Gabriel Fortin, 48, is alleged to have killed two HR directors and a jobs centre worker and wounded a fourth person in 2021 attacks
An unemployed French engineer has gone on trial accused of shooting dead three women he blamed for his failure to find a job.
Gabriel Fortin, 48, allegedly killed two human resources directors and a jobs centre employee, and attempted to kill another worker, after a string of dismissals.
Continue reading...Suspect Dirk Raats has been officially put under investigation for murder of Solaine Thornton
A man has appeared in court in France charged with shooting dead an 11-year-old British girl who was playing in the garden of her family home.
The suspect, Dirk Raats, 70, originally from Antwerp in Belgium, has been officially put under investigation for the murder of Solaine Thornton and the attempted murder of her parents, Adrian and Rachel Thornton.
Continue reading...Child’s father and mother were also injured in attack while her eight-year-old sister escaped unhurt
An 11-year-old British girl was shot dead as she played on swings in the garden of her family home in a village in western France on Saturday.
The girl’s father and mother were also injured in the attack in the village of Saint-Herbot in Brittany while her eight-year-old sister escaped unhurt.
Continue reading...The stabbing of four toddlers has united inhabitants of the picture-postcard French town but also left them heartbroken and baffled
By the wooden climbing frame in the shape of a pirate ship, Jean-Xavier dismounted from his bike and surveyed the piles of flowers and candles lit for the four children aged between 22 months and three who were seriously injured when a knife attacker stabbed toddlers in this lakeside playground in the French Alps town of Annecy.
“Everyone is asking why,” he said, as his own two-year-old son, who usually liked whizzing down the slides here, sat sucking a dummy and clutching a toy rabbit, strapped safely into his bike seat. “Stabbings happen a lot in France but to actually go after small children in a playground gives a different context – it’s incomprehensible.”
Continue reading...Police detain man after attacks in lakeside playground that left children in critical condition
Four children and two adults have been injured in a knife attack in the picturesque town of Annecy in the French Alps.
The children – one aged 22 months, two aged two years old and one aged three – were in a critical condition from stab wounds, and were transferred to hospitals in the French Alps and across the Swiss border in Geneva on Thursday afternoon.
Continue reading...Briton was one of four children aged between 22 months and three years attacked in Annecy playground
A British child is among four children and two adults who have been injured in the town of Annecy in the French Alps, after a knifeman went on a rampage in a playground, the UK’s foreign secretary has confirmed.
At least two of the children, both aged about three, were reported to be in a critical condition in hospital, while an adult also suffered life-threatening injuries, French national police said.
Continue reading...Roderick Sinclair claims he has faced intimidation and mayor says he has had death threats in row with farmer in Montjoi
A retired British stockbroker claims he has been subjected to a sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation in a row over a bridle path running through his property in an idyllic corner of south-west France.
“It has been hell. In the beginning we all thought it was the traditional sort of spat between neighbours that happens all the time in France,” Roderick Sinclair said of the dispute at his French second home, a stone farmhouse his family have spent thousands renovating in Montjoi, in the Tarn-et-Garonne.
Continue reading...Accused among eight arrested after Jean-Baptiste Trogneux was beaten up outside family’s chocolate shop
Three men have appeared in court in France accused of attacking Brigitte Macron’s great-nephew outside her family’s chocolate shop.
The accused were among eight people arrested after Jean-Baptiste Trogneux, 30, was beaten up while reportedly trying to protect the windows of the store in Amiens in the Somme last month.
Continue reading...From Sweden to the US, the handling of the pandemic has been questioned. In some cases criminal proceedings are under way
Britain’s public Covid-19 inquiry, led by the retired judge Heather Hallett, is far from the first independent commission in the world to begin examining a country’s experience confronting the pandemic.
Their formats, mandates – and their progress – vary widely according to systems and traditions, but their task is essentially the same: to assess preparedness, make a record of decision-making, review government responses and learn lessons for the future.
Continue reading...Many in need of permanent protection remain stuck in ‘prison-like’ camps on Greek islands, leading refugee charity says
Just 271 Afghans were resettled in the EU in 2022, 0.1% of the 270,000 identified as in need of permanent protection, it has emerged.
Leading charity the International Rescue Committee accused EU leaders of “staggering neglect” of Afghan refugees with many remaining trapped in “prison-like” conditions on Greek islands.
Continue reading...In speech in Bratislava, French president will warn of steady erosion of European strategic stability
Emmanuel Macron is to make a diplomatic push to reassure central and eastern European countries that France understands that the continent’s security environment has been permanently changed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Macron has often been viewed with suspicion across eastern Europe, especially in Poland, as someone who sees Russia as ultimately part of Europe’s security architecture and wants to use the war in Ukraine to boost European defence autonomy in a way that loosens Europe’s security ties to the US.
Continue reading...Moving people including asylum seekers to temporary regional centres would free up accommodation
Local politicians and charities in France have expressed concerns about a French government plan to encourage thousands of homeless people and asylum seekers to leave the Paris area before next year’s Olympic Games and move to other regions of the country to free up accommodation in the capital.
The news agency Agence France-Presse reported that since mid-March, the government has asked local prefects to create temporary reception centres in every French region except the north and Corsica, which would free up space in hotels normally used as emergency accommodation centres in and around Paris.
Continue reading...French court upholds sentence against ex-president in corruption case, saying he must serve one-year’s detention at home
A French appeals court has upheld a prison sentence against the former president Nicolas Sarkozy for corruption and influence-peddling – maintaining he should serve one-year’s detention at home with an electronic bracelet.
Sarkozy was originally convicted in 2021 of trying to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated. It was the first time in modern French history that a former president was given a prison sentence for corruption. He had appealed against the verdict.
Continue reading...French first lady condemns what appears to be politically motivated attack in Amiens
The French president’s wife, Brigitte Macron, has denounced an attack on her great-nephew, who was beaten up outside her family’s chocolate shop in an apparent politically motivated assault.
Jean-Baptiste Trogneux was returning to his apartment on Monday evening above the Trogneux chocolate shop that he runs in Amiens in northern France, when he was set upon by anti-government protesters.
Continue reading...Films in contention for this year’s Palme d’Or include Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, while Johnny Depp’s Louis XV kicks off proceedings
Jury president Ruben Östlund struck a defiant note of optimism on the opening day of the 76th Cannes film festival, positioning the event as a stronghold of community in an increasingly atomised world. Cinema, he said, was more relevant and valuable than ever. The challenge is to connect it with a younger, post-pandemic audience that prefers to gorge its entertainment online.
“If you look at today’s world, you see that cinema is unique for the simple reason that it offers a room where we can all watch films together,” he said. “All the other content, we’re accessing it on our devices, in our little bubbles, consuming culture like zombies and not reflecting what we’re looking at. So going to the cinema is almost a political stance. We come together and have a conversation about the world. We find out who we are and where we’re going. That is cinema’s strongest selling point. I think people want that collective experience.”
Continue reading...Former president is accused of seeking millions of euros from Gaddafi to finance his 2007 campaign
French prosecutors have demanded that the former president Nicolas Sarkozy face a new trial over alleged Libyan financing of his 2007 election campaign.
France’s financial crimes prosecutors (PNF) said on Thursday that Sarkozy and 12 others should face trial over accusations they sought millions of euros in financing from the regime of the then Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, for his ultimately victorious campaign.
Continue reading...Philippe Hategekimana, 66, who started new life in France under false identity, is charged with crimes against humanity
A former Rwandan military police officer who fled to France after the 1994 genocide and started a new life under a false identity is going on trial in Paris charged with crimes against humanity.
Philippe Hategekimana, 66, fled to France five years after the genocide, obtaining refugee status under a fake name. He became a university security guard in the city of Rennes and gained French citizenship in 2005.
Continue reading...AFP video coordinator Arman Soldin, 32, who was ‘totally dedicated to his craft’, died in attack near Bakhmut
A French journalist working for Agence France-Presse news agency has been killed in Ukraine in a Russian rocket strike near the battle-torn eastern city of Bakhmut.
Arman Soldin, a 32-year-old video coordinator, died on Monday when a Grad missile landed close to where he was lying. Soldin was with Ukrainian soldiers in the town of Chasiv Yar, six miles (10km) from Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months.
Continue reading...Jean-Luc Mélenchon also criticises French TV coverage while National Rally MP hails ‘magnificent’ ceremony
Almost 9 million people watched King Charles’s coronation live on TV in France, where the pomp and ceremony sickened the radical left while impressing the far right.
As the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who is close to Charles, attended the service at Westminster Abbey, congratulating the monarchy who he said were “friends to France”, the French media’s massive focus on the event – with souvenir front pages and lengthy TV specials across different channels – caused high emotions across the polarised political landscape.
Continue reading...As campaigning hots up around the world once again, eyes have been turning to the country that is taking things further
In the UK, when climate activists want to block a road, they sit down on it. When their fellow activists in France want to do the same, they build a wall across one side, and set the other side on fire.
As Extinction Rebellion drew tens of thousands to their peaceful “Big One” protests in London last month, in the south of France 8,500 environmental protesters occupied the road from Toulouse to the town of Castres.
Continue reading...