Category Archives: France

French sailor, 73, wins round-the-world solo-race without modern instruments

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  • Jean-Luc Van Den Heede spent 212 days alone at sea
  • Golden Globe race involves navigation with sextants and paper maps

A 73-year-old French sailor has won an unusual, around-the-world yacht race after 212 days alone at sea without modern instruments, in what was his first sailing victory.

Jean-Luc Van Den Heede arrived on Tuesday in Les Sables d’Olonne in western France in his 35-foot yacht Matmut, the first boat to finish the 30,000-mile Golden Globe race. Of the 19 sailors who started out last July, only five were still in the race on Tuesday.

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Gunmen snatch prisoner from van outside French court

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Shots fired in latest dramatic escape, with union accusing authorities of naivety

Two armed men attacked a van carrying a prisoner on his way to a French court on Monday, firing at the vehicle and striking a guard before making their getaway in the southern town of Tarascon, officials said.

The escape follows last year’s dramatic helicopter jailbreak by Rédoine Faïd, a notorious gangster, which led to calls for prison services to improve their security and intelligence gathering.

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Parachutists to fill skies over Normandy on 75th anniversary of D-day

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Wartime aircraft will fly in 6 June event commemorating day that turned tide of war

The skies over the UK and Normandy will be filled with wartime Dakota aircraft as hundreds of parachutists take part in a mass airdrop to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings in June.

The plans, unveiled by Imperial War Museums (IWM), are part of a programme on an “unprecedented scale” for the commemoration of the greatest seaborne invasion in history, to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation, on 6 June 1944.

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US asks world to ‘pick a side’ on Venezuela as UK calls for fair elections

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Mike Pompeo urged countries to disconnect from Maduro’s government financially as Britain issued eight-day ultimatum

Britain has issued the embattled Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, a stark ultimatum, warning him it would throw its weight behind the country’s self-declared interim leader unless he called an election within the next eight days – as the US government called on the world to “pick a side” in the crisis.

Echoing calls from Berlin, Paris and Madrid, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, said on Saturday it was clear Maduro was no longer the legitimate leader of the Latin American country after last year’s “deeply flawed” election.

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Thieves drive off with Banksy mural on Bataclan fire door

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Artwork thought to be homage to the 90 people who died in an Islamist attack on Paris venue

A mural by British street artist Banksy on a fire-exit door at Paris’ Bataclan theatre, where Islamist militants killed 90 people three years ago, has been stolen, the venue has said.

The work, one of a series of murals painted last June in the French capital and attributed to Banksy, showed a veiled female figure in a mournful pose.

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Europe ‘coming apart before our eyes’, say 30 top intellectuals

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Group of historians and writers publish manifesto warning against rise of populism

Liberal values in Europe face a challenge “not seen since the 1930s”, leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections.

The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was “coming apart before our eyes”.

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Death of Count of Paris sparks pretend game of thrones in France

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Jean d’Orléans, descendant of Louis XIV’s brother, inherits a place in a theoretical tussle

The pretender to be French king is dead. Long live the other pretenders, all three.

France might have thought it had done with monarchs, first in 1793 when it sent Louis XVI to the guillotine during the French Revolution, and again when it exiled Napoleon III in 1870.

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Emiliano Sala’s sister begs rescuers to restart search for missing footballer

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Romina Sala says she believes he is still alive after plane vanished over Channel Islands

The family of the footballer Emiliano Sala have pleaded for rescuers to continue searching for the player and a pilot after their light aircraft went missing over the Channel Islands.

Sala’s sister, Romina Sala, speaking after the search was called off, said she believed the Argentinian striker and the pilot Dave Ibbotson, from Lincolnshire, were still alive and in the Channel three days after their plane vanished.

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Gilets jaunes name 10 candidates for European elections

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Protest group in France says it wants to ‘transform the anger into a human political project’

The gilets jaunes (yellow vests) have named 10 candidates for the European parliament elections in May and called for more of their fellow demonstrators to put their names forward.

The French protest movement that, until now, has had no official leaders or formal organisation, announced on Wednesday that it would take part in the vote on 26 May after 10 weeks of occasionally violent demonstrations across the country.

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Emiliano Sala: search resumes for lost plane carrying Cardiff player

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Voicemail message revealed as police say chances of finding footballer alive are ‘slim’

The search for the plane carrying the Cardiff City footballer Emiliano Sala that went missing over the English Channel has resumed, amid only “slim” hopes he survived.

The aircraft, carrying Sala and the pilot, disappeared off Alderney in the Channel Islands on Monday night.

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France and Germany renew postwar vows of friendship

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Macron and Merkel sign update to 1963 Élysée treaty in effort to mitigate populist party gains

France and Germany have renewed their vows of postwar friendship, aiming to show that the traditional engine powering the EU project is still strong but drawing fierce criticism from the nationalist and populist parties advancing across the continent.

President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel signed the 16-page update to the 1963 Elysée treaty on Tuesday in the German border city of Aachen, residence of Charlemagne, the “father of Europe” who managed to unite much of western the continent in the ninth century.

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France summons Italian envoy over ‘hostile’ Africa remarks

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Italian deputy PM blames migrant crisis on France’s ‘colonisation’ of Africa

France’s foreign ministry has summoned the Italian ambassador in an escalating row over migrant arrivals in Europe that pits the centrist government of Emmanuel Macron against Italy’s far-right-populist coalition.

Teresa Castaldo was summoned over “hostile” remarks made by the Italian deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio.

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US singer Chris Brown arrested in Paris on suspicion of rape

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Twenty-nine-year-old in custody with two others after woman files complaint

The American singer Chris Brown and two other people were held in custody in Paris after a woman filed a rape complaint.

Brown was detained on Monday on potential charges of aggravated rape and drug infractions, a French judicial official said. Investigators have two days to decide whether to let him go or file preliminary charges.

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Google fined record £44m by French data protection watchdog

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CNIL found that company failed to offer users transparent information on data use

The French data protection watchdog CNIL has fined Google a record €50m (£44m) for failing to provide users with transparent and understandable information on its data use policies.

For the first time, the company was fined using new terms laid out in the pan-European general data protection regulation. The maximum fine for large companies under the new law is 4% of annual turnover, meaning the theoretical maximum fine for Google is almost €4bn.

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Vintage ski posters – in pictures

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A collection of vintage ski and winter sports posters up to a century old – some worth thousands of dollars – is about to be auctioned in New York. The resorts advertised range from Europe’s Alpine jewels to the mountains of Canada, and all offer fun in the outdoors

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Fire at French ski resort of Courchevel kills two

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Pre-dawn blaze injured 22 others and forced evacuation of 60 resort workers

Two people have died and 22 others have been injured after fire swept through a building in the French ski resort of Courchevel.

The fire spread rapidly after breaking out on an upper floor of the building, housing nearly 60 resort workers – many of them foreigners – some time after 4.30am on Sunday, forcing several residents to jump from windows.

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France in shock at gang-rape trial of police from famous BRI unit

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Court hears how Canadian woman was allegedly raped by terrorism officers at 36 Quai des Orfèves

Emily Spanton grew up with police officers – her father had been a high-ranking officer in the Toronto force – so when two French officers she met while drinking in a Paris bar invited her to see their famous headquarters, she agreed.

Spanton was, she says, drunk and shaky on her feet. “I knew I wasn’t in a state to find my hotel. And I thought that going to a police station would sober me up as there would be plenty of lights and people,” the Canadian said.

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