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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Stéphane Bourgoin, whose books about murderers have sold millions, says he invented much of his experience, including training with FBI
An online investigation has exposed French author Stéphane Bourgoin, whose books about serial killers have sold millions of copies in France, as a serial liar.
Bourgoin is the author of more than 40 books and is widely viewed as a leading expert on murderers, having hosted a number of French television documentaries on the subject. He has claimed to have interviewed more than 70 serial killers, trained at the FBI’s base in Quantico, Virginia, and that his own wife was murdered in 1976, by a man who confessed to a dozen murders on his arrest two years later.
Continue reading...Guardian writers report on how various European countries have managed the process
Boris Johnson has been heavily criticised for failing to show Britain a clear route out of lockdown. Easing a nation out of two months of confinement is a complicated business, and some degree of confusion is almost inevitable. Here, Guardian correspondents look at how other European leaders have managed the process.
Spain’s lockdown exit strategy – known formally as the Plan for the Transition Towards the New Normality – was outlined by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, during a televised press conference on the evening of 28 April. Sánchez said the country’s four-phase de-escalation initiative would be “gradual and asymmetric”, adding that the first stage – dubbed phase 0 – would come into effect on 4 May.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson criticised for vague blueprint; China reports more infections in Wuhan; Belgium and Greece also ease some measures
Millions of people across Europe are set to embrace a relaxation of stay-at-home rules on Monday, as countries around the world plot their way tentatively through the coronavirus crisis.
In France, from Monday members of the public were able to walk outside without filling in a permit for the first time in nearly eight weeks, teachers will start to return to primary schools, and some shops – including hair salons – will reopen. Bars, restaurants, theatres and cinemas will, however, remain closed.
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...Quiet commemorations held to mark 75 years since end of war on continent
Seventy-five years ago crowds massed in the streets of Europe, singing and dancing as their leaders announced the end of six years of bloody war. Today, the streets were empty, and leaders stood alone in silence at places of commemoration, as a continent marked the heroics of the war generation in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...German journalist alleges VGE repeatedly touched her bottom during interview
The former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has been accused of sexual harassment in a legal complaint lodged by a German journalist.
Ann-Kathrin Stracke claims VGE, as he is known, repeatedly touched her bottom during an interview at his office on Boulevard Saint-Germain, in Paris, at the end of 2018. She lodged a complaint on 10 March with the Paris public prosecutor’s office.
Continue reading...France confirms lockdown-easing from Monday as WHO warns on domestic violence
Another record rise in coronavirus infections has propelled Russia past Germany and France to the fifth highest tally in the world, as the French government confirmed the country would start gradually lifting its strict eight-week lockdown from Monday.
With much of Europe now easing itself out of confinement, Russia has become the continent’s new Covid-19 hotspot. More than half of the country’s 177,160 cases are in Moscow and the capital’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said research suggested the actual number was nearer 300,000, more than triple the official figure.
Continue reading...War cabinet papers reveal PM’s concern French ally would pre-empt joint announcement
Winston Churchill believed a disgruntled general Charles de Gaulle intended to pre-empt the allies’ announcement of victory in Europe by 24 hours but felt unable to pressure him to change his plans, according to British war cabinet documents released free online by the National Archives during the lockdown.
VE Day will be celebrated for the 75th time on Friday 8 May but Gen Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in north-west Europe, and the Soviet high command had actually received the German surrender in the French city of Reims on 7 May 1945 at 2.41am.
Continue reading...Brazil, France and Germany say UN can’t hear complaint against five countries of flouting child rights to clean air
Greta Thunberg and a group of other children have pushed forward their legal complaint at the UN against countries they accuse of endangering children’s wellbeing through the climate crisis, despite attempts to have it thrown out.
The 16 children, including the Swedish environmental activist, lodged a legal case with the UN committee on the rights of the child against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey last September.
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...Two of Europe’s worst affected countries begin careful process of opening up societies again
Spain and Italy, two of the European countries hardest hit by coronavirus, are beginning to emerge from lengthy and strict lockdowns as Russia and Afghanistan reported their biggest one-day rises in new infections.
In Spain, where 217,466 cases of Covid-19 and 25,264 deaths have been confirmed, adults were allowed back on to the street to exercise for the first time in seven weeks this weekend.
Continue reading...Germany’s top coronavirus expert says children play as big a role as adults in spread
More countries across Europe are preparing to reopen schools in the coming weeks despite conflicting advice from scientifist, some of whom caution against underestimating children’s potential to spread the coronavirus.
Some schools and nurseries in Denmark and Norway have already reopened, and grandparents in Switzerland are allowed to hug grandchildren under 10, following a ruling by the health ministry’s head of infectious diseases that it is safe to do so.
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