Thursday, February 21, 2019
France and Germany have announced a €65 million contract to design a next-generation stealth fighter jet. The new design will combine manned jet fighters with a swarm of cloud-connected drones, Dassault said in a release. It is the first act of a joint programme that will see the building of a combat aircraft and associated weapons, such as drones. The project, plans for which were first announced in 2017, has…
France’s foreign ministry said Thursday it had recalled its ambassador to Rome for consultations after a series of “provocations” by leaders of Italy’s populist government. “For several months France has been the subject of repeated accusations, unfounded attacks and outlandish claims,” the ministry said in a statement, calling them “unprecedented” since the end of World War II. It came one day after the French foreign ministry denounced as “unacceptable” a meeting between Italy’s Deputy…
The initiative of creating a European Army actually is in the air of the European Union. Both French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel declared this month that they support the need to create a joint European army. By the way these two countries are the strongest EU member states from economic and political points of view. Their words are not just “air shaking” but the subject to…
French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the nation amid criticism that he has failed to act over the crisis sparked by his economic reforms. Here are the key takeaways from his speech. ‘I take my share of responsibility for this’ In the long-awaited speech, Macron said protesters’ anger and indignation was “deep, and in many ways legitimate” but “no anger justifies attacking a police officer, a gendarme or damaging a shop…
France will deploy 65,000 security personnel on Saturday for more protests from the ‘gilets jaunes’ (‘yellow vest’) movement. Prime Minister Édouard Philippe told French senators on Thursday that ‘exceptional measures’ were being put in place for the demonstrations. France has been rocked by consecutive weekends of demonstrations from the ‘gilets jaunes’ protesters. The movement began online over moves to raise a fuel tax but have since snowballed into anger over…
French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced Tuesday that the French government will temporarily suspend a carbon tax plan that triggered weeks of often violent protests nationwide. To help curb climate change, the government had proposed the taxes, which were slated to take effect in January and were designed to wean consumers off diesel and other polluting fuels and to favor electric cars. But the price increases those taxes represented led…
A woman has barricaded herself in a bank in southern France, threatening to blow up the building, local police say. The woman is reportedly 60 years old and entered the bank in in Alès, in the Occitanie region, wearing a backpack, at around 9.30am local time. The Credit Lyonnais (LCL) bank has been evacuated and police have surrounded the building. The woman walked in ‘without any specific claim or specific…
Defense ties between France and the U.K. need a shot in the arm to ensure the two countries can remain closely aligned in a post-Brexit world, according to a pair of British and French think tanks. London’s looming exit from the European Union has the potential to put a wedge between the two long-standing allies, as the Macron government in Paris see its future intertwined with that of a strong…
President Raimonds Vejonis will be visiting France on November 10 and 11 for events to mark the centenary of the Armistice of November 11, 1918 that ended the First World War, the Latvian president’s agenda shows. US President Donald Trump and dozens of other heads of state are also scheduled to attend the commemorative events planned in Paris to mark the 100 years since the end of World War I. The main ceremony will…
At least six people have been killed by flash floods in the Aude region of south-western France. Local authorities say several months’ worth of rain fell in just a few hours overnight, leaving roads blocked in some areas. One woman was swept away by the River Aude, local broadcaster BFMTV reports. Alain Thirion, the prefect of Aude, said people were stranded on rooftops and would have to be evacuated by…
