Category Archives: France

Greens surge as parties make strongest ever showing across Europe

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Party could hold balance of power in EU parliament with projected 71 MEPs

Green parties have swept to their strongest ever showing in European elections, boosting their tally of MEPs to a projected 71 compared with 52 last time and giving themselves every chance of becoming kingmakers in a newly fragmented parliament.

“Thank you so much for your trust in us Greens,” a delighted Ska Keller, one of the European Greens’ two lead candidates for the post of European commission president, told a press conference in Brussels.

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‘They’re going to bonfire me’: French trial for Briton over film-maker’s death

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Death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in west Cork in 1996 and protracted, bungled investigation has gripped Ireland

After 23 years of trying to clear his name, Ian Bailey is bracing for the appellation he has always dreaded: convicted murderer.

A court in Paris is due to try the English former journalist this week for the 1996 murder of the French film-maker Sophie Toscan du Plantier in west Cork, a bucolic Atlantic region known as the Irish riviera.

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Iraq sentences three French citizens to death for joining Isis

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Human rights groups have criticised the country’s trials of fighters captured in Syria

An Iraqi court has sentenced three French citizens to death after they were found guilty of joining Islamic State, a court official said.

Captured in Syria by a US-backed force fighting the jihadists, they are the first French Isis members to receive death sentences in Iraq, where they were transferred for trial.

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Final votes cast as EU awaits parliamentary election results

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France, Germany, Italy and others go to polls on Sunday, with gains expected for nationalist parties

The western world’s largest democratic exercise is nearing its finale as tens of millions of EU citizens in 21 countries go to the polls on Sunday, the last of four days of voting in European parliament elections that will shape the bloc’s future.

Polls suggest the vote will produce a more fragmented parliament than ever before, with the two centre-right and centre-left groups that have dominated Europe’s politics forecast to lose their joint majority for the first time, and nationalist and populist forces to make gains.

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Refugee jailed for smuggling injured niece into UK reunited with family

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Home Office releases Najat Ibrahim Ismail, an Iraqi Kurd who faced deportation three times

A man who brought his baby niece to the UK from a French refugee camp after she sustained serious burns has been released from detention and reunited with his family.

Najat Ibrahim Ismail, 32, an Iraqi Kurd, faced three attempts by the Home Office to put him on a plane to Iraq in recent weeks. He is married to a British woman, Emma Ismail, and has three young British children, including a 10-year-old son who has autism.

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Police seek suspect after package bomb explosion in France

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Twelve people injured in incident described by Emmanuel Macron as an attack

Police in France were hunting a suspect following a blast in a pedestrian street in the heart of Lyon that wounded more than a dozen people just two days before the country’s fiercely contested European parliament elections.

The president, Emmanuel Macron, called Friday’s explosion, apparently from a package packed with shrapnel and placed in the street, an “attack” and sent his interior minister, Christophe Castaner, to Lyon.

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Lyon bombing described by Emmanuel Macron as an ‘attack’ – video

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French police have evacuated a pedestrian street in the heart of Lyon after more than a dozen people were wounded in a suspected package bomb blast. President Emmanuel Macron, who was beginning a broadcast address as news of the explosion broke, described the incident as an "attack" with no fatalities

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Woman, 102, suspected of killing care home neighbour, 92

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The suspect, who told staff she had ‘killed someone’, has been placed in psychiatric care after the incident in France

A woman aged 102 has been placed in psychiatric care in north-eastern France after she was suspected of murdering her 92-year-old neighbour in a care home, prosecutors said.

The victim was found dead on Saturday night in her room at the care home in the town of Chezy-sur-Marne. Her face was swollen.

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From bleak to bustling: how one French town beat the high street blues

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Mulhouse has turned around its image and now boasts more shops opening than closing, thanks to smart planning, investment and community efforts

On a lane in what was once considered eastern France’s grimmest town, a street artist is up a ladder finishing a mural, the independent bookshop has a queue at the till, the organic cooperative is full of customers and Séverine Liebold’s arty independent tea shop is doing a brisk trade.

When Liebold opened Tilvist in Mulhouse three years ago, in a space that had been vacant for years, friends tried to persuade her against it. “They said: ‘Not Mulhouse, look elsewhere,’” she recalls. “But I stuck with my instinct, and I was right.”

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European companies can’t compete against global giants

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Finance ministers say Europe is increasingly dependent on Chinese and US technology

It boasts the world’s second biggest economy, a huge consumer market of about 500 million people and prodigious pools of talent and capital, not to mention two of the world’s most important financial centres.

But Europe is struggling to match its great rivals, the US and China, in creating the kind of global firms that increasingly dominate the 21st-century marketplace.

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Fugitive ex-Eta leader Josu Ternera arrested in France

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Basque terrorist group’s former political chief tracked down after 16 years on the run

A former leader of the Basque terrorist group Eta has been arrested in France after spending more than 16 years on the run, the Spanish government said on Thursday.

Jose Antonio Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea, better known as Josu Ternera, was once Eta’s political chief.

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Leaders and tech firms pledge to tackle extremist violence online

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Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron met companies and G7 nations in Paris for Christchurch Call summit

World leaders and heads of global technology companies have pledged at a Paris summit to tackle terrorist and extremist violence online in what they described as an “unprecedented agreement”.

Wednesday’s event, organised two months to the day since the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, drew up a “plan of action” to be adopted by countries and companies to prevent extreme material going viral on the internet.

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Marine Le Pen makes ‘OK’ hand gesture used by white supremacists

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France’s far-right National Rally leader asks ally to remove controversial selfie from Facebook

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally, has asked an Estonian ally to remove a selfie from Facebook in which the pair made a controversial “OK” hand gesture, which has been linked to white-power messaging.

Le Pen was in Tallinn to meet MPs from Estonia’s far-right EKRE party, which recently became part of the country’s coalition government, as part of cross-continent negotiations on setting up a new bloc of nationalist and far-right forces after European elections next week.

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Cannes festival in row after director and baby blocked from Palais entry

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British film-maker claims she was denied access to Marché du Film, then told to pay fee for baby and wait two days for it to be processed

The Cannes film festival has been criticised for its treatment of mothers and babies after a female director claimed she and her child were prevented from entering the festival site.

British director Greta Bellamacina, whose film Hurt By Paradise is screening in the market section of the festival, said the festival had displayed an “outrageous” attitude after she attempted to enter the festival with her four-month son.

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Rooftop pool? Notre Dame proposals defy traditionalists

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Designs from architects around world also suggest glass, crystal and metal spires

An architecture firm has proposed replacing the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral with a swimming pool, as France prepares to launch an international competition to restore the fire-damaged gothic edifice to its former glory.

After the roof and spire of Notre Dame were damaged in a fire watched worldwide in April, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was open to a “contemporary gesture” in rebuilding it “more beautiful than before”, and the prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, called for a new spire “adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era”.

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Separatists aim for majority as New Caledonia votes

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Ballot comes six months after closer-than-expected referendum raised questions over French control of islands

Voters in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia cast ballots for their local Congress on Sunday, with separatists hoping to win a majority.

The ballot comes six months after a closer-than-expected referendum raised questions over France’s control of the strategic islands, which sit on a quarter of the world’s known supplies of nickel, a vital electronics component.

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Paris police say no danger of toxic inhalation from air near Notre Dame

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High lead levels after cathedral fire have led to concerns from environmental groups

Paris authorities have warned of very high lead levels on the ground immediately surrounding the fire-damaged Notre Dame cathedral but insisted there was no danger from breathing the air, after environmental groups likened the site to “toxic waste”.

The latter are preparing to step up pressure this week over the possible pollution danger from toxic metal particles from the cathedral fire. Campaign groups will hold a press conference on Friday to warn of their concerns about the danger from the combustion of lead in last month’s blaze which destroyed the Gothic cathedral’s roof, spreading lead-laden dust.

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Teknival: 30 suffer hypothermia after snow hits French music festival

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Red Cross steps in after temperatures drop below zero at unauthorised electronic music festival

About 30 people have been treated for hypothermia at an outdoor techno music festival in France after unexpected snowfall left many sheltering under survival blankets distributed by the Red Cross.

About 10,000 people attended the unauthorised Teknival 2019 festival in the central Creuse region at the weekend, where temperatures dropped to -3C over Saturday night.

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Notre Dame: time to call in the French builders with medieval skills

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Artisans creating a ‘13th-century’ castle in Burgundy might well be the ideal team to restore the cathedral

In a clearing in a forest in northern Burgundy, the stonemasons and carpenters of Guédelon are awaiting a call.

If anyone can rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral as it was – if that is what is required – they can.

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