French minister raises electricity supply as point of leverage in dispute over access to UK waters
The French government could cut off the electricity supply to Jersey in an escalating row over post-Brexit fishing rights, a French minister has suggested.
Responding to questions in the national assembly, Annick Girardin, the minister for maritime affairs, said she was “revolted” by the UK government’s behaviour over its waters and France was ready to retaliate.
Continue reading...French farmer could theoretically face criminal charges for moving 200-year-old marker
The boundary between France and Belgium is believed to have been inadvertently redrawn by a farmer who found the 200-year-old border stone marking the divide in an inconvenient location for his tractor.
The French farmer could theoretically face criminal charges after making Belgium bigger by moving the stone that has marked the border since after the defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo.
Continue reading...René-Claude and Cyril, the two postmen serving Mafate, French Réunion, walk 90 miles of paths to deliver mail to residents on routes that can last days
The Cirque de Mafate, one of three calderas on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, along with Cilaos and Salazie, is a valley more than 1,000 metres deep surrounded by huge cliffs and steep peaks which, for nearly two centuries, have been home to the descendants of the “maroons”, slaves who fled sugar cane plantations.
The community of 700 Mafatais lives here, almost self-sufficiently, amid palm, banana and filao trees. But there are only two ways to get to the cirque: by foot or by helicopter.
Continue reading...He was the inventor of ‘art brut’ who rebelled against his parents, his teachers and then art itself. Yet the impact of his wild provocative paintings, often culled from graffiti, can still be seen today
Which great artist of the 20th century has been most influential on the 21st? Neither Picasso nor Matisse, as they have no heirs. And not Marcel Duchamp, however much we genuflect before his urinal. No, the artist of the last century whose ideas are everywhere today was a wine merchant who took street art and fashioned it into something extraordinary more than 75 years ago.
After four years of Nazi occupation, you’d think Parisians would have been unshockable. But in 1944, the newly liberated city was sorely provoked by the antics of Jean Dubuffet. Even as the last shots were fired, he was creating newspaper collages bearing the fragmentary graffiti messages he saw in the streets: “Emile is gone again”, “Always devoted to your orders”, “URGENT”. In the next couple of years, he unveiled shapeless, childlike paintings that abandoned all pretence at skill.
Continue reading...Police in Paris fire teargas as protesters in trade union-led march smash windows of bank branches
Thousands rallied on Saturday across France and Spain to hold May Day rallies in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic as police scuffled with protesters in Paris and fired teargas.
A police source told AFP that far-left “black bloc” protesters had repeatedly tried to block the trade union-led march in the French capital, with 34 people detained.
Continue reading...Countries across Europe are starting to relax coronavirus restrictions as case numbers fall
Counting on an accelerating vaccination campaign to keep new infections in check, much of continental Europe has announced plans for a gradual exit from lockdown over the coming weeks as case numbers begin to fall. Here is where things stand:
Belgium (at least one vaccine dose administered to 25% of whole population) aims to permit outside dining in restaurants and bars again on 8 May, with a mandatory 10pm closing time and tables limited to groups of four. Non-essential shops and hairdressers reopened on Monday.
Continue reading...Rome had long urged Paris to detain 10 people found guilty of terrorist acts from late 1960s to early 80s
Seven Italian far-left guerrilla fighters, who hid in France for decades after escaping terrorism convictions that left “an open wound” in Italy, have been arrested.
French authorities are also searching for three other Italians convicted on terrorism charges linked to bombings and assassinations between the late 1960s and early 1980s.
Continue reading...The new government led by the son of late president Idriss Déby says it is pursuing rebels into Niger, but capital may still face assault
Chad’s military transitional government has said it will not negotiate with the rebels blamed for killing the country’s president of three decades, raising the possibility that the armed fighters might press ahead with their threats to attack the capital N’djamena.
A spokesman for the rebel group known as the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (Fact) said on Sunday that it was now joining forces with other armed groups who oppose the Mahmat Idriss Déby taking control of the country following the death of his father.
Continue reading...Film about a former resistance fighter travelling to visit the concentration camp where her brother died wins prize at the 93rd Academy Awards
• Watch the Guardian’s Oscar winning film, Colette
Colette, a film released by the Guardian, has won the Oscar for best documentary short at the 93rd Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
Written and directed by Anthony Giacchino, and produced by Alice Doyard, Annie Small and Aaron Matthews, Colette tells the story of 90-year-old former French resistance member Colette Marin-Catherine, who visits the concentration camp where her brother was murdered during the war with a young history student, Lucie Fouble.
Continue reading...Elbaz redefined the party dress, showing how glamour could be sensual rather than overtly sexy
Alber Elbaz will be remembered for his heart. Emotion was at the core of every dress he designed. The signature that ran through every one of his catwalk shows was not a hemline or a logo, but a feeling of joyfulness. His jewel-coloured, goddess-draped dresses made women feel happy and confident – and because they felt happy and confident, they looked beautiful.
Elbaz, who has died from Covid-19 aged 59, was at the centre of the fashion industry for over three decades, riding both its highs and its lows as he transformed the fortunes of the dormant house of Lanvin before being unceremoniously dropped in 2015.
Through three turbulent decades, no one in the industry had a bad word to say about him – quite an achievement in the fickle world of thousand-pound frocks. Warm and funny with a shy, neurotic charm, he was a confidant and therapist to his movie-star clients and his loyal seamstresses alike. When he appeared at the end of a catwalk for his brief bow, looking like a bespectacled teddy bear in a bow tie, the applause was always thunderous. His death has sent shockwaves through the industry, not just for being sudden and unexpected, but because Elbaz was loved.
Continue reading...Decision not to try Kobili Traoré over 2017 killing of Sarah Halimi, 65, has provoked international outrage
Thousands of protesters have rallied in Paris and across France after the killer of a Jewish woman was declared unfit to stand trial because he was judged to have suffered a psychotic episode caused by cannabis use.
Kobili Traoré is accused of beating 65-year-old Lucie Attal – better known as Sarah Halimi – and throwing her from the balcony her Paris apartment in 2017.
Continue reading...Fifteen people have emerged from a cave in south-west France after 40 days underground in an experiment to see how the absence of clocks, daylight and external communications would affect their sense of time
Continue reading...The west backed military solutions across the Sahel. With the death of President Idriss Déby, that strategy is helping to destabilise the region
The death in battle last week of Chad’s unloved dictator, Idriss Déby, has pushed the Sahel up the west’s political and media agenda. The sudden burst of interest is unlikely to last. The global attention span for this desperately poor, unstable and ill-governed region is chronically short. And yet the Sahel is, or soon could be, everyone’s problem.
A vast, arid swath of sub-Saharan Africa that comprises Mali, Niger, Chad, Mauritania and Burkina Faso (the so-called G5 Sahel), plus parts of neighbouring countries, the Sahel is where the world’s toughest challenges collide. The spread of jihadist terrorism, claiming record numbers of lives and posing a possible threat to Europe, is the most closely watched phenomenon.
Continue reading...Anti-terrorism branch leading investigation after incident in which assailant was shot dead
A terrorism investigation has been launched after a French police employee was killed in a knife attack at a police station in Rambouillet, south-west of Paris.
The anti-terrorism branch stepped in to lead the investigation to determine the circumstances of the knife attack by a man unknown to intelligence services.
Continue reading...Front for Change and Concord heads towards capital, N’Djamena, where memorial took place
Rebels were preparing a new offensive towards the capital of Chad on Friday as dignitaries and supporters paid their final respects to Idriss Déby, the veteran ruler of the central African state, who died earlier this week from wounds sustained “on the battlefield”.
The Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) said its forces were about 190 miles (300km) north of N’Djamena, the capital, but would observe a pause in hostilities to allow time for Déby, who was 68 when he died, to be buried.
Continue reading...Portraiture, perspective, impressionism, movement, mythology: cave artists could do the lot. And I have spent the past year on a virtual odyssey of their primordial wonders
I was recently awoken in the night by lions, their eyes glaring in the dark from blunt rectangular faces as they stalked bison through an ancient, arid grassland. As I came to, however, I realised I was not about to be eaten alive. This was simply one of the perils of spending too much time looking at images of cave art on the web.
Cave artists could do it all. The faces of the animals they painted are exquisite portraits, while their bodies are rendered in perfect perspective. But wait – weren’t these supposed to be the great achievements of European art? After all, in his classic study The Story of Art, EH Gombrich tells how western art took off when the ancient Greeks learned how to show movement, that the perspective was discovered in 15th-century Europe, and that the communication of sensation rather than the seen was the gift of the impressionists. Gombrich had probably not seen much cave art. Lascaux, a series of caves in the French Dordogne, was a recent discovery when he published his book in 1950 – and Chauvet, also in France, wouldn’t be found until 1994.
Continue reading...Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus jab rolled out after backing from European Medicines Agency
EU member states are starting to administer Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine after Europe’s drug regulator this week backed the single-dose shot, with several expected to impose age restrictions, as with the AstraZeneca jab.
Spain’s regional health authorities began using the shot on Thursday for people aged 70 to 79, two days after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced a possible link to a rare clotting disorder but stressed the shot’s benefits outweighed the risks.
Continue reading...French trial will be extended from 29 April to include vaccination certificates
France has become the first EU member state to begin testing a digital coronavirus travel certificate as part of a Europe-wide scheme that Brussels hopes will allow people to travel more freely within the bloc by the summer.
The TousAntiCovid app, part of the country’s contact tracing programme, has been upgraded to store negative Covid-19 test results on travellers’ mobile phones and is being trialled on flights to Corsica and overseas départements from this week.
Continue reading...Report by US law firm commissioned by Kigali says France bears ‘significant responsibility’ for deaths
France “bears significant responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 because it remained “unwavering in its support” of its allies even though officials knew the slaughter was being prepared, a report commissioned by Kigali claims.
The accusation is the latest in the continuing dispute between Paris and the small east-African country over the role played there by France before and during the mass killings.
Continue reading...UK’s greater inequality levels made impact worse for the less well off, study suggests
British households were plunged into the Covid pandemic with lower savings, more debt and weaker welfare support than their French and German counterparts, according to analysis revealing how inequality increased the impact of the UK crisis.
High levels of income inequality also weakened the financial resilience of poorer households as the pandemic hit. The greater exposure of British households, revealed in an analysis by the Resolution Foundation thinktank to be published in full this week, comes despite similar levels of average income with our European neighbours.
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