Peak of French mountain now 4,807 metres high and fluctuates year by year due to changes in Alpine climate
Europe’s highest peak shrank by more than a metre last year, data has shown.
Mont Blanc in France now stands 4,807.47 metres above sea level, a team of surveyors from the Haute-Savoie regional department said on Wednesday, putting “the roof of Europe” 1.29 metres lower than in 2025.
Continue reading...Beneath a wave of school protests in France lies a more existential worry: the future prospects of an entire generation
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Say what you will about France’s high schools, they still produce world-class slogan writers. Here’s a brief selection spotted during three weeks of blockades and marches over chronic teacher shortages, overcrowded classes and crumbling buildings:
“Pas d’avenir, pas de calme” (No future, no calm). “Diplômés aujourd’hui, précaires demain” (Graduates today, insecure tomorrow). “Vous détruisez notre futur, on bloque votre présent” (You destroy our future, we block your present).
Continue reading...Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joins teenagers calling for investment to fix teacher shortages and crumbling schools
More than 160,000 schoolchildren, students and trade unionists have marched in cities across France as protests over high school education continued into a third week and many demonstrators denounced policing tactics.
Riot police fired teargas at the end of Tuesday’s marches in Nantes and near the Montparnasse area of Paris, but most of the demonstrations over teacher shortages, overcrowded classes and crumbling school buildings held in cities including Lyon, Lille and Marseille were peaceful.
Continue reading...Hundreds of Intermarché shops and Coopérative U outlets in France hit, with fears Dutch chains also affected
Hackers have forced the temperature of many French supermarket fridges up to 50C overnight, in an “unprecedented” cyber-attack affecting several hundred stores across the country, with fires and food losses reported.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Monday the large-scale attack was “affecting connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France”. Reported damage included “food losses and fires”, it added.
Continue reading...As ‘one in, one out’ scheme ends, refugees still want to cross the Channel despite French police aggression and hostile welcomes
The smuggler works quickly. Using a small shovel, he digs up a dinghy buried in a sand dune on a beach not far from Boulogne-sur-Mer, assembles it and affixes a motor in record time.
“I never saw anyone work like this,” says Amad, from Iraq, one of a group of about 30 asylum seekers waiting to cross the Channel. “The UK government wants to stop the smugglers, but they are smart. They have plan A, plan B and plan C, so there is always a way for them to get people across this sea. For as long as asylum seekers will pay them, there is too much money involved for them to give up.”
Continue reading...Schools blockaded again across country as teenagers and teachers demand more investment and ‘concrete measures’ to improve conditions
High school students have again blockaded schools and marched through cities across France, promising to continue their campaign despite government pledges to address the grievances underlying 10 days of protests that have left hundreds injured.
Large crowds took to the streets on Thursday for mainly peaceful demonstrations in cities including Lille, Rennes, Nantes, Lyon, Toulon and Marseille, while in Paris a large procession marched through the city centre to the Place de la Bastille.
Continue reading...Finance minister, Roland Lescure, welcomes Burnham’s pledge to explore closer ties with bloc
The French finance minister has invited the UK to “come all the way back” to the European Union after Andy Burnham raised the prospect of a new referendum to reverse Brexit.
Roland Lescure was speaking after the prime minister used his Labour conference speech to pledge that the government would explore closer ties with the bloc at a summit later this year.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: A youth-led movement is protesting crumbling school buildings and teacher shortages while turning adult focus onto wider educational inequalities
Good morning. In my experience, at any protest, the most memorable and encapsulating slogans are always the ones written by hand with marker pen on cardboard placards.
“School is a right, not a privilege,” read one such sign held aloft by a student in Paris, where huge youth protests over the state of high school education have brought tens of thousands of young people and adults on to the streets, with further strikes planned today.
UK politics | Kemi Badenoch has announced that the Conservatives would abolish inheritance tax on family homes if elected, prompting criticism that she is prioritising cutting taxes for the rich.
Education | Labour’s flagship changes to special education in England are at risk of unravelling because parents are rushing to secure support for their children before the system changes, new analysis has found.
Spain | María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old whose eviction set off a nationwide wave of protests against Spain’s housing crisis, has died.
Science | A type of gene therapy based on Nobel prize-winning science is safe and can partly restore sight in blind people, researchers have revealed.
Epstein | British billionaire Sir James Goldsmith warned that Jeffrey Epstein was a “sexual deviant” decades before the FBI closed in on the abuser, a Guardian investigation has found.
Continue reading...Minister says use of grenades has been stopped after a student lost a hand as protests across France continue
France’s interior minister has suspended the use of stun grenades by police at high school demonstrations but rejected mounting accusations of police brutality during two weeks of protests marred by often violent clashes that have injured hundreds.
Laurent Nuñez told RTL radio on Wednesday that he had ordered a temporary halt on the use of the grenades “in the context of the high school students’ movement” after a 15-year-old boy lost a hand during a protest in Lens, northern France, on Monday.
Continue reading...Thousands expected to join marches of support on Tuesday across the country amid growing concerns over police response
France is bracing for a national day of protests and high-school blockades as a youth protest movement gathers pace amid a growing debate over the scale of the police response.
In one incident, a 15-year-old protesting against what demonstrators said were France’s dilapidated and understaffed schools had his hand blown off outside a high school in the northern town of Lens, said François-Xavier Lauch, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais.
Continue reading...Demonstrations over housing rights and crumbling schools are a sign the younger generation is withdrawing political consent
In Spain, tens of thousands of people in 50 cities have taken to the streets amid mounting fury over the country’s housing crisis, their feelings made plain on a banner at the burgeoning protest camp in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol plaza: “You can speculate on watches, jewels, crypto-bros and Ferraris. But not on our fucking homes.”
In France, as high school pupils clash with police in often violent protests over long hours, missing teachers, crumbling classrooms and an opaque university admissions system, the angry slogans include: “More hours in class than for sleep”, “Fund study, not repression” and “I’d like to be worrying about my maths exam, not my future”.
Continue reading...Education minister says 24 schools have been burnt or ransacked and 78 staff members injured since student unrest began last month
More than 400 schools in France will be closed or partly closed on Monday as authorities brace for another week of student protests.
Lessons will be totally or partly suspended in 400 to 500 schools because security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, the education minister, Édouard Geffray, said on Sunday.
Continue reading...Government struggling to deal with worst crisis in months after being taken by surprise by massive demonstrations
As dozens of school pupils sat on top of a pile of wheelie bins blocking a high school entrance in north-eastern Paris, Sophia, 17, was on the frontline of the barricade, when she would normally have been attending Spanish class.
“We hope this grows into a massive youth protest movement,” said the final year baccalaureate student at Paris’s Lycée Voltaire, who did not want her real name published. She was on her second day of blocking the school entrance along with hundreds of others, ensuring all lessons were cancelled. “We just want to be listened to by the government. We’d rather stand here doing this than have to learn in poor conditions. It’s the only way to make ourselves heard.”
Continue reading...About 900 demonstrations, blockades and related incidents under way outside high schools around the country
A fast-growing protest by high-school students over long hours, teacher shortages and decaying facilities has escalated into “urban violence”, the French government has warned, as it said many schools would switch to online classes to protect teachers and pupils.
The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, called a crisis cabinet meeting on Thursday and told ministers to cancel travel plans to deal with the demonstrations, which erupted in the Paris region last week but have snowballed across the country.
Continue reading...Designer showcases wool alternatives and ocean-inspired clothes and says ‘kindness requires real work’
Stella McCartney has been talking about animal rights at fashion week for 30 years. She is usually a lone voice, but the issue is back in the headlines this season. Outcry over the physical restraining of a Peta protester at a catwalk show by Steven Kolb, the president of New York fashion week’s governing body, has put cruelty in wool production – previously considered niche compared to the hot button topic of fur – on the news agenda.
“There is no wool on the runway this season, and I’m proud of that,” McCartney said after her show. She has been working on wool alternatives, including Brewed Protein, a fermented alternative to cashmere and wool developed in collaboration with the Japanese biotech firm Spiber, which was first used in her collections a year ago.
Continue reading...French president, speaking alongside Spanish counterpart Pedro Sánchez, says EU bid would be good news for UK and Europeans
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has reacted warmly to Andy Burnham’s suggestion that the UK could rejoin the EU.
“Welcome back,” the French leader said in English with a smile at a news conference in Madrid on Wednesday. Macron continued in French: “If the British want to come back and if the prime minister is moving in that direction, I think that is very good news, both for his country and for the Europeans.”
Continue reading...Seven others found guilty of lesser charges in connection to incident in 2021 when inflatable dinghy sank killing at least 27 people with four more still missing
A Paris court has jailed six men for manslaughter over the deaths of at least 27 people in the worst mass drowning on record from a small-boat crossing in the Channel.
Seven other men were found guilty of lesser smuggling charges with varying degrees of seriousness, including facilitating illegal immigration as part of an organised gang and criminal conspiracy.
Continue reading...Deal aimed at deterring small boat arrivals set to end as talks stall over French demand for EU-wide scheme
The UK government’s “one in one out” deal with France, which was supposed to help deter small boat arrivals, is expected to expire on Thursday, government sources have said.
It is understood that negotiations have stalled over French demands for a Europe-wide deal instead, and a reluctance to scale up the numbers of people exchanged between the two countries.
Continue reading...More than 200 arrested while teachers join protest over class sizes, exhausting timetables and staff shortages
French teenagers blockading their schools in protest at class sizes, teacher shortages and long timetables have clashed with police, as politicians traded verbal blows over how to respond.
Demonstrations that began in Paris last week have escalated and spread across France, with the authorities reporting the arrests of 164 people on Monday.
Continue reading...President of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party faces calls to resign over comments he allegedly wrote as a teenager
Jordan Bardella, the head of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN), has claimed a “total war” is being waged against his party as he faces a political storm after the publication of antisemitic comments he allegedly wrote as a young party member.
Bardella, who is facing calls from political opponents to resign, said on Tuesday that the report by the investigative website Mediapart was false. To a standing ovation from his party’s lawmakers and senators at a meeting in parliament, he said the report was an attempt to damage his party as Le Pen tops the polls before the 2027 presidential election.
Continue reading...