French farmers protesting low prices paid for their produce, administrative bureaucracy and environmental regulations used tractors to block road access to Paris on Monday, vowing to continue the action for days to come, while the government has mobilised around 15,000 police and gendarmes, some in armoured vehicles, to keep airports and the major Rungis food market operating.
Two women protestors wearing T-shirts that read 'food counterattack' threw pumpkin soup at Leonardo da Vinci's 16th-century painting Mona Lisa at the Louvre on Sunday morning, but the museum afterwards confirmed no damage was caused because of protective glass around the canvas.
A plan to build a National Memorial for the Victims of Slavery in the Trocadéro Gardens in central Paris, which will display the names of around 224,000 people freed from slavery by France in 1848 is criticised by some as glorifying France for abolishing slavery, and not atone for holding some four million people in bondage over two centuries.
Claude Palmero, who for 22 years was asset manager for the Monaco royal family until he was sacked last year, has detailed to the French media their alleged transactions that include a 600,000-euro settlement in 2017 of an overdraft of ruling Prince Albert's South African wife Princess Charlene, that she spent 15 million euros over a period of eight years, and that she enjoys a yearly allowance of around 1.5 million euros.
France's Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has announced a series of measures in an effort to defuse a growing protest movement by the country's farmers, including the scrapping of a move to phase out tax breaks on diesel fuel for farm vehicles, the simplification of administrative procedures, aid for farmers whose cattle are affected by epizootic hemorrhagic disease, and an emergency fund for winegrowers and organic farms.
Posy Simmonds, author of such works as Tamara Drewe and Gemma Bovery, has become the first Briton to win the grand prix at the Angoulême international graphic novel festival.
France's Constitutional Council has rejected more than a third of the articles of hardline legislation on immigration which was approved by parliament in December after it gained support from the Right and far-right.
Researchers with the European Council on Foreign Relations polled voting intentions in all 27 European Union countries head of June's elections to the European Parliament and concluded the far-right and populist parties are on course to make major gains which, they forecast, could block Europe’s green deal and harden EU policies on migration, enlargement and support for Ukraine.
