington on Wednesday morning for a Nato summit, leaving the political deadlock at home behind, Olivier Faure, the leader of the country's Socialist Party, and which is part of the leftwing alliance that emerged as the largest bloc in parliamentary elections which ended on Sunday, has said he is ready to become prime minister.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 72-year-old leader of the radical-left party La France Insoumise, which took the majority of seats won by the leftwing alliance in parliamentary elections that ended on Sunday, is a divisive figure even among his electoral allies, apparently excluding him from becoming prime minister despite his ambition to do so.
None of the three main forces in parliament - the Left, centre-right and far-right - came close to obtaining an absolute majority, while the formation of a coalition government appears ruled out by all at present, leaving the prospect of a lengthy spell of an ineffective caretaker government unable to legislate.
Two of emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's pistols, one of which he intended to use to commit suicide after a military defeat but was prevented from doing so by his grand squire, were sold at an auction in Fontainebleau at the weekend for 1.69 million euros.
France's outgoing prime minister Gabriel Attal handed in his resignation on Monday but will stay in the post at Emmanuel Macron's behest while the long process of forming a new government begins following the election results which gave no party or bloc an absolute majority.
Close to the border with Spain, the French town of Perpignan, where one-in-three people live below the poverty line, elected a far-right mayor in 2020 and has been regarded since as something of a laboratory for the Rassemblement National party's capacity for urban management.
Kitesurfers Martin Marescaux and Théo Vanmarcke crossed from Portland in England to the French port of Cherbourg in four hours and thirty minutes, each carrying barrels of sourdough bread from a British bakery to be used in beermaking at the Pain de Minuit brewery in Lille.
