Fruit growers and winemakers in France have reported that the majority of their harvest this year has been lost to the significant cold snap that spread through parts of Europe from Wednesday, April 7 to Friday, April 9, 2021. Many industry experts believe that the frost damage might be the worst since the 1990s.

French farmers started counting the cost on Friday, April 9, after a deep cyclonic vortex from North Atlantic went down on northern Europe. Frosty conditions covered much of France, where many areas recorded their lowest April temperature on record.

"No region has been spared-- beets, rape, barley, vines fruit trees [have been lost]. All the different kinds of support must be activated urgently," said the National Federation of Unions for Farmers (FNSEA). "Exceptional situations call for exceptional measures."

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba and Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs of France Jean-Yves Le Drian discussed Russia's aggravation of the security situation.

This was reported by the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

During a phone call, Kuleba informed his French counterpart in detail about the latest actions of the Russian Federation aimed at destabilizing the security situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. In particular, the minister drew attention to the threatening build-up of Russia’s military presence along the Ukrainian border and the strengthening of Russian propaganda.

President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday announced the closure of France’s Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA), the training ground for French leaders founded by Charles de Gaulle at the end of World War II, AFP reported.

Envisioned as the pinnacle of a meritocratic system offering opportunities for all, the graduate school had increasingly become a symbol of elitism and entrenched privilege, churning out presidents, premiers and captains of industry destined to fill France’s top ranks.

Macron, who graduated from the school in 2004, told senior civil servants he was going to "abolish the ENA" and replace it with a new institution called the "Public Service Institute". He said the new school would continue to train graduates for senior positions in the public sector, but with a mission to introduce more diversity.

Spot, the four-legged robo-canine built by Boston Dynamics, appears alongside trainee soldiers during drills carried out by a French military school, but the US firm says it had not been notified in advance about its use.

The pictures of the drill were shared earlier this week on Twitter by France’s foremost military school, the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr in the country’s northwest. The tweet said the drill tested students’ awareness of the challenges of tomorrow, like robotization of the battlefield.

As millions in France struggle through a new draconian lockdown, members of the French elite, including high-level government officials, have been caught attending rule-breaking secret restaurants in Paris.

French TV channel M6 aired secretly recorded footage of wealthy politicians and powerful business owners enjoying lavish meals at an “underground restaurant located in a beautiful part” of Paris.

The video shows guests at the restaurant wining and dining without masks, kissing each other, and fragrantly ignoring social distancing rules.

The cost of the dinners are at least €490 euros per head.

France has concealed the levels of radioactivity that French Polynesia was exposed to during French nuclear tests in the Pacific from 1966 to 1996, during which almost the “entire population” of the overseas territory was exposed, according to a report.

Online investigation site Disclose said on Tuesday that it had analysed some 2,000 pages of French military documents declassified in 2013 by the defence ministry concerning nuclear tests on the archipelago.

Furious Parisians have turned on their Socialist mayor with a Twitter campaign where they are accusing her of gross mismanagement which as left Paris looking like a 'rubbish dump'.

Thousands of pictures have emerged on social media in the past few days of piles of rubbish filling the streets of the historic city under the hashtag 'SaccageParis' - meaning 'trash Paris'.

Parisians have claimed the city has been left 'abandoned' by their Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo and they are fed up with living in an 'unmaintained dump' which some have likened to a 'shanty town'.

Moscow continues work to coordinate a joint videoconference of Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron with Berlin and Paris, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert earlier said that there had been no videoconference between Putin, Macron and Merkel on March 29.

"We continue coordination with Berlin and Paris," the Kremlin spokesman noted when asked whether it was planned to hold such an event and when it could take place.

French schools will close for at least three weeks as part of new national restrictions to fight rising Covid cases, President Emmanuel Macron says.

Mr Macron said that schools would move to remote learning from next week.

Lockdown measures, introduced in some areas of France earlier this month, are also being extended to other districts.

All non-essential shops are to close from Saturday and there will be a ban on travelling more than 10km (six miles) from home without good reason.

The country is facing a peak of over 5,000 people in intensive care.

The vaccine misinformation battle raging in France
How is Europe dealing with the third wave?
France has so far reported more than 4.6 million cases of coronavirus and 95,495 Covid-related deaths.

The leaders of Russia, France and Germany, which are signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal, have exchanged views on the multilateral accord amid a standoff between Iran and the United States over the implementation of the agreement.

During a conference call on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), among other issues.

The Kremlin said the trio spoke in favor of “preserving and implementing” the JCPOA and “further coordinating steps in this direction.”

Separately, the Elysee Palace said in a statement that three leaders had agreed to take measures on the nuclear pact and coordinate their efforts to return Iran to full compliance with its international obligations as soon as possible.

A black deputy mayor of Paris, Audrey Pulvar, has sparked controversy online after she said white people should remain “silent spectators” if they attend meetings where people of color discuss racism.

A former TV host and journalist, Pulvar, told the French BFM TV on Saturday that she was “not shocked” to hear that people of color hold meetings closed to the whites. The politician, who now serves as a deputy to the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, referred to a high-profile incident earlier this month, which saw the National Union of Students of France (UNEF) organizing meetings on racism that were off-limits to the whites.

Although guilty of causing around 2,000 fatalities with a toxic diet drug, none of Servier’s bosses went to prison. It’s little wonder that Covid-19 vaccine sceptics believe that business, not safety, is big pharma’s main concern.
When everyone at the top of one of France’s big pharma giants avoids serving prison time, and the company faces a fine of just €2.7 million for producing a drug that led to the death of around 2,000 people over 33 years, you start to understand the mistrust at the heart of French Covid-19 vaccine refuseniks.

The drug at the centre of the scandal, Mediator, was produced by Servier for use by diabetics, but it ended up being prescribed as an appetite suppressant taken by more than five million people until its withdrawal from the market in 2009, a significant number of whom developed fatal heart problems as a result.

Residents of Paris and several other regions of France spent their first weekend under a limited monthlong lockdown. While the French government insisted the rules would be less strict than in the past, the measures have been criticized as messy.

A travel authorization certificate posted online was so ridiculed by French media for its unnecessary complexity that the Interior Ministry scrapped it within hours. For now, simple proof of residence is required to stroll within a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius.

The form the French government still obliges citizens to fill out to travel greater distances – up to 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) also was not accessible online because of a technical glitch. A website Sunday simply said, “Available soon.”

President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday called on France to reject the International Criminal Court’s “legally and morally bankrupt” decision to investigate Israel for war crimes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Rivlin made the plea via op-ed in the Le Figaro French daily, hours before his planned meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

“Friends may not always agree, but I believe we are committed to hearing each other in order to better understand each other’s perspectives, motivations and decisions,” the president wrote, explaining why he would be raising his objection over the ICC probe with Macron. The ICC investigation will also examine alleged war crimes by Palestinian terror groups.

Following Britain's exit from the European Union, the eurosceptic movement in France, criticizing European integration and raising the possibility of the country’s opting out of the bloc, was aptly dubbed Frexit and has since gained some momentum.

The currently ongoing COVID-19 health crisis has once again highlighted the deep inherent dysfunctions of the European Union (EU), claims analyst Laurent Herblay in an article for Le Figaro.

According to the writer, who has also been running the “free Gaullist” blog since 2007, an inadequate bureaucracy has been paralysing political action, without ever serving the citizens.

A French farmer who can no longer perform his routine farming duties because of permanent pesticide injuries has had his day in court, literally, and the perpetrator of his injuries found guilty of chemical poisoning. The French court in Lyon ruled that Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller formula, which contains the active ingredient alachlor, caused Paul Francois to develop lifelong neurological damage that manifests as persistent memory loss, headaches, and stuttering during speech.

Reports indicate that the 47-year-old farmer sued Monsanto back in 2004 after inhaling the Lasso product while cleaning his sprayer tank equipment. Not long after, Francois began experiencing lasting symptoms that prevented him from working, which he says were directly linked to exposure to the chemical. Since Lasso’s packaging did not bear adequate warnings about the dangers of exposure, Francois alleged at the time that Monsanto was essentially negligent in providing adequate protection for its customers.

The U.S. Army 21st Theater Sustainment Command has reported that military helicopters and equipment from the 1st Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, arrived March 6, 2021, at the Port of Dunkirk, France.

According to a recent news release, the aviation brigade is home-stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas and its equipment arrived aboard the Endurance, a commercial vessel chartered by the U.S. Navy Military Sealift Command.

The brigade is deploying to Europe in support of Atlantic Resolve, and will conduct bilateral and multinational training events with more than a dozen NATO allies and partner nations. These exercises build readiness and strengthen relationships between U.S. forces and our allies and partners.

France has recently sent one of its nuclear attack submarines over 10,000 kilometers to the South China Sea for a “patrol.” It is the latest indicator of how strained the underlying credibility is of US foreign policy regarding the South China Sea and its growing conflict with Beijing.

While Washington frames its involvement in the region as “championing” for claimants in the South China Sea, it is recruiting allies farther and farther from its actual waters and appears to merely be using the confrontation to undermine Beijing, not support other nations in the region.

France24 in an article titled, “France wades into the South China Sea with a nuclear attack submarine,” would claim:

The week in France kicked off with a Twitter thread by Defence Minister Florence Parly revealing that French nuclear attack submarine SNA Emeraude was among two navy ships that recently conducted a patrol through the South China Sea.

President Emmanuel Macron has admitted for the first time that French soldiers murdered a top Algerian independence figure then covered up his death in the latest acknowledgement by Paris of its colonial-era crimes.

Macron met four of the grandchildren of Ali Boumendjel and admitted “in the name of France” that the lawyer had been detained, tortured and killed in Algiers on March 23, 1957, his office said on Tuesday.

Astounding new figures out of France suggest what is no doubt a broader global trend of hesitancy and skepticism when it comes to the current big push to 'vaccinate all'.

Reuters in covering the country's vaccine rollout finds that merely around "half of health workers in French care homes do not want to be vaccinated" — even after many of these routinely witness the ravages of COVID-19 on the elderly and infirm.

"There’s a complete loss of trust," one home health care worker and trade union representative was cited in the report as saying, reflecting resistance to the growing pressure put on often underpaid staff in difficult working conditions who are being ordered to get vaccinated lest they risk the safety of the elderly patients. And another reflected a common answer of "I’m going to wait a bit".

A Paris court has found former French President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption - which is only the second time in modern history that a French head of state has gone down on such a charge - for which he's been issued a sentence of three years in prison, two of which have been suspended.

Despite the prison sentence it's expected however that the 66-year old will serve the non-suspended one year portion on probation - with an electronic bracelet and subject to a curfew.

The French minister for digital transformation has said mafia-type gangs from Eastern Europe are probably behind a spate of attacks on French hospitals and laboratories during the pandemic, rather than foreign state actors.

“Concerning the hospitals, in all likelihood, it is not foreign powers, but rather Mafia-type organizations – often situated in eastern countries but not just limited to there – who are looking for money,” Cedric O, the secretary of state for digital transformation, told France 2 television on Thursday.

The minister said that the gangs normally attempt to steal confidential data with the aim of ransoming the organization in question, adding that the situation had stabilized following a spate of attacks earlier in the year.

While many hospitals and healthcare organizations have returned to normal, Cedric O claimed that hospitals in Dax and Villefranche-sur-Saône were still working with pen and paper after their computer systems were hit.

Some 2-3,000 Parisians, mostly young, gathered peacefully in their city’s Place Denfert Rochereau this last Saturday (February 20) to reclaim their freedom of speech, and more specifically, to support Génération Identitaire (“Generation Identity”), the youth group currently targeted by the French government for dissolution [France: Protesters oppose move to disband anti-migrant group, by The Associated Press, February 20, 2021]. The vocal crowd shouted slogans like “We are at home,” and among the well-known faces such as Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Florian Philippot or Jean Messiha, was a striking one: Thaïs d’Escufon, GI spokeswoman and rising star.

The AstraZeneca experimental COVID-19 vaccine currently being given to health workers in France has caused so many side-effects that the French vaccination task force (Conseil d’orientation de la stratégie vaccinale) has recommended “a staggering of the vaccination schedule for people working in the same care unit” as well as “the systematic intake of paracetamol just before the injection and in the two following days.”

The vaccine was developed by Oxford University together with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca by cultivating the weakened SARS-CoV-2 virus in the HEK-293 cell line derived from the kidney of an aborted baby. According to the Oxford Vaccine Centre, these weakened viruses “are purified several times to remove the cell culture material,” adding that “this makes it unlikely that any human material remains in the final vaccine.” “Unlikely”, it is worth noting, does not mean “impossible.”

Consuming meat has become a cultural staple across the world. But with the surging middle class in China and elsewhere, demand for beef, pork, and processed chicken has erupted. Global elites are pushing for societies to consume a plant-based diet because they say there's a clear linkage between the worldwide livestock industry and greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, France would be one of the first to mix politics with food.

Residents of Saint-Senier-de-Beuvron are at odds with Elon Musk’s SpaceX after the tech giant announced plans to erect a massive satellite array there. The ambitious idea has prompted health concerns among locals.

Saint-Senier-de-Beuvron is a small rural village located in the north-western French province of Normandy. Home to some 350 residents, it attracted some unexpected – and unwelcome – attention earlier this month when it got named one of three locations across the country to get a Starlink ground station.

Two Su-27 interceptor planes have escorted two French fighters and a tanker aircraft away from Russian airspace over the Black Sea, the Russian military has confirmed, as video of the encounter in the sky appeared on social media.

The Southern Military District deployed the interceptors on Wednesday morning as the trio of foreign aircraft appeared on radar, the National Defense Control Center (NDCC) said in a statement.

A French pharmaceutical company has developed a nasal spray that it says could eliminate up to 99% of the Covid-19 virus, with the product set to be available to buy within weeks.

French group Pharma & Beauty (P&B) has been working on the spray for almost a year. It says that according to several studies it can eliminate 99% of the viral load in nasal passages within 30 seconds and reduce the spread of the virus by up to 90%.

The company is set to begin selling the product from March 1.

Production is scheduled to begin next week at the P&B site in Montélimar, Drôme; and then in four other P&B factories across France. Between 1 million-3 million bottles are expected to be available in March, followed by 13 million-15 million each month from April.

Each bottle of 30ml is expected to last one month, and will be sold at €14.90 each.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has reported the interception of three French warplanes over the Black Sea. The planes were over international waters but were approaching Russia’s border at the time.

Russian Su-27 fighters scrambled and intercepted the French planes, which turned around. There appears to have been no direct confrontation between the planes.

Interceptions of US planes in the Black Sea were common throughout much of 2020, and as with this incident they all came with the suggestion that tensions are higher than at any point since the Cold War.

The tensions are a concern, but the real feature is French planes. Previous interceptions have virtually always been US planes, and it is noteworthy that France is choosing to set itself up to confront Russia this time.

Europe has been hit by extreme amount of snow and cold temperatures this year, which have exhausted countries' own fuel reserves and prompted them to seek additional help elsewhere.

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom has increased its export of gas to France by almost 1.5 times since the start of the year, the company said on its Telegram channel, linking Europe’s surging demand for natural gas to the “cold, frosty winter..

France’s gas reserves in underground storage have declined below 30%, the gas producer added, citing data from Gas Infrastructure Europe. In Germany, the gas reserves reportedly dropped to 34.17% and to 45.28% in Austria.

France has hit pause on the withdrawal of troops fighting in the Sahel against ISIS terrorists, but President Macron must revisit the strategy behind his nation’s role in the region and be clear how it benefits the French people.

While Emmanuel Macron has put on hold – for now – plans for the withdrawal of his 5,100 troops from battle against jihadis in the Sahel, he should have the courage to admit to himself and the public that France has done all it can in the West African region. It’s time to go home.

Because his claim that this messy, protracted struggle is “attracting the interest of a growing number of countries, particularly in Eastern and Southern Europe” just doesn’t ring true.

During a high-profile speech on secularism and Islam last October, French President Emmanuel Macron said that “Islam is a religion which is experiencing a crisis today, all over the world”, and there was a need to “free Islam in France from foreign influences”.

Two months later, the French government unveiled draft legislation in order to combat what it terms “Islamist separatism” and an ideology it describes as “the enemy of the Republic”.

We have covered for a decade the campus shout-downs and shut-downs of speakers, the incessant thought policing, the political correctness run amok, and in recent years, the cancel culture and repression of free expression. We also have documented how the campus culture has migrated to the broader culture, reflected in Big Tech censorship and repression.

It’s not just us noticing the destructive impact of this campus-to-culture phenomenon.

French leaders are worried that the American campus culture poses a threat to the national cohesiveness not just of the Unites States, but of France.

The NY Times reports:

The threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national unity. Abets Islamism. Attacks France’s intellectual and cultural heritage.

The threat? “Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,’’ said President Emmanuel Macron.

France's major trade unions have called for a nationwide strike to protest the government's measures against COVID-19 over fears the steps will further affect jobs and wages.

Sputnik is live from Paris, France, where people are holding a protest rally against the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The General Confederation of Labour (CGT), considered a leading trade union in the country, has called on workers all across France to join the nationwide strike and participate in mass demonstrations to protest against the government's COVID-19 measures.

As France is still struggling to revitalise its economy after being hampered by the coronavirus pandemic, protesters are demanding to ensure more spending for education and public services in the recovery plan. Another topic behind today's mass demonstration is making sure that people can be protected from further job cuts, as the unemployment rate has increased.

French police raided an at-least-81-person orgy at a warehouse outside of Paris Friday and cited the participants for breaking the city’s coronavirus curfew.

Officers arrived on the scene at 9 p.m. after neighbors reported the party and were allowed to enter the warehouse in Collegien, about 20 miles east of Paris, around 11 p.m., hours after the country's 6 p.m. curfew, the Independent reported.

At least 81 orgy participants were fined 135 Euros, according to the outlet.

The latest update on the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID jab was released Tuesday afternoon in a report from the University which offered more insight on exactly when vaccine-induced immunity begins, and how effective the vaccine can be after its first dose and after its second.

Unsurprisingly, the data offer a more optimistic read than the batch released by AZ and Oxford the first time around.

But they also suggest that the vaccine is actually more effective overall if doctors wait roughly 3 months before inoculating patients with the second dose, which provides support for "current policy" in the UK.

However, in the US, the FDA-recommended vaccination dosing schedule is 21 days, which has endured despite logistical problems and other issues that have caused delivery delays in NYC and elsewhere (so much for the consistency of the "science"), And the new AstraZeneca vaccine might be able to fix all that.

President Biden’s first call with French President Emmanuel Macron, per the readouts from both leaders’ offices, was conventional and congenial. Some differences of priority may be detected among the topics specified in the Élysée statement (Lebanon, Iran, the WHO) and the White House release (Russia, China, NATO), but the documents both suggest a return to the pre-Trump status quo of U.S.-France relations.

Insofar as it means diplomacy elevated, sanctions repealed, and tariffs dropped on French wine, this is great news. But it may also mean undoing even the smallest shifts away from the dynamic of the last 70 years, in which the U.S. subsidizes European defense and spends decades entangled in no-win wars. With the Trump administration over, Macron is reversing himself, dropping calls for “European solutions” and a Europe “in control” of its own fate and calling on Biden to re-escalate U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.

Mass rallies have been held in Paris and other French cities after the lower house of parliament passed in the first reading late November a controversial security bill criminalising the dissemination of photos and videos of police officers "with intent to harm" them.

Sputnik is live from Place de la Republique in Paris as protesters take to the streets once again to rally against the 'Global Security Bill'.

Article 24 of the bill entails up to a year in prison and a 45,000 euro ($53,400) fine for disseminating videos and photos identifying police officers with an intention to harm them – penalties that critics deem a threat to press freedom. In a bid to address the concerns, the lower chamber of French parliament amended the clause.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for international regulation to curb the spread of ideological extremism in Western democracies, chiding tech companies and political correctness for allowing it to flourish.

Speaking to a group of reporters inside the Élysée Palace, Mr. Macron said the storming of the U.S. Capitol was a sign of the West’s failure to rein in social media platforms, allowing them to become incubators of hate, moral relativism and conspiracy theories.

The French leader chided tech companies—without naming them—for giving former President Donald Trump a platform to “spread hate” for years before taking action. Twitter Inc. banned Mr. Trump’s personal account in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, citing the risk of further incitement of violence. Facebook Inc. announced a temporary suspension of Mr. Trump after the riot before extending that action indefinitely.

France is preparing to hold presidential elections in April 2022 that will probably see harsh competition between incumbent President Emanuel Macron and his 2017 rival Marine Le Pen. Four years ago, the President of the National Rally decisively lost to Macron in the second round.

French politician and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen proposed to ban “Islamist ideologies” during a press conference on Friday, the plan that would also include a restriction on hijab-wearing in all public places, France 24 reports.

The 52-year-old politician, who leads France’s National Rally party, told reporters that Muslim headscarves should be considered “an Islamist item of clothing”, as she unveiled a plan to outlaw “totalitarian and murderous” ideologies related to Islamic fundamentalism.

The mayor of a small French town has warned of the growing problems rural communities across France face with delinquency, violence and drug dealing and has called on the government to do more.

Antoine Valentin, the mayor of the small town of Saint-Jeoire, has sounded the alarm about the growing insecurity in rural French areas and highlighted the way in which local drug dealers are not only well-known by locals but act largely with impunity.

In an opinion article for the French newspaper Le Figaro, Valentin wrote that local drug dealers rare face long prison sentences and find themselves back to the small towns “very quickly.”

EMMANUEL MACRON could see his seat stolen by Marine Le Pen as soon as in the first round of the 2022 French Presidential election, a new poll has found.

Marine Le Pen calls on France to abandon the 'catastrophic' EU
A new Harris Interactive poll commissioned by CommStrat cabinet and the daily L'Opinion found that, depending on the various potential candidates on the right and the left of France's political sphere, Emmanuel Macron could lose to Marine Le Pen by a short header in the first round.

The French President would gain 23 to 24 percent of the votes against the 26 to 27 percent that the eurosceptic Le Pen could secure, the poll found.

France’s government may impose a third lockdown in the coming days if an existing 12-hour-a-day curfew doesn’t significantly slow virus infections.

Exactly a year after France announced Europe’s first confirmed case of the coronavirus, Health Minister Olivier Veran said in an interview published Sunday in the Le Parisien newspaper that if infections don’t drop, and “if the variants start to spread everywhere, we will take extra measures. And that’s called confinement. … We will close down.”

An official in French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said Sunday that “everything is on the table” but no firm decisions will be made until the effect of the nationwide 6 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew is clear in the coming week.

French President Emmanuel Macron has defended his government and its response to the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that he laments France's "incessant hunt for errors," adding that such criticism is counterproductive during a crisis.

Speaking on Thursday, Macron took a swipe at his critics, saying France had become "a nation of 66 million prosecutors" constantly on the lookout for mistakes and government failings during the pandemic.

"And I say this because what goes with French mistrust is also this kind of incessant hunt for error. That is to say, we have become a nation of 66 million prosecutors. It is not the way we face the crisis or move forward," the president said.

Former French prime minister Edouard Balladur goes on trial Tuesday on charges that he used kickbacks from arms deals in the 1990s to fund a presidential bid, a case known as the “Karachi affair”.

Balladur, 91, joins a long list of senior French politicians pursued for alleged financial wrongdoing, including former president Nicolas Sarkozy and his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

The conservative ex-premier will be tried by the Court of Justice of the Republic in Paris, a tribunal dedicated to hearing cases of ministerial misconduct.

Also in the dock will be his former defence minister Francois Leotard, 78, though his presence at the trial’s opening is uncertain because of illness.

Swedish hygiene products company Essity has sparked widespread criticism in France for having planned to equip its workers with collars or belts that would ring if they are too near to each other, in an effort aimed at avoiding COVID-19 infections. The plan was touted as a way to “reinforce the safety of collaborators” by limiting “transmission of the virus as much as possible.”

Essity, which specializes in products such as diapers, toilet paper, make-up remover cotton pads, compression stockings and other paramedical goods, has units in over 100 countries, with eight factories and over 2,800 employees in France alone. All of these would be concerned by the measure. Its initiative garnered a great deal of attention in major media outlets, while commentators on social media angrily described the “social distancing devices” as dog collars.

Police surveillance of the French population is set to increase as new measures quietly installed by the government last month were approved on Tuesday by the Council of State, the highest administrative court that has the power of assessing the legality of decisions made by the administration.

The new dispositions were published discreetly on December 2 with the signatures of prime minister Jean Castex and interior minister Gérald Darmanin. The next day, an internet news outlet specialized in digital news and new technologies exposed the move, revealing that under the government decrees, population surveillance records set up by law enforcement bodies may include information regarding “political opinions, philosophical and religious beliefs, or trade union membership.”

Surveillance records may now also include “health data that reveal particular danger,” such as mental health problems or psychiatric internment.

President Emmanuel Macron on Monday faced growing pressure to accelerate France's Covid-19 vaccination drive which has seen just a few hundred people receive the jab, with the French leader himself reportedly livid over the sluggish pace.

Just over 500 people have received the vaccine so far in France, with critics pointing to the figure of 200,000 people who have been immunised in Germany in a similar timeframe after the EU-wide rollout began a week ago.

"What we have seen is a government scandal," Jean Rottner, the head of France's Grand Est eastern region, which has seen a particularly sharp rise in infections, told France 2 television.

"Things need to accelerate," said Rottner, a member of the right-wing Republicans (LR) opposition party. "The French need clarity and firm messages from a government that knows where it is going. It is not giving this impression."

Emmanuel Macron sparked fury today by claiming Brexit was the product of 'lies and false promises' in a bitter broadside at Britain's departure from the EU.

The French president lashed out at the UK's decision to quit the block on the night it finally took place, more than four years after the Brexit referendum.

He used his New Year address to his nation to castigate the UK's decision to go it alone after agreeing a trade deal which could damage the French fishing fleet - and his grip on power.

In the address delivered from the Elysee Palace, Paris, Mr Macron questioned the strength of Britain's sovereignty following its departure from the European Union.

DONALD TRUMP has hit back with tariffs against France and Germany amid the battle over aircraft subsidies.

Due to the EU imposing “unfair” tariffs on US products, the Trump administration has announced it will strike back with similar measures on French and German imports. The US government stated Brussels had imposed tariffs on “substantially” more American products following the result of WTO litigation. Although the WTO authorised the tariffs, the US has stated Brussels had unfairly raised levies.

The French government has published the three permission forms members of the public need to either go shopping, go to work or go to school during lockdown. Here are all the details.

People in France will once again need a permission form - either in paper version or on mobile phone - to leave their homes during the second period of confinement.

In all there are three forms, one that people will need when leaving their house to go shopping or for exercise, called the attestation de déplacement dérogatoire (exemption certificate), another form that workers will need to make the journey to and from their place of work, called the justificatif de déplacement professionel and finally a form that covers school pupils titled the justificatif de déplacement scolaire.

The form needed to leave the home, seen below, includes several options members of the public must tick to explain their reason for being outside.

France announced the reopening of its borders with the UK late on Tuesday, ending a two-day closure prompted by fears of a fast-spreading coronavirus mutation in England.

As a result of the border shut down, thousands of truck drivers remain stranded in the UK, while France's new public health measures require drivers to be tested before entering the country.

France and Britain agreed on a rapid PCR (polymerase chain reaction) COVID-19 test that takes about 30 minutes, but that doesn't necessarily mean the thousands of stranded truck drivers waiting to cross the channel will be resolved in a day's time.

Despite the reopening of the borders, FT notes the backlog of trucks on Wednesday was in the thousands.

Anarchy was spreading across Kent today as fights broke out between lorry drivers and police at the Port of Dover and Manston Airport - and testing staff arrived in an attempt to get them across the Channel for Christmas.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron last night agreed a deal to let lorry drivers into France with a negative 30-minute lateral flow coronavirus test, after two days of chaotic gridlock following the French president's fears over the new super-infectious strain of Covid-19 sweeping across Britain and other countries.

The major flashpoint in Kent today was at the Port of Dover where drivers were blocking the entrance in anger at not being allowed to cross the Channel without a negative coronavirus test from the UK Government.

French citizens who decline to take the coronavirus vaccine will be barred from public transportation, among other places, under a controversial “Green Passport” plan set out in a draft law that’s now on its way to parliament.

Gaining the support of Prime Minister Jean Castex’s cabinet earlier this week, the bill proposes to deny “access to transport or to some locations, as well as certain activities” to those unable to prove that they received a “preventative treatment” for Covid-19, including a vaccine, or produce a negative virus screening.

The draft bill has been harshly denounced by members of the opposition, with the spokesman of the right-wing National Rally party (RN), Sebastien Chenu, accusing the government of planning a “health dictatorship.” RN head Marine Le Pen, meanwhile, blasted the proposed measure as “essentially totalitarian.”

British retailers have urged the government to make an urgent effort to prevent prolonged suspension of cross-Channel transport, which they say would disrupt supplies of fresh produce to UK consumers.

To prevent the spread of a new, more transmissible variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus from the UK, the French government suspended all travel from the UK for 48 hours from 11 p.m. on Sunday night (midnight Paris time), including travel linked to goods transport by road, air, sea, or rail.

Last week, a US Navy guided-missile destroyer held anti-submarine warfare drills with a French submarine and a Japanese carrier in the Philippine Sea. The drill was a rare joint exercise with France in the Pacific and is a sign of things to come as both the US and its European allies are looking to counter China in the region.

“Although one of the US’s long-standing allies, it is a rare opportunity for US Navy maritime forces to conduct operations with their French Navy counterparts in the Seventh Fleet area of operations,” The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet said in a statement. The fleet is based out of Japan and operates across the Indo-Pacific region.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the US, Japan, and France will hold their first joint land and sea military exercises in May 2021. In comments to Japan’s Sankei newspaper, a French naval leader made it clear that the future exercises are aimed at Beijing.

A large majority of the children of African migrants born in France in the Paris region say that, within the next ten years, they want to migrate to their parents’ homelands.

Many of the French citizens in the Ile-de-France region born to African migrants say they want to leave France and resettle in their parent’s countries of origin, a phenomenon becoming known as repatriation or return migration.

Newspaper Le Parisien cited a 2019 Intelcia study of 800 children of African migrants, which revealed 71 per cent could move to their parents’ country of origin within the next ten years. Nearly 40 per cent said they would do so immediately.

French President Emmanuel Macron, 42, tested positive for COVID-19 this Thursday after displaying “mild” symptoms of the disease related to the Wuhan coronavirus. According to the French government’s spokesman, Gabriel Attal, who gave an update on the president’s condition on Thursday evening, Macron has a “slight” fever, a bad cough, and severe fatigue. He has gone into isolation, and not only he: at a time when the French are being encouraged to telecommute, avoid contacts as much as possible, and observe an 8:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. curfew under the threat of heavy fines, Macron has a long list of “contacts” who are now deemed to be at risk of infection.

A host of European leaders are self-isolating after the French President, Emmanuel Macron, tested positive for Covid-19.

Mr Macron, 42, will self-isolate for seven days while working remotely, the Elysée Palace said in a statement.

The French president attended a number of high-profile events in recent days, including an EU summit.

Following his diagnosis several other European leaders, including the Spanish PM, said they would self-isolate.

"The President of the Republic has been diagnosed positive for Covid-19 today," the Elysée said on Thursday morning. The diagnosis was made following a "test performed at the onset of the first symptoms", the statement added.

The French president's wife Brigitte Macron, who is 67, is self-isolating but has no symptoms.

The proposed plant is planned to be a copy of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station that EDF is building in Somerset with Chinese partner China General Nuclear (CGN). CGN holds a 20 percent development phase stake in the development with the option to invest further.

The UK government has announced it will begin talks with France's EDF to build the proposed 3.2 GW Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk.

The move is part of an Energy White Paper that outlines plans to decarbonise the UK's energy system as it transitions to net zero, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said.

In April 2014, the French capital elected Anne Hidalgo, a member of the Socialist Party, as the first female mayor of Paris. The 69-year-old politician, who from 2001 to 2014 served as the city’s first deputy mayor under Bertrand Delanoe, has been re-elected for another term for the city's top official.

France’s Public Service Ministry has fined Paris City authorities for breaking national rules on gender parity by employing too many women in senior management positions.

The ministry decision was based on Mayor Anne Hidalgo appointing 11 women to senior Paris city hall positions, making a 69% majority of women, compared to five males.

A report published Tuesday by the French Military Ethics Committee has indicated that the country has begun to develop technology for bionically enhanced soldiers. The report discussed conditions in which devices like implants can be used to improve soldier performance on the battlefield.

“Human beings have long sought ways to increase their physical or cognitive abilities in order to fight wars. Possible advances could ultimately lead to capacity enhancements being introduced into soldiers’ bodies,” the report said, according to the BBC.

The report said that maintaining clear ethical lines would be important in the development of bionic soldiers.

The report called for eugenic or genetic applications of the technology to be banned, as well as anything “that could jeopardise the soldier’s integration into society or return to civilian life”.

Cultural venues were due to reopen on 14 December but the latest regulations say that they should stay closed at least until the beginning of 2021.

Watch a live broadcast from Paris where entertainment sector employees have gathered to protest coronavirus restrictions imposed in France.

On Monday, cultural venues were expected to reopen but with the current coronavirus situation showing few signs of improving, new measures have taken effect, advising the entertainment sector to remain closed until early January.

Iran has summoned the envoys of Germany and France over their criticism of the execution of an opposition journalist.

The foreign ministry voiced Iran's protest to the two ambassadors over French and EU criticism of the execution on Saturday of dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam, who had been based in Paris before he was captured in Iraq and taken to Iran.

Zam was convicted in June this year of fomenting violence during anti-government protests in 2017. His Amadnews feed had more than one million followers.

‘Don’t mention the ‘I’ word’ seems to be President Macron’s new strategy. After tough talk on Islamist separatism, he’s backed down on legislation to fight extremism and now wants Muslims to sign up to ‘Republican values’.
In announcing planned laws aimed at targeting radical Islamism, French President Emmanuel Macron has bowed to his liberal critics and watered down the draft legislation so that the problem he is aiming to address is not even mentioned. It’s so bloody polite.

And that is something of a surprise, because back in October, in the days following the shocking beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by a teenage Chechen radical Islamist, Macron seized the initiative, announcing plans that had been in the pipeline for some time for an ‘anti-separatism’ raft of laws.

French General Pierre de Villiers, the former chief of staff of the French armed forces, has warned that France could be heading for civil conflict, due to Islamist radicals and growing urban violence.

General de Villiers, who made headlines by quitting as armed forces chief of staff in 2017 over clashes on army budget cuts with President Emmanuel Macron, warned of a variety of factors that could see France heading to potential civil conflict.

According to the General, the social climate in France has been tense well before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and the lockdowns imposed by the French government.

Paris erupted into chaotic scenes on Saturday as black bloc Antifa protesters assaulted police officers, vandalised storefronts, and set fires throughout the city.

The French Ministry of the Interior said that approximately 52,350 took to the streets of France to protest against the “global security” law, over a provision that could criminalise sharing footage of police officers online.

Some 5,000 demonstrators marched in Paris, with police saying that there were between “400 and 500 radical elements”, including “yellow vests” and “anti-fascist” activists, embedded within the protest. The Associated Press and local media identified violent infiltrators as “black blocs”.

Anti-vax sentiment against the Covid-19 vaccination appears to be growing sharply in France, after a new poll put the number of people opposed to the jab at higher than 50% for the first time.

A new survey by pollster Ifop found that 59% of the French public do “not have the intention to get a vaccination when it becomes possible”.

The online poll asked a nationally-representative sample of the French public for newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

Politically, opponents to the jab are more likely to support opposition parties such as La France Insoumise and the far-right group Rassemblement National. Those aged under 35 are also more likely to be wary.

An interior minister who served in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has been placed under investigation for “criminal association” by French judges as part of investigation into Libyan funding of the 2007 presidential election.
France’s national prosecutor's office confirmed on Thursday that former interior minister Claude Gueant is now under formal investigation on charges of criminal association.

The charges brought against him are part of an ongoing investigation into possible Libyan financing of former President Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential campaign in 2007.

While it is suspected that the accused spent €42.8 million to finance the campaign, nearly twice the maximum authorized amount, it is also alleged that the campaign was funded from the pockets of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Last week Paris was struck by a shocking incident, whereby a 47-year-old history teacher was beheaded in what President Emmanuel Macron described as an "Islamist terrorist attack." The victim had shown cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad during class, which came as a trial proceeds over the 2015 Charlie Hebdo killings, where the satirical magazine was attacked by gunmen over the same issue. After having identified and killed the teacher, the attacker was shot dead by police. He was later confirmed to have links to ISIL through his family.

There’s new evidence that the first case of coronavirus may not have started in China at all.

Doctors at a Paris hospital say they’ve found evidence that an ill patient admitted in December was already infected with COVID-19, with no known association or recent travel to China.