Forty-year-old has cardiac arrest after boat carrying 50 people deflates shortly after leaving France
A 40-year-old man died on Sunday trying to cross the Channel from northern France to the UK.
According to the prefecture in Calais, the man was of Indian heritage and had a cardiac arrest after the boat he was in with about 50 other men, women and children deflated minutes after leaving the French shore.
Continue reading...US and European states urge Tehran not to respond, while Middle Eastern countries condemn Israeli operation
World leaders have called for restraint after the first open Israeli airstrikes on Iran, after Tehran reiterated that it was “entitled and obligated to defend itself”.
The Israeli air force struck about 20 military bases across Iran, including missile and drone manufacturing sites and air defence systems, in the early hours of Saturday.
Continue reading...Dozens of accused deny rape, despite video evidence showing unconscious Gisèle Pelicot snoring loudly
Taking the stand in France’s biggest ever rape trial, Patrice N, 55, an electrician from the southern town of Carpentras, said he was a “jovial” guy and a fun dad who once trained youth football teams and had a “great respect for women”.
He denied the charges of rape, claiming rape had never been his intention. “To my mind, it was a game,” he told the court.
Continue reading...Conference convened by French president raises $800m in humanitarian aid and $200m to strengthen Lebanese army
Emmanuel Macron has warned Benjamin Netanyahu that “civilisation is not best defended by sowing barbarism ourselves”, as a conference convened by the French president in Paris raised $200m (£154m) for Lebanon’s official military and $800m in humanitarian aid for the country.
Macron also vowed to help train 6,000 extra Lebanese official forces, and called for a ceasefire and an end to Israeli attacks on UN peacekeepers, for which he said there was no justification.
Continue reading...Woman who was raped by her husband and allegedly abused by 50 other men says she is driven by ‘determination to change society’
Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman who has become a feminist hero for insisting that the rape trial of her ex-husband and 50 other men should be held in public, has told a court in southern France she was driven by her desire to change society and expose rape culture.
“I am a woman who is totally destroyed, and I don’t know how I’m going to rebuild myself. I’m 72 soon and I’m not sure my life will be long enough to recover from this,” said the former logistics manager, who was repeatedly unknowingly sedated and raped by her then husband, Dominique Pelicot, 71.
Continue reading...Woman at centre of France’s mass rape trial says ‘will and determination to change society’ is what keeps her going in face of evidence heard
Earlier this month the Guardian’s associate editor, Europe, Katherine Butler, spoke to Angelique Chrisafis about why this trial is so unusual and whether it might change French attitides to sexual violence.
Trials like this are normally held behind closed doors, away from the media, but this case is being heard in public because Gisèle Pelicot “wanted to draw attention to the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse,” Angelique said.
Continue reading...French maritime officials say rescue operation was launched after lifejacket spotted in sea off Calais
Three people have died after a boat sank in the Channel, French maritime authorities said.
The French maritime prefecture for the Channel and the North Sea said a further 46 people were rescued after the incident off the coast of Calais on Wednesday morning.
Continue reading...Private equity firm CD&R revealed to be in exclusive talks to buy 50% stake in consumer healthcare arm Opella
The French government has warned a US private equity firm buying the consumer healthcare arm of the drugmaker Sanofi that it faces penalties of more than €100m if it does not keep production and jobs in France.
Sanofi is splitting off Opella, which makes the paracetamol brand Doliprane, the laxative Dulcolax and other over-the-counter medicines and vitamins. However, news of talks with the New York-based Clayton, Dubilier & Rice on 11 October prompted fears about French jobs and the loss of control to a foreign company.
Continue reading...Emmanuel Macron has banned Israeli companies from the Euronaval Salon defence fair in Paris next month
Israel’s foreign minister has announced he is taking “legal and diplomatic measures” against the decision by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to ban Israeli companies from showing their wares at an arms fair in Paris next month.
Israel Katz described the “boycott” as an anti-democratic measure that was “not acceptable, especially between friendly nations”.
Continue reading...Jean-Noël Barrot says Russian victory would ‘push the international order toward chaos’ as he backs negotiations
France’s foreign minister pledged his support for Ukraine’s plan for ending the war with Russia, telling reporters in Kyiv on Saturday that he would work with Ukrainian officials to secure other nations’ backing for the proposal.
Presented by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this week, Kyiv’s “victory plan” hopes to compel Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine through negotiations.
Continue reading...Researchers hope to uncover how people died and how diseases have developed over 1,000 years
Deep beneath the streets of Paris, the dead are having their last word. They are recounting 1,000 years of death in the city: how many are buried in the labyrinth of tunnels that make up Les Catacombes, what killed them and how the diseases that may have led to their demise have developed over the centuries.
In the first ever scientific study of the site, a team of archeologists, anthropologists, biologists and doctors is examining some of the skeletons of an estimated 5-6 million people whose bones were literally dumped down quarry shafts at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th.
Continue reading...World Without End topped bestseller lists but was criticised for embracing nuclear power
In 2019, France’s best known climate expert sat down to work with its most feted graphic novelist. The result? Perhaps the most terrifying comic ever drawn.
Part history, part analysis, part vision for the future, World Without End weaves the story of humanity’s rapacious appetite for fossil fuel energy, how it has made possible the society people take for granted, and its disastrous effects on the climate.
Continue reading...Motorist accused of deliberately targeting 27-year-old Paul Varry in road rage incident
A motorist accused of deliberately running over a cyclist in a Paris road rage incident has been formally put under investigation for murder and remanded in custody.
The 52-year-old SUV driver, named only as Ariel M, is accused of deliberately targeting the cyclist, who was named by the Paris public prosecutor’s office as Paul Varry, 27.
Continue reading...French authorities say 65 people rescued after overloaded boat sinks off coast of Wissant
A baby died after a boat carrying people in the Channel towards Britain capsized off the French coast, local coastguards have said.
Sixty-five people were rescued after the overloaded boat started to sink off the coast of Wissant, in northern France, on Thursday night. Some people were in the water when rescuers arrived. An unconscious baby found in the water was later declared dead.
Continue reading...Hail swath estimated at 120 miles damages crops in western Victoria as winds break windows and rip tiles from roofs
On Wednesday, the Australian state of Victoria was hit by thunderstorms. The town of Casterton was particularly badly affected, receiving 21mm of rain in just 30 minutes, followed by large hailstones.
Vehicles and properties were severely damaged, with reports of broken windows and tiles blown off roofs due to strong winds.
Continue reading...Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd organisation faces extradition to Japan after arrest in Nuuk in July
Paul Watson, the anti-whaling activist detained in Greenland and awaiting possible extradition to Japan, has appealed to Emmanuel Macron for political asylum in France.
Watson was detained in July after a Japanese request to Interpol over his confrontational tactics aimed at disrupting whaling operations in the Antarctic, and could face up to 15 years in prison if he is extradited and convicted.
Continue reading...Organisations assisting deserters hope France’s decision will lead to more soldiers fleeing war
Six Russian soldiers who fled the war in Ukraine have been granted temporary entry permits as they apply for political asylum in France, in what human rights activists describe as the first major case of a group of deserters being admitted to a EU country.
The men arrived in Paris on separate flights over the last few months after initially fleeing Russia to Kazakhstan in 2022 and 2023, according to an organisation that assists soldiers in fleeing, and to accounts from the deserters.
Continue reading...French far-right leader denies embezzling EU funds and compares European parliament to a ‘blob’
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has denied embezzling EU funds in a fake jobs scam when questioned in court for the first time, and used her appearance in the dock to attack the European parliament as a slow-moving, alien “blob”.
Le Pen is one of 27 members and employees of the party then known as the National Front (FN) who are on trial in Paris for allegedly using EU money to finance domestic political activities between 2006 and 2016.
Continue reading...French navy helicopter winched woman from the sea, but she was later pronounced dead
A woman has died after going overboard from a passenger ship off the Channel Islands.
The French coastguard said it received a distress message saying a woman in her 20s had gone overboard north of Les Casquets rocks, west of Alderney, shortly after midnight on Saturday. The woman went overboard from the Maltese-flagged cruise ship MSC Virtuosa.
Continue reading...Flooding is separate from typical US home insurance and many homeowners are not adequately covered
As millions of US residents begin working to file insurance claims on their homes in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, many could be denied, particularly if their homes were damaged by flooding.
A quirk in the US home insurance market is that flood insurance is separate from typical home insurance, which usually covers wind damage from hurricanes but not flooding. Homeowners must purchase flood insurance separately if they want their homes protected against flooding.
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