Category Archives: France

Thirteen people charged in France over Essex lorry deaths

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Group of mainly French and Vietnamese nationals accused of organising migrants’ journey from Asia

Thirteen suspects arrested by French police over the deaths of 39 Vietnamese people found in a refrigerated lorry in Essex have been charged with people trafficking and manslaughter, a judicial source has said.

Six of the group – mainly Vietnamese and French nationals – were taken into custody on Tuesday in the Paris region, while the alleged key figure in the ring of smugglers was caught in Germany.

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‘We are losers in this crisis’: research finds lockdowns reinforcing gender inequality

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Campaign groups warn women across Europe risk being pushed back into traditional roles

Life during the coronavirus lockdown has reinforced gender inequality across Europe with research emphasising that the economic and social consequences of the crisis are far greater for women and threaten to push them back into traditional roles in the home which they will struggle to shake off once it is over.

Throughout the continent, campaign groups are warning that the burdens of the home office and home schooling together with additional household duties and extra cooking, has been unequally carried by women and that improvements made in their lives by the growth in equality over the past decades are in danger of being rolled back by the health crisis.

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Global report: South Korea postpones school reopening due to new outbreak

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Country reverses easing plans; Philippines residents to enjoy free movement as daily infections pass 500; Mumbai’s hospital close to collapse

South Korea has postponed the planned reopening of more than 800 schools as it battles a renewed outbreak of the coronavirus, with cases now at their highest level for almost two months.

The country’s easing of lockdown measures has gone into reverse, with museums, parks and art galleries closed again on Friday for two weeks. Kindergarten pupils, and some primary and secondary school students were due back from Wednesday, in the last phase of school reopenings.

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French power couple given jail terms for money laundering

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Patrick and Isabelle Balkany, Paris suburb’s mayor and deputy, hid €13m from tax authorities

A rightwing power couple who have run a rich Paris suburb for almost 40 years and who are close friends of the former president Nicolas Sarkozy have been given prison sentences for money laundering.

Patrick Balkany, the mayor of Levallois-Perret, and his wife, Isabelle, were convicted of hiding at least €13m from tax authorities via a complex network of offshore companies between 2007 and 2014.

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Global report: EU countries block hydroxychloroquine, South Korea fears new spike

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France, Italy and Belgium respond to safety fears around drug; UN issues food insecurity warning for Africa; mosques reopen in Syria

France, Italy and Belgium have all taken steps against the use of hydroxychloroquine in treating patients with Covid-19 as safety concerns over the drug, touted by Donald Trump and Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, continue to grow.

Paris on Wednesday revoked a decree allowing doctors to use the drug with severely ill coronavirus patients, while the Italian and Belgian medicine agencies either suspended or warned against its use except in clinical trials.

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Marie Antoinette’s travel bag fetches nearly £40,000 at Paris auction

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Embroidered serviette used during coronation also went for several times its estimate

A travel bag belonging to Marie Antoinette has sold for more than five times its estimate in an auction of royal memorabilia near her one-time home in Versailles.

A large embroidered serviette used during the coronation of the Austrian-born monarch – who was executed during the French Revolution – also went for several times its estimate.

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French billionaire claims he spied on ex-president for security agency

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Xavier Niel, co-owner of Le Monde, says he worked for French security services in 1980s

A French billionaire has said he spied on a former president and on the car giant Renault for the country’s security agency.

Xavier Niel, a co-owner of Le Monde newspaper, claimed that as a teenager in the 1980s he worked for the state internal security services when they were interested in hacking, which was then a relatively new technique.

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Parisians angry as trees in famous cinema’s Japanese garden cut down

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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.

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We need geeks, not James Bonds, for post-Covid world, says French spy chief

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Cybersecurity is ‘alpha and omega’ of global security, says DGSE director, in callout to young people ‘connected to technology’

The French secret service wants to recruit geeks rather than budding young James Bonds as it adapts to new demands in the post-coronavirus world, its technical director has said.

In rare public comments, Patrick Pailloux said there was a danger that many young tech-savvy French people did not consider themselves suitable for the stereotypes of France’s directorate-general for external security (DGSE).

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Apple whistleblower goes public over ‘lack of action’

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Thomas le Bonniec says firm violating rights and continues massive collection of data

A former Apple contractor who helped blow the whistle on the company’s programme to listen to users’ Siri recordings has decided to go public, in protest at the lack of action taken as a result of the disclosures.

In a letter announcing his decision, sent to all European data protection regulators, Thomas le Bonniec said: “It is worrying that Apple (and undoubtedly not just Apple) keeps ignoring and violating fundamental rights and continues their massive collection of data.

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Homophobic crimes rise by more than a third in France

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Figures released on eve of International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia show 36% leap in offences

Homophobic attacks and insults in France rose by 36% last year, according to figures released by the interior ministry, prompting the government to talk of an “anchoring” of homophobia in the country.

The figures released on Saturday show a steady increase in offences and come on the eve of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, and 30 years after the withdrawal of homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses by the World Health Organization.

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French police arrest Rwandan genocide suspect Félicien Kabuga

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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.

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French boy dies from coronavirus-linked Kawasaki diseae

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Nine-year-old from Marseille had Covid-19 but no symptoms before dying in hospital

A nine-year-old boy from Marseille is reported to have died of Kawasaki disease, the mysterious inflammatory syndrome linked to coronavirus.

The boy is the first victim of the disease in France and only the second in Europe after a teenager died of the syndrome in London last week.

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Iran sentences French-Iranian academic to six years in prison – lawyer

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Fariba Adelkhah to appeal against sentence on national security charges

Iran has sentenced the French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah to six years in prison on national security charges, her lawyer said.

“The court has sentenced her to six years. We have appealed and if accepted, the sentence will drop to five years,” Adelkhah’s lawyer, Saeid Dehghan, told Reuters on Saturday.

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UK quarantine for travellers to now include French arrivals

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Downing Street rolls back on idea of exempting people from France from 14-day isolation

Downing Street has rolled back on the idea of exempting travellers from France from incoming quarantine rules, with only freight drivers and experts working on anti-Covid-19 efforts being able to avoid the 14-day isolation period.

Boris Johnson used his TV address last Sunday to announce that quarantine restrictions would soon be imposed on people entering the UK, but only mentioned those arriving by air. It later became clear that the rules would also apply to arrivals by road, rail and sea.

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Coronavirus in Europe: states take small steps towards normality

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Restaurants reopen in parts of Germany, while Italy relaxes travel restrictions

Europe took a step towards post-virus normality on Friday when restaurants in Germany and Austria reopened for the first time in two months, and other countries loosened travel restrictions and threw open borders.

Berlin’s restaurants, cafes and snack kiosks were allowed to serve customers again, so long as they obeyed social distancing. People from two separate households could share a table, but had to keep a distance of 1.5m from each other.

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Hockney invites budding artists to find joys of spring in lockdown

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Artist provides inspiration for competition to lift spirits during the coronavirus crisis

Locked down in France, the British artist David Hockney has been sitting in the garden of his Normandy home drawing the blossoming of spring. The cherry and other fruit trees, the hawthorns and blackthorns, all feature in his works, famously created on his iPad.

Now Hockney, 82, is the inspiration for a competition to encourage young and old to create an image that captures the season and to lift coronavirus lockdown spirits.

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Global report: leaders urge free vaccines as France allows staycations

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French drugmaker criticised for giving US priority; Gordon Brown says Covid-19 solution is global

More than 140 world leaders and experts have called for future Covid-19 vaccines to be made available to everyone free of charge, amid growing tensions between drug companies and governments and a boycott of vaccine summits by the US.

Vaccines and treatments for the virus should not be patented, say the signatories to an open letter published in the run-up to next week’s meeting of the World Health Assembly, the policy-setting body of the UN’s World Health Organization. Instead, scientific breakthroughs must be shared across borders, they urge.

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Ikea France to face trial over claims it spied on staff and customers

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Two former chief executives and four police officials among 15 individuals charged in case

Ikea’s French subsidiary and 15 individuals including former executives and police officials are to go on trial on charges of spying on employees and customers, prosecutors have announced.

Two former Ikea France CEOs are among those charged in a case dating back to 2012 when the Swedish-based home furnishings firm was accused of paying for illegal access to police files.

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French court scraps olive farmer’s conviction for helping migrants cross border

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Amnesty International says appeals ruling will affect ‘acts of solidarity’ throughout Europe

A French court has scrapped all charges against an olive farmer who helped migrants enter the country illegally, the final chapter in a groundbreaking case that defined so-called “crimes of solidarity”.

Cedric Herrou, who helped about 200 migrants cross the border from Italy into southern France, was given a four-month suspended sentence in August 2017.

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