Tag: France

Police open fire at Paris train station on woman making ‘threats’

By Tiphaine LE LIBOUX, Murielle KASPRZAK PARIS, Oct 31, 2023 (AFP) – French police on Tuesday shot and seriously wounded an unarmed woman who was making threats at a train station in Paris during morning rush hour, police and prosecutors told told AFP. According to witnesses the 38-year-old woman, who was completely veiled, shouted “Allahu akbar” (“God is Greatest”) and “made threats”, a police source said, adding that “police fired because they feared for their […]

The race to save post-glacial landscapes amidst glacier retreat

By Amélie HERENSTEIN LES CONTAMINES, France, Oct 19, 2023 (AFP) – Water surged through a desolate canyon of grey rock into a blue-grey lake, an ancient landscape only revealed to humanity in recent decades because France’s glaciers have retreated so far. The rocks bore the markings of the ice and, on an unseasonably hot day in October high above the ski resort of Chamonix, experts from the Ice and Life research project were clear that […]

French airports evacuated after ‘threats of attack’

PARIS, Oct 18, 2023 (AFP) – Airports across France were evacuated on Wednesday after emailed “threats of attack”, a police source told AFP, the latest in a series of similar alerts. The evacuations at Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Nice, Toulouse and Beauvais airport near Paris would allow authorities to “clear up any doubts” whether the threats are real, the source said. A spokeswoman for Strasbourg airport in eastern France also said the site was being evacuated […]

DEVELOPING STORY: Murdered French teacher’s school evacuated over bomb threat: AFP

ARRAS, France, Oct 16, 2023 (AFP) – A school in northern France where a teacher was stabbed to death in an apparent Islamist attack last week was on Monday evacuated following a bomb threat, an AFP journalist said. Dozens of staff and pupils left the combined middle and high school in Arras around 10:30 am (0830 GMT). Authorities told AFP the bomb threat had been made by internet.

French schools to honour teacher killed in ‘terror’ attack

By Laurent GESLIN, with Clement ZAMPA in Lille ARRAS, France, Oct 16, 2023 (AFP) – Schools across France will on Monday hold a minute of silence for the teacher stabbed to death in what President Emmanuel Macron called an act of “Islamist terror”. The nationwide tribute will come a day after thousands gathered in Arras, northeastern France to pay their respects to 57-year-old Dominique Bernard. His killing on Friday has sent shockwaves through the country […]

France on top alert, deploys 7,000 soldiers after teacher’s murder

ARRAS, France, Oct 14, 2023 (AFP) – France on Saturday said it will deploy 7,000 soldiers after declaring a top-level alert following the fatal stabbing of a teacher by a Chechen-origin man, who also severely wounded three others at a school. The attack took place in the northeastern town of Arras, home to large Jewish and Muslim populations. Police arrested the suspected attacker, Mohammed Moguchkov, who had cried the Arabic phrase “Allahu akbar!” (God is […]

Germany, France step up security at Jewish sites

BERLIN, Oct 7, 2023 (AFP) – Germany and France on Saturday moved to reinforce security around Jewish temples, schools and monuments after the surprise attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas against Israel. Germany tightened police protection of Jewish and Israeli institutions, as some supporters of the Palestinians took to the streets of Berlin to celebrate the attack. France focussed on Jewish temples and schools in cities across the country, as one Jewish leader expressed concern […]

France to hold crisis meetings on bedbug ‘scourge’

By Sami ACEF with David COURBET in Marseille PARIS, Oct 3, 2023 (AFP) – The French government said Tuesday it would host emergency meetings this week to examine surging numbers of reported bedbug cases, which are being increasingly seen as a major potential public health problem. Bedbugs have in recent weeks gone from being a subject of potential derision to a contentious political issue in France, with aghast citizens reporting seeing the creatures in locations […]

France to vaccinate millions of ducks against bird flu

PARIS, Oct 2, 2023 (AFP) – France on Monday began Europe’s only vaccination campaign against bird flu in ducks, hoping to avoid mass culls of millions of birds that have dearly cost the industry in recent years. “There’s high pressure from the virus, but vaccination should mean we only face individual cases, avoiding the tidal wave sweeping through farms,” said Jocelyn Marguerie, poultry chief at the SNGTV farm vets’ association. The two-jab course for ducklings […]

Rarely seen works by abstract master Nicolas De Stael open in Paris

PARIS, Sept 15, 2023 (AFP) – An unprecedented collection of paintings by 20th century abstract master Nicolas de Stael have been gathered for a show that opened in Paris on Friday — including several even his own children have never seen. The exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art includes some 200 paintings by de Stael, a key figure in France’s postwar art scene. They include several that have never shown in public because the […]

France insists no Morocco snub over quake aid

PARIS, Sept 11, 2023 (AFP) – France is insisting that the reluctance of Morocco to accept French offers of aid in the wake of Friday’s devastating quake does not represent a snub, even if it comes at a time of growing tensions between Rabat and the former colonial power. Along with the United States, France was conspicuously absent from a list of four countries Morocco said on Sunday it would seek aid from — Britain, […]

Paris fumigates for tiger mosquitoes as pest spreads in Europe

© Agence France-Presse Health authorities in Paris fumigated areas of the French capital for the first time on Thursday to kill disease-carrying tiger mosquitoes whose rapid advance through northern Europe is thought to have been accelerated by climate change. Roads were closed and people asked to stay in their homes in southeast Paris during the early hours of Thursday as pest control contractors sprayed insecticide in trees, green spaces and other mosquito-breeding areas. Such scenes […]