Call for increased security as French president tells demonstrators ‘be cool’
Anti-government gilets jaunes (yellow vests) hurled abuse at Emmanuel Macron as he walked with his wife, Brigitte, on Bastille Day in a public garden in Paris, prompting calls from opposition leaders for increased security.
Demonstrators confronted the French president and his wife, Brigitte, as they walked with bodyguards in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris on Tuesday.
Continue reading... Inquiry to examine claims remains were found strewn around and dismembered
Authorities in France will investigate claims that human corpses donated for science were left to rot and be eaten by rats at a university research facility, the Paris prosecutor’s office has said.
An investigation into “violations of the integrity of a corpse” was handed over to magistrates by prosecutors who handled the initial phase of the investigation after l’Express magazine reported the scandal last November.
Continue reading...Statistics agency is first in France to cross-check Covid-19 fatalities with country of origin
Death rates among immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa doubled in France and tripled in the Paris region at the height of France’s coronavirus outbreak, finds a study from the French government’s statistics agency.
The INSEE agency’s findings, published on Tuesday, are the closest France has come to acknowledging with numbers the disproportionate impact of the virus on the country’s black immigrants and members of other overlooked minority groups.
Continue reading...Experts believe up to 500 people guillotined in period may be buried in Chapelle Expiatoire
Experts believe the remains of up to 500 people guillotined during the French Revolution may be buried in the walls of a listed monument in Paris.
The discovery blows apart the accepted historical account, which suggests the bodies of famous guillotinés, including Louis XV’s mistress Madame du Barry, Olympe de Gouges and Maximilien Robespierre, revolutionary architect of the Reign of Terror, were moved to the network of catacombs under the city.
Continue reading...Four police officers questioned for involuntary homicide over death of Cédric Chouviat
A French delivery driver who died after being arrested in Paris pleaded “I’m suffocating” several times as police held him to the ground.
Footage has emerged of 42-year-old Cédric Chouviat saying he could not breathe seven times in 22 seconds as officers pinned him to the ground.
Continue reading...French nursing unions called for a national strike to ask for better working conditions and to demand the government keep its promise to overhaul France’s hospital system in response to the coronavirus crisis.
Police fired teargas after being pelted with objects by a small minority that overturned a car during the demonstration led by healthcare workers
With streets pedestrianised and the mayor turning parking spaces into cycle lanes, motorists fear being squeezed out of public spaces
It is evening rush hour and the Rue de Rivoli, a major east-west road through central Paris, is heaving. Pre-coronavirus, it would have been one long traffic jam, paralysed by increasingly frustrated and angry motorists. Now, though, with private cars banned, it is busy with pedestrians, cyclists and a smattering of taxis and buses.
North of Rue de Rivoli, in the Marais, a maze of narrow cobbled streets, cafes, restaurants and bars have spread out across pavements and parking places.
Continue reading...Opinion poll puts Socialist at 44% of intentions to vote, well ahead of her closest rival
The mayor of Paris has opened up a strong lead in her bid to be reelected after forging an alliance with the city’s ecologists.
An opinion poll put the Socialist Anne Hidalgo at 44% of intentions to vote, well ahead of her closest rival, the centre-right candidate Rachida Dati, a former justice minister under Nicolas Sarkozy.
Continue reading...Elsewhere, Italy’s president warns Covid-19 ‘is not over’, and former UK PMs join calls for a coordinated global response
Germany lifted its blanket European travel ban as coronavirus lockdowns across the EU continued to ease, with officials saying new cases in western Europe were now in steady decline.
Parisians reclaimed their cafe terraces and Berliners took back their bars as normal life inched closer to returning in many parts of the continent.
Continue reading...Property magnate Charles Cohen’s €8m renovation of La Pagode branded a ‘massacre’
When the property magnate Charles Cohen bought the La Pagode cinema in Paris, complete with its celebrated Japanese garden, three years ago, he announced that as an American in Paris he wanted “everyone to be happy”.
The cinema-loving Francophile promised to “restore and preserve” the magnificent listed building and pledged he would “not disappoint” with his €8m facelift.
Continue reading...Officers find African country’s most-wanted man living under false identity in Paris
French police have ended a decades-long hunt for a fugitive accused of playing a key role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, arresting 84-year-old Félicien Kabuga during a dawn raid near Paris.
Kabuga, who is accused of financing the killings and frequently listed as one of the world’s most wanted men, was living under a false identity in the French capital’s suburbs, local police and prosecutors said in a statement on Saturday.
Continue reading...As schools and businesses get set to reopen some citizens urge caution, wary of a spike in infections
France is set to end eight weeks of strict lockdown as the government urged people to behave responsibly to avoid a sudden spike in coronavirus cases.
Hours before the national déconfinement there were reports of two new Covid-19 clusters in départments designated green – areas where the virus has largely stopped circulating and where most restrictions are being lifted.
Continue reading...Man found to have had virus a month before government confirmed first cases
A French hospital that retested old samples from pneumonia patients has discovered that it treated a man with the coronavirus as early as 27 December, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases.
Dr Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, told BFM TV that scientists had retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who tested negative for flu.
Continue reading...Gilles Peterson and Biz Markie pay tribute to the Fela Kuti collaborator, described by Brian Eno as ‘perhaps the greatest drummer who ever lived’
The Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, who is credited with creating Afrobeat along with his old bandmate Fela Kuti, died suddenly at the age of 79 in Paris on Thursday, his manager said.
“We don’t know the exact cause of death,” Eric Trosset said, adding it was not linked to the coronavirus.
Continue reading...For 300 hundred years staff at the Elysée witnessed men flaunting their power over women, but no longer, says author of a new book
From the time of kings and emperors to modern day presidents, the Elysée Palace has stood as a symbol of male dominance in society and politics. Behind the wrought iron gates its gilded salons have witnessed conquests of many kinds – including, frequently, the sexual.
Continue reading...Cathedral can still be repaired by 2024, says general, but decisions must be made fast
The army general in charge of rebuilding Notre Dame has said it is still possible for the cathedral ravaged by fire exactly one year ago on Wednesday to reopen in 2024 as pledged by Emmanuel Macron, if everyone “rolls up their sleeves”.
Jean-Louis Georgelin insisted unexpected delays in work to restore the 13th-century cathedral to its previous glory – including the coronavirus lockdown – need not derail the five-year deadline.
Continue reading...Parisians have been told to remain indoors for 15 days, with exemptions on buying groceries, visiting doctors and getting medication, or commuting for those unable to work from home
Continue reading...Fire reportedly started by protesters opposed to concert nearby by Congolese singer
Police evacuated the Gare de Lyon in Paris after scooters and rubbish bins were set alight outside the station, reportedly by protesters opposed to a concert being given by a Congolese singer.
Photos on social media showed flames reaching several metres into the sky and a cloud of black smoke around the station, which was evacuated at the height of rush hour.
Continue reading...New campaign includes advice on how to prevent and treat an infestation, and a number to call for expert help
The French government launched a campaign Thursday, complete with an emergency number, to combat an influx of unwelcome visitors that have left Parisians in despair: bedbugs that have settled in homes and hotels to feed, uninvited, on human blood.
After disappearing from France in the 1950s, the insects have made a resurgence, according to the ministry of housing, which cited international travel and growing resistance to insecticide as the main causes.
Continue reading...Petr Pavlensky and partner questioned after complaint from Benjamin Griveaux
The girlfriend of a Russian performance artist and activist who released a video of a sexual nature that prompted a Paris mayoral candidate to stand down is being questioned by police over her role in the scandal.
The woman was taken into custody along with the artist, Petr Pavlensky, on Saturday afternoon as they left a Paris hotel. They are being questioned over accusations of invasion of privacy and “broadcasting images of a sexual nature without the permission of the person involved”.
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