Category Archives: France

Under the radar: the Australian intelligence chief in the shadows of the Aukus deal

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Andrew Shearer’s unreported meeting in April with Joe Biden’s top Indo-Pacific adviser may have been the clincher for the Aukus security agreement

It was late April when one of Australia’s top intelligence chiefs arrived in Washington for important talks with key officials in the relatively new Biden administration.

Andrew Shearer, a longtime foreign policy hawk and one of Scott Morrison’s most influential advisers on how Australia should position itself at a time of rising tensions with China, met with Joe Biden’s top Indo-Pacific adviser, Kurt Campbell, in the building next to the White House on 30 April.

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UK’s neighbours criticise Covid policies as cases begin to surge across EU

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Several European nations have questioned British response but there are growing signs of fresh wave across continent

For the past several weeks, many western European countries have been eyeing Covid case numbers across the Channel with mounting trepidation.

“Why does Britain have more than 40,000 Covid cases a day, and why is it the European country with the most infections?” asked Spain’s ABC, while France’s L’Express criticised “disastrous myopia” in London.

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France hails victory as Facebook agrees to pay newspapers for content

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Social media firm announces deal after long-running battle with national and regional newspapers

France has hailed a victory in its long-running quest for fairer action from tech companies after Facebook reached an agreement with a group of national and regional newspapers to pay for content shared by its users.

Facebook on Thursday announced a licensing agreement with the APIG alliance of French national and regional newspapers, which includes Le Parisien and Ouest-France as well as smaller titles. It said this meant “people on Facebook will be able to continue uploading and sharing news stories freely amongst their communities, whilst also ensuring that the copyright of our publishing partners is protected”.

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Valneva Covid vaccine could be as effective as Oxford jab, study suggests

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Vaccine produced by French company uses inactivated Sars-CoV-2 virus and can be stored in fridge

A coronavirus jab based on traditional vaccine technology might be as effective as the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, data suggests, offering new hope for global vaccination efforts.

Vaccines currently approved for use in the UK deliver instructions for producing the coronavirus “spike” protein to cells in order, which triggers an immune response. However, the jab produced by the French pharmaceutical company Valneva involves delivering the whole – but inactivated – Sars-CoV-2 virus.

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US urges UK to rebuild relations with Paris after submarine contract row

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Exclusive: diplomatic effort by US following Australia cancelling $66bn deal with France not matched by London

The US has urged Britain to follow its example and try to repair its relations with Paris in the wake of the row over France’s loss of its submarine contract with Australia.

Australia pulled out of the $66bn (£48bn) contract for 12 diesel electric-powered submarines, signed in 2016, to opt instead for nuclear-powered submarines to be developed with America and the UK. The secretive and sudden cancellation of the contract has created a crisis of trust between Paris on the one hand and London, Canberra and Washington on the other.

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Macron: police violence at 1961 Algerian protest ‘unforgivable’

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French president attends memorial for those killed and lays flowers at bridge over the Seine

Emmanuel Macron has described a bloody police operation against Algerian pro-independence demonstrators 60 years ago that led to many deaths as an “unforgivable” crime.

Attending a memorial for those killed, Macron laid flowers at a bridge over the River Seine which marked a starting point for the protests in October 1961 that led to one of the darkest chapters of French postwar history.

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French villagers bid to stop Tory donor Aquind laying cable under Channel

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Energy firm and director Alexander Temerko have given £1.1m between them to Conservatives

French mayors and residents along the Normandy coast are campaigning to block a project for a cross-Channel electricity cable backed by a Ukrainian-born businessman who has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservative party.

Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s business secretary, is due to decide this week on whether to give the go-ahead to a £1.2bn project for the 148-mile cable between Normandy and Hampshire. The firm says the link, which will run through Portsmouth, could supply up to 5% of Britain’s electricity needs.

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Macron and the ‘French Trump’ trap Gaullism’s heirs in a political vice

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With just months to go before presidential polls, the centre-right Les Républicains, under pressure from both flanks, are scrambling for a suitable candidate

Six months before a presidential election and France’s mainstream right finds itself squeezed – between the hammer and the anvil as they say here – without a candidate and facing an existential threat from either side.

On one flank are the far-right Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, a polarising television pundit who wants to talk about immigration, identity and Islam – the three i’s – and ban “non-French” names such as Mohamed.

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Why are Britons so much more relaxed about Covid than Europeans?

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UK residents abroad are shocked at the lack of mask wearing back home, and point fingers at the government’s blase approach

Compared with some other countries, along with high numbers of Covid cases and deaths, the UK has relatively relaxed Covid restrictions, with no mandatory vaccine passports, no social distancing measures, and no mask mandate in England.

Four people from the UK and in Europe share their views on the country’s approach to Covid restrictions compared with others they are visiting or living in.

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Hope and fear in EU as hardliner tipped to be German finance minister

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Prospect of the FDP’s Christian Lindner taking charge has ‘half of Europe quaking in its boots’

Germany’s biggest neighbours are watching the formation of the country’s new government with a mixture of hope and fear, amid concerns that a fiscal hardliner hotly tipped to become the next finance minister could drag the continent back to the frosty standoffs of the eurozone crisis.

The Social Democratic party (SPD), the German Greens and the Free Democratic party (FDP) were expected to inch further towards a “traffic light” power-sharing deal on Friday, with formal coalition talks likely to start next week.

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Australian Chloë McCardel sets world record for most swims across the English Channel – video

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Chloë McCardel finally achieved her dream of crossing the English Channel more times than anyone else. The 36-year-old Australian completed her 44th crossing a little after 2pm BST, eclipsing the previous record held by British swimmer Alison Streeter. ‘I’m buzzing right now, I feel like I could go again and swim the channel again tomorrow, although that's not a very good idea’, she said. After starting in the dead of night at Shakespeare Beach at Dover, she touched land at Wissant Beach on the French side, before returning to her support boat to celebrate

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Covid rates lower in western Europe than parts of central and eastern Europe

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Slower vaccination rates in east lead to dramatic surge in cases, while UK remains outlier in west as cases rise despite vaccinations

Higher vaccination rates are translating to lower Covid infection and death rates in western Europe than in parts of central and eastern Europe, the latest data suggests – except in the UK, where case numbers are surging.

Figures from Our World In Data indicate a clear correlation between the percentage of people fully vaccinated and new daily cases and fatalities, with health systems in some under-inoculated central and eastern EU states under acute strain.

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French study of over 22m people finds vaccines cut severe Covid risk by 90%

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Largest study of its kind also finds vaccines appear to protect against worst effects of Delta variant

Vaccination reduces the risk of dying or being hospitalised with Covid-19 by 90%, a French study of 22.6 million people over the age of 50 has found.

The research published on Monday also found that vaccines appear to protect against the worst effects of the most prevalent virus strain, the Delta variant.

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Former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr dies aged 88

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First president after 1979 Islamic revolution clashed with clerics and fled to exile in France a year later

Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who became Iran’s first president after the 1979 Islamic revolution before fleeing into exile in France, died on Saturday aged 88.

He died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris following a long illness, his wife and children said on Bani-Sadr’s official website.

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French far right’s new face: the meteoric rise of Éric Zemmour

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The controversial TV pundit recently overtook Marine Le Pen in presidential election opinion polls

He has been convicted for inciting racial hatred, attacked by historians for claiming the Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Pétain saved French Jews rather than aiding their deportation to death camps, and was this week described by the French justice minister as a dangerous racist and Holocaust denier.

But Éric Zemmour, a far-right French TV pundit, is rising so fast in opinion polls for president that one survey this week found he could make the final round of the April election and take 45% of the vote against the centrist Emmanuel Macron.

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Unseen Van Gogh sketches that rework scorned masterpiece to go on display

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Preparatory work for ‘redoing’ of The Potato Eaters – savaged in his lifetime – to feature in exhibition

A collection of Vincent van Gogh’s preparatory drawings sketched ahead of a planned “redoing” of The Potato Eaters, a masterpiece brutally slated by buyers, friends and family at the time of its painting, are being exhibited for what is believed to be first time.

The Dutch artist considered his depiction of a peasant family from the village of Nuenen in Brabant eating a meal of potatoes as one of only four of his works that could be regarded as important, alongside The Bedroom, Sunflowers and Augustine Roulin (La berceuse).

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France threatens to cut UK and Jersey energy supply in fishing row

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French government pushing EU to take stronger stance in dispute over access to Channel waters

The EU could hit Britain and Jersey’s energy supply over the UK’s failure to provide sufficient fishing licences to French fishers, France’s EU affairs minister has said.

Clément Beaune, who is a close ally of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said action would be decided on within days and discussions were already in motion.

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Estimated 216,000 children abused by French Catholic priests, report finds

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Abuses committed by priests as well as non-religious people, says independent commission

An investigation into sexual abuse in the French Catholic church has found that an estimated 216,000 children were victims of abuse by clergy since 1950.

The revelations in France are the latest to rock the Roman Catholic church after a series of sexual abuse scandals around the world, often involving children, over the past 20 years.

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3,000 paedophiles in French Catholic church since 1950s – inquiry head

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Figure from head of commission investigating sexual abuse comes days before publication of report

The head of an independent commission investigating child sexual abuse in the French Catholic church has said about 3,000 paedophiles have operated inside the institution since 1950.

Days before publication of its report, Jean-Marc Sauvé said the commission’s investigations had uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 paedophile priests or other church members, adding that this was “a minimum estimate”.

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It’s a wrap: Christo’s final art project follows Paris triumph

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As the covers come off the Arc de Triomphe, work begins to realise an ambitious project in the desert and secure the artist’s legacy

Before he died last year the artist Christo had not one but two dreams: to wrap the Arc de Triomphe and to build a massive structure out of oil drums in the desert sands of Abu Dhabi. L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped was completed last month and today visitors to Paris will have one last chance to see the arch swathed in silver blue fabric before it is dismantled tomorrow.

Once he has overseen the monument’s restoration to its original glory in time for Armistice commemorations next month, Christo’s nephew Vladimir Yavachev will turn his attention east to create the last monumental project that – if completed – will be the artist’s only permanent large-scale sculpture and the largest artwork in the world.

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