Motive as yet unclear for knife attack in Villejuif that left one dead and two seriously injured
Police shot dead a man who stabbed several people in a Paris suburb in a knife attack that left one person dead and at least two others seriously injured.
Armed officers were called at around 2pm on Friday after the man stabbed several people – apparently at random – near a park and busy shopping centre in Villejuif, south of the French capital.
Continue reading...New book describes sexual relationship between Matzneff and 14-year-old girl
Paris prosecutors have opened a rape investigation into the author Gabriel Matzneff, a day after the publication of a book detailing his sexual relationship with a girl of 14 more than three decades ago.
The case has attracted huge interest in France, which is only now beginning to scrutinise decades of what are seen by some as permissive attitudes towards sexual exploitation and paedophilia.
Continue reading...As a year of big EU decisions begins, the bloc’s most important relationship is stuck in a rut
In early December, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel sat down opposite each other in Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at the Savoy Hotel, central London, for a two-hour tête-à-tête dinner. They had some talking to do.
Cordial and constructive, diplomats in Paris and Berlin said, the evening apparently cleared the air. But it will take more than a dinner to clear the structural obstacles to a relationship that is critical to what Europe can achieve in 2020.
Continue reading...FTSE 100 records best performance since the referendum year, jumping 12%
Global stock markets have posted their best year since the aftermath of the financial crisis a decade ago, as investors shrugged off trade tensions and warnings of slowing growth in major economies.
The MSCI World Index, which tracks stocks across the developed world, jumped by almost 24% during 2019 – the strongest performance since 2009. A surge in US technology giants and a strong recovery in eurozone and Asian stocks drove the rally.
Continue reading...Business still booming at Marc Veyrat’s restaurant despite it losing one of its three stars
One of France’s leading chefs has lost his court case against the Michelin Guide after it downgraded his restaurant from three to two stars.
In a case that became known as Cheddargate, Marc Veyrat sued the respected guide claiming it had made a “profoundly offensive” suggestion that he had used the English cheese in one of his signature soufflé dishes.
Continue reading...Archives show British PM was warned France may have made secret deal with Bosnian Serbs
Days before the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, John Major was warned France had possibly brokered a secret deal with the Bosnian Serbs to halt airstrikes in return for the release of western military hostages.
This claim, detailed in a secret Foreign Office note to the prime minister, is among documents available to read at the National Archives in Kew fromTuesday that expose the depth of Anglo-French distrust during the Balkans conflict.
Continue reading...Kent youth asylum seeker charity has seen a 50% rise in demand for its services since December 2018
Bridget Chapman, who swims regularly in the Channel, wasn’t surprised when desperate asylum seekers began travelling to the UK on small dinghy boats last year. On a clear day she can see France’s coastline from where she lives in Folkestone, Kent. “If you’re stuck in Calais and you can see the British coast quite clearly, it must be really tempting to think: I’ll just get a boat,” she said.
It has been a year since the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, declared the increasing number of migrants attempting to cross the Channel a “major incident”, but boat arrivals are still a regular occurrence. On Boxing Day this year, more than 60 migrants were picked up while attempting to cross in small boats.
Continue reading...French president to address 25-day strike and widespread protests in new year speech
Emmanuel Macron will be forced to speak out on France’s ongoing pensions strike in his televised new year address on Tuesday as transport stoppages look likely to continue into a fifth week, causing major disruption over the holiday period and into January.
The centrist French president, who made overhauling the country’s pensions system a key election pledge, has until now refrained from intervening personally, leaving his prime minister, Edouard Philippe, to deal with the day-to-day response to the crisis.
Continue reading...Some are trusted aides, others are fixers who work in the shadows. Often unelected and unaccountable, they all have the ear of national leaders
The role of Dominic Cummings in plotting and facilitating Boris Johnson’s drive for power has focused attention on the influence exerted by behind-the-scenes advisers and confidants who have the ear of prominent politicians.
Powerful men and women around the world all have personal counsellors, trusted aides and backroom mentors. Then there are the “insiders” – string-pullers, fixers and manipulators with ambitions of their own. Few become well-known, although Cummings’s notoriety is by no means exceptional.
Continue reading...Vanessa Springora describes relationship with Gabriel Matzneff, then 50, in new book
The French literary world is in shock after a leading publishing director, Vanessa Springora, alleged in a new book that she was groomed into a damaging relationship from the age of 14 with an acclaimed author who was 50.
Springora’s book, Le Consentement (Consent), will be published in France in January and has already been met with critical acclaim and sent shockwaves through the close-knit world of Paris intellectuals. It has been described as a #MeToo moment for France’s literary circles.
Continue reading...This year world leaders struggled to manage the fallout from the erratic tenant in the White House – as China flexed its imperial muscles. We look back at the events that created the most turbulence
Click here for 2019’s reasons to be cheerful
A year of high anxiety was rendered more alarming by intensifying clashes of interest between world powers. As international cooperation declined, and nationalist agendas gathered strength, China, the US, Russia and Europe, and their respective allies, emulators and proxies, engaged in often dangerous competition.
The Chinese communist regime’s increasingly assertive behaviour at home and abroad, reflecting the authoritarian outlook of its paramount leader-for-life, Xi Jinping, produced head-on collisions with western countries, notably over Hong Kong, trade, technology and the repression of the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang.
Continue reading...French Catholics go to nearby church in Paris for Christmas mass following fire in April
Notre Dame Cathedral was unable to hold Christmas Eve mass for the first time in more than 200 years after a fire ravaged its structure in April.
French Catholics instead gathered at the church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, a few hundred metres away from the Paris landmark, for a service celebrated by the cathedral’s rector Patrick Chauvet.
Continue reading...Renaissance work sold to foreign bidder has now been declared ‘national treasure’
France has blocked the export of a tiny early Renaissance masterpiece found in a French woman’s kitchen that fetched more than €24m (£20.5m) at auction and became the most expensive medieval painting ever sold.
Christ Mocked, by the 13th-century Florentine painter Cimabue, had hung for decades above a cooking hotplate in the kitchen of a 1960s house near Compiègne, north of Paris, before it was spotted by an auctioneer who had come to value furniture for a house move.
Continue reading...Striking French rail workers have clashed with riot police in Paris after holding a demonstration against pension changes despite Emmanuel Macron’s call for a Christmas truce. Hundreds of trade unionists and protesters gathered outside Gare de Lyon on Monday morning. The nationwide transport strikes have dragged on for a 19th day, causing what the state rail operator SNCF has described as 'ongoing severe disruption' to services
Continue reading...Equalities minister says social networks must act faster in taking down illegal content
France’s equalities minister has said social networks must do more to ensure illegal content is immediately taken down, after a video of an alleged rape was shared widely on Twitter.
Two 16-year-old boys have been charged with the rape of a teenage girl and remanded in custody outside Paris.
Continue reading...Alongside Yves Saint Laurent, Ungaro is seen as having helped establish ready-to-wear as an alternative to couture
Emanuel Ungaro, the French fashion designer who described himself as a sensual obsessive, has died in Paris at the age of 86.
Ungaro was a giant of old-school fashion, once memorably declaring: “One should not wear a dress, one should live in it.”
Continue reading...Lawyers warn loss of reunion rights for unaccompanied refugee children will put them in danger
The loss of family reunion rights for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will leave them with “no options” except taking dangerous routes and using smugglers, charities in France and Greece are warning.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, faced criticism after he told parliament he had dropped a promise to replace the EU law that allows child refugees stranded in Europe to reunite with family members in the UK after Brexit.
Continue reading...More than 110,000 without electricity as rail and air travel disrupted across the region
The death toll from storms that have battered Spain, Portugal and France rose to nine on Sunday as the region braced for more violent winds and heavy rain.
Storms Elsa and Fabien have flooded rivers, brought down power lines, uprooted trees and disrupted rail and air travel across the region, leaving more than 118,000 households without electricity.
Continue reading...President gives up automatic pension given to French leaders as union standoff continues
Emmanuel Macron is to give up his own generous presidential pension in an attempt to calm anger over politicians’ privileges, as French transport strikes caused chaos for Christmas travellers.
With rail strikes continuing into their third week and travellers scrambling to get to home for the holidays, Macron, who turned 42 this weekend, made the symbolic move to become the first president in more than 50 years to give up the automatic pension of more than €6,000 a month that all French leaders receive after leaving office, regardless of age or wealth.
Continue reading...Mario Sandoval charged with dictatorship-era crimes in Argentina – so how could he have worked undetected at a top French university?
Mario Sandoval had been living in France for 14 years when he became a lecturer at the Institute of Latin American Studies (IHEAL) at the Sorbonne in Paris.
The Argentinian security specialist was in his mid-40s, spoke good French and had recently obtained French citizenship. His credentials were impeccable – he’d spent the previous five years teaching international relations at another Paris institute, the Université Marne-la-Vallée – and he soon became a valued asset at the Sorbonne.
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