French president makes announcement on west Africa trip that has focused on jihadist threat in region
French forces have killed 33 Islamic extremists in central Mali, Emmanuel Macron has said.
The French president made the announcement on the second day of his three-day trip to west Africa, which has been dominated by the growing threat posed by jihadist groups.
Continue reading...Mass to be held nearby as workers continue to repair Paris landmark eight months after devastating fire
Notre Dame cathedral will fail to hold a Christmas mass for the first time since 1803, French officials confirmed on Saturday, as workers continue to repair and rebuild the Paris landmark eight months after a devastating fire.
The cathedral’s press office said midnight mass would still be celebrated on Christmas Eve by rector Patrick Chauvet but it would be held at the nearby church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois.
Continue reading...Court told of psychological abuse of staff as bosses focused on cost savings and job cuts
Former executives at France Télécom have been given prison sentences and fines after being found guilty of “institutional harassment” and creating a culture of routine workplace bullying that sparked a number of suicides at the company.
The landmark ruling is likely to send shockwaves through the French business world. It is the first time managers have been held criminally responsible for implementing a general strategy of bullying even if they had not dealt directly with the staff involved.
Continue reading...As prelude to day of action, power to thousands of homes deliberately cut by workers
Police fired teargas and charged at demonstrators in central Paris as hundreds of thousands of protesters across the country staged a show of force against the government’s controversial pension reform plans.
The violence erupted at Place de la Nation, one of Paris’s biggest squares, as riot police attempted to disperse protesters. Police said they had charged after coming under a hail of paving stones and missiles. There were 27 arrests by late afternoon.
Continue reading...Ex-police officer alleged to be ‘butcher’ of dictatorship held over student’s disappearance
An Argentinian ex-police officer suspected of links with the murder of hundreds of people during the country’s “dirty war” has been extradited by France to Buenos Aires to face trial over the disappearance of a student.
Mario Sandoval, 66, was arrested on Wednesday at his home near Paris after French authorities gave the final go-ahead for his extradition, ending an eight-year legal battle.
Continue reading...Medics say budget cuts have pushed health system to brink of collapse and put lives at risk
More than 600 French hospital doctors have threatened to resign if the government does not increase health funding, as striking medics prepare to take to the streets this week across the country.
The doctors warn that budget cuts, bed closures and staff shortages are bringing France’s health system to the brink of collapse and putting patients’ lives at risk.
Continue reading...From her landmark early films with Jean-Luc Godard to later work such as The Nun, Karina’s beauty and charisma shone out
It was Anna Karina’s fate, or curse, to be perpetually described as an “icon” or a “muse”: a devastatingly beautiful figurehead and inspiration-figure to all those male directors doing the creating or critics doing the rhapsodising – one male director-cineaste in particular. She certainly was every bit as beautiful as everyone ceaselessly said, but it was her easy charm, intelligence and grace which made that beauty visible and made it exist. It was the kind of acting talent that made her whole style and address to the camera look easy, or not like acting: the kind of thing that bad or inexperienced actors – or very good male stars – foreground as an effortfully meaningful performance. And she had parallel careers as singer, producer, director and novelist.
Related: Anna Karina, French new wave icon – a life in pictures
Continue reading...Train and metro strikes enter fourth day as prime minister vows to implement changes
The French government said it would press ahead with its planned pension changes but said the proposed new system that has sparked nationwide strikes would be introduced gradually and public concerns would be addressed.
Transport systems were paralysed for a fourth day on Sunday as unions at the state railway SNCF and Paris public transport system RATP extended their strike against the changes.
Continue reading...Transport stoppages to run into weekend amid protests against planned pension changes
France is facing a second day of travel chaos and school closures after unions said there would be no let-up in nationwide strikes against Emmanuel Macron’s proposed changes to the pensions system.
The far-reaching strike, which brought more than 800,000 people on to the streets on Thursday, is seen as the greatest test yet for the centrist president, who has promised to deliver the biggest “transformation” of the French social model and welfare system since the immediate post-war era.
Continue reading...Rail workers, air-traffic controllers, teachers and public sector staff staged walkouts and took to the streets across France to protest against proposed changes to the pension system.
The strike is the biggest in Emmanuel Macron's presidency and 90% of regional trains were cancelled on 5 December
Continue reading...Transport workers bring country to standstill amid anger over pension changes
More than 800,000 people have marched in cities across France as railway workers, teachers and hospital staff held one of the biggest public sector strikes in decades against Emmanuel Macron’s plans to overhaul the pension system.
A nationwide transport strike brought much of France to a standstill and was expected to continue for the next few days as unions dug in, saying the president’s pension changes would force millions of people to work longer or receive lower payments.
Continue reading...Study expands on archive finds revealed in 2011, and suggests that the French state may have abetted the 1960 car crash that killed him
Sixty years after the French Nobel laureate Albert Camus died in a car crash at the age of 46, a new book is arguing that he was assassinated by KGB spies in retaliation for his anti-Soviet rhetoric.
Italian author Giovanni Catelli first aired his theory in 2011, writing in the newspaper Corriere della Sera that he had discovered remarks in the diary of the celebrated Czech poet and translator Jan Zábrana that suggested Camus’s death had not been an accident. Now Catelli has expanded on his research in a book titled The Death of Camus.
Continue reading...Squabbling, a spreading focus and Trump raise doubts about the effectiveness of the alliance
Seventy years after Nato was founded to protect western Europe from Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, the military alliance returned this week to its first home in London to discuss an increasingly sprawling set of goals while bickering leaders competed to see who could offer the most contentious soundbite.
Normally this is an arena that would be dominated by Donald Trump, although this time he was somewhat upstaged by Emmanuel Macron, whose pre-summit declaration that the organisation had become “brain dead” obliged Trump to describe his French counterpart’s comments as “very, very nasty”.
Continue reading...The Unbearable Lightness of Being’s author has lived in France since fleeing communism in 1975, and has previously questioned ‘the notion of home’
After more than 40 years in exile, Milan Kundera, the Czech-born author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has been given back the citizenship of his homeland.
Petr Drulák, the Czech Republic’s ambassador to France, told public television he visited the 90-year-old author in his Paris apartment last Thursday to hand deliver his citizenship certificate.
Continue reading...US president calls French leader’s comments ‘nasty’ and says Paris could leave alliance
Donald Trump has lashed out at Emmanuel Macron on the first morning of a two-day Nato meeting, saying the French president’s description of Nato as brain dead was insulting and a “very, very nasty statement”.
At a news conference alongside the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, the US president also accused Macron of trying to break away from Nato, as well as running a failing economy – while discarding the fact he himself has described Nato as obsolete on previous occasions.
Continue reading...Three emergency workers were killed in a helicopter crash near Marseille while on a rescue mission in southern France where floods have left two people dead, officials have said. The Var and the neighbouring Alpes-Maritimes region were on red alert for floods that disrupted train services and cut the A8 motorway for four hours on Sunday evening.
Continue reading...Three emergency workers killed in Marseille while two men died in the French Riviera
Three emergency workers were killed in a helicopter crash near Marseille while on a rescue mission in southern France where floods have left two dead, officials have said.
Their EC145 helicopter lost radio and radar contact while on a rescue and reconnaissance flight in the Var region on Sunday night.
Continue reading...French president says comments ‘a necessary wake-up call’ and criticises Turkey
Emmanuel Macron has said his claim this month that Nato was “brain-dead” was a necessary wake-up call before a summit in London next week at which he will urge members of the alliance to take a greater interest in its southern flank, including the fight against terrorism in the Sahel.
The French president defended his comments in Paris alongside the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, who had previously warned Macron not to expect that a European defence formation could replace the Nato transatlantic structure.
Continue reading...Complex military operations in desert north of Mali have been described as game of cat and mouse
Thirteen French troops were killed in a midair collision between two helicopters in Mali on Monday night as they fought Islamic militants in the west African country.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, expressed his “deep sadness” at the crash, stressing the “courage of the French soldiers” in what he called the “hard fight against terrorism” in west Africa’s Sahel region. It was the biggest loss of French troops in a single day since an attack in Beirut 36 years ago when 58 soldiers died.
Continue reading...Nicolas Bardy says decision by France’s highest court is ‘stupidity pushed to its limit’
A French farmer has been ordered to pay €8,000 (£6,835) after neighbours complained about the smell from his herd of cows, bringing to an end a 10-year legal battle.
Nicolas Bardy, whose family have farmed cattle at Lacapelle-Viescamp in the Cantal, in south-central France, for six generations, was accused of stocking bales of hay too close to his retired neighbours’ home, causing “strong irritating odours”.
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