France

France's highest appeal court on Wednesday upheld a guilty verdict against the son of Equatorial Guinea's president for embezzlement, paving the way for the potential return of tens of millions of dollars to the country's people.

The French parliament has approved a bill to further tighten requirements for mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations and health passes in response to the Delta variant. The new constraints come amid mounting protests in France.

The mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo declared on Tuesday that from Wednesday, "there will be no more drug addicts in the Éole gardens", reiterating her commitment to return this park in the north-east of Paris to local residents by the end of June.

Surprise initiative follows US president Joe Biden’s summit with Vladimir Putin

While in France the Biebers met up with the President and his wife, however fans weren’t impressed with what they wore for the occasion.

French President Emmanuel Macron was slapped in the face on Tuesday by a man in a crowd of onlookers while on a walkabout in southern France, video of the incident showed.

Despite a guaranteed US veto, France proposed another draft resolution on Wednesday calling for an end to hostilities and humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip. The US vetoed similar measures in recent days, with a UN spokesman saying Washington is pursuing its own “intensive diplomatic efforts”.

France is suspending all flights to and from Brazil to curb the spread of a new Covid-19 variant found in the South American country, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Tuesday.

President Emmanuel Macron extended light lockdown measures from 19 areas including Paris to all of mainland France from April 3 for 4 weeks at a televised address on the resurgent Covid-19 pandemic on Wednesday.

Tough-talking politicians from the right are accustomed to demanding “exemplary” punishments. This week, they did not appreciate the judiciary making an example of their champion, Nicolas Sarkozy, venting their fury at a special prosecutor’s office tasked with cleaning up French politics.

French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in jail, two of them suspended, for corruption.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday that French actor Gerard Depardieu was charged in December with rape and sexual assault after authorities revived a 2018 investigation that was initially dropped.

France on Friday recommended that people who have already recovered from Covid-19 receive a single vaccine dose, becoming the first country to issue such advice.

France's Pasteur Institute said on Monday it was ending development of a Covid-19 vaccine with US pharmaceutical company Merck after clinical trial results proved disappointing.

Prosecutors in the graft trial of French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday called for him to be sentenced to a prison term of four years of which he should serve two.

France will require online technology giants to pay a new "digital tax" on their 2020 earnings, the finance ministry said Wednesday, breaking a truce with Washington over the long-running tax fight that could prompt a round of punitive US tariffs on French goods.

Three people have been “butchered” in a suspected terror attack in Nice, France, as ‘simultaneous’ attacks were reported elsewhere.

A knife-wielding attacker beheaded two of the three victims at the Notre Dame church in the center of the French resort city of Nice, First Deputy Mayor Anthony Borré told RT France.

French media have released the first details about the suspect in an attack that killed three people at a church in Nice. The facts are yet to be confirmed by officials, who launched a terrorist investigation into the case.

At least two people have died and up to 20 are still missing after a powerful storm hit south-eastern France and north-western Italy.