Tag: France

French President Emmanuel Macron addresses the nation amid violent riots in Paris spurred by activist group Gilets Jaunes, or 'Yellow Vests'. Backlash against Macron's proposed eco-tax initially sparked the violence, after which he killed the legislation, though protesters have since…

Donald Trump should not meddle in French affairs, its foreign minister said on Sunday, after the US president criticised France in tweets following riots in Paris. "The Paris Agreement isn't working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France," Trump wrote on his Twitter account. Protests and riots all over France. Le Drian said images published in the United States with people chanting "We want Trump" were filmed during a Trump visit to London several months ago. Clad in their luminous safety jackets, the "yellow vests" show no sign of calling off weeks of protests over rising living costs and accusations that Macron only looks out for the rich. Maybe it's time to end the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement and return money back to the people in the form of lower taxes? The US was way ahead of the curve on that and the only major country where emissions went down last year!" Le Drian also said most Americans disagreed with Trump over his decision to walk away from the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Alain Juppe, mayor of Bordeaux where a protester lost his hand after picking up an anti-riot grenade, joined calls from across the political spectrum for Macron to respond.

Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, a former businessman who fled to Israel and joined the Knesset to escape a French jail sentence, died early Friday morning. Flatto-Sharon had been hospitalized near Tel Aviv since September with an infection, according to Hebrew-language media reports. Born in Poland in 1930, Flatto-Sharon escaped the Holocaust and eventually became a successful industrialist. Free Sign Up In 1977, with France attempting to have him extradited to serve a jail sentence, Flatto-Sharon started a one-man political party and managed to win a spot in the Knesset, gaining parliamentary immunity. The affair, for which he became famous, is sometimes cited as a reason for higher electoral thresholds in the Knesset. He was unable to enter the Knesset in subsequent tries and was later convicted for buying votes during the 1977 election and sentenced to prison. After leaving politics, Flatto-Sharon continued as a successful businessman and philanthropist in Israel, though legal woes dogged him throughout. In 1992 he asked a court in Tel Aviv to declare him penniless, apparently to escape a $35 million judgement awarded the French Companie Parisienne de Participation, which sued him in Israel. He later settled on a smaller amount with the company. In 2000, he served several months in an Israeli prison for a French graft conviction, according to Ynet.

Paris police said 133 people were injured, including 23 police officers, as crowds trashed the streets of the capital Saturday. Officers fired tear gas and used water cannon to tamp down the violence as protesters torched cars, smashed windows, looted stores and tagged the Arc de Triomphe with spray paint. Some radical far-right and far-left activists were involved in the riot, as well as a “great number” of protesters wearing yellow jackets, Delpuech said. The fluorescent jackets, which French motorists are required to have in their cars for emergencies, are an emblem of a grassroots citizens’ movement protesting fuel taxes. At the security meeting, the French leader asked his interior minister to consider making “adaptations” to security procedures to try to contain ongoing protests sparked by rising fuel taxes, Macron’s office said in a statement. Macron also asked Prime Minister Edouard Philippe to meet with the heads of France’s major political parties and representatives from the grassroots movement behind the protests. “It’s difficult to reach the end of the month. People work and pay a lot of taxes and we are fed up,” said Rabah Mendez, a protester who marched peacefully Saturday in Paris. Speaking in Buenos Aires before he flew home to Paris, Macron said he welcomed the views of protesters but vowed that those who participated in wreaking havoc would be held responsible for their behavior. “(Violence) has nothing to do with the peaceful expression of a legitimate anger” and “no cause justifies” attacks on police or pillaging stores and burning buildings, Macron said.

“So sorry,” they said sympathetically. French officials report that applications for French nationality have rocketed as the Brexit deadline – now four months away – has approached. In bars and cafes, Brexit was not the main topic of conversation in France, which has problems of its own. Pushed to express an opinion, the most common response suggested Britain had “brought this upon itself”. “Most of all, I feel sorry for my British friends,” said Catherine in a cafe at Bastille in the centre of Paris. Across Europe people were genuinely perplexed about how the optimism of Wednesday, when it was announced the EU and UK had reached a deal, had turned to dust a few hours later. “Brextremist putsch attempt” the German tabloid Bild declared, as Theresa May struggled to maintain a grip on her government and her own political future. Writing on Spiegel Online, EU correspondent Peter Müller urged May to hold on, calling her “the lonely heroine of the Brexit theatre” and praising her for having made the best of a bad situation. France’s bestselling newspaper Ouest-France ran a leader sympathising with the prime minister, describing her decision to present the withdrawal agreement as “courageous and remarkable”. “In accepting the European Union withdrawal agreement, Theresa May has put the greater interest of her country before that of her party and perhaps even her own.

In an interview with the French TV channel TF1 from the Charles-de-Gaulle aircraft carrier, Mr Macron said: “I don’t think the French expect me to respond to tweets, but to continue this important history.” In five tweets sent on Tuesday morning after a visit to Paris to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One, Mr Trump mocked the 40-year-old centrist over his call for a European defence force, reminded France it was nearly crushed by Germany in two wars, complained about French tariffs on US wine and poked fun at Mr Macron’s falling approval ratings. Mr Trump had earlier dismissed Mr Macron’s suggestion that a European army was needed, in part, to reduce the bloc’s reliance on the US, slamming the idea as “very insulting”. Asked whether Mr Trump’s tweets were “unpleasant and inelegant,” Mr Macron answered: “You’ve said all that needs to be said”. “At every moment of our history, we have been allies, and between allies we owe each other respect … I don’t want to hear the rest,” he said, stressing that being America’s ally should not mean having to kowtow to its leaders. It’s the ally with which we take all the risks, with which we carry out the most complicated operations. But being an ally doesn’t mean being a vassal state, which is why we cannot rely on them militarily.” Mr Macron also suggested the blistering comments were aimed at a domestic audience, in the wake of Mr Trump’s losses in mid-terms elections. He said: “I think Donald Trump is doing American politics and so I let him do American politics … I’m not going to hold a debate with the president of the United States on Twitter.” His response was more tight-lipped than his spokesman’s, Benjamin Griveaux, who earlier in the day said Mr Trump lacked “common decency” for launching a barrage of piercing invectives on a day when France was mourning the victims of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. So I’ll reply in English: common decency would have been appropriate.” The public spat stands in stark contrast to the once-friendly relationship between the ex-investment banker and former real estate mogul, who bonded over the fact they had both won power despite being described as political “outsiders”. After being invited to Paris to attend the Bastille Day military parade in July last year and receiving Mr Macron for a state visit in Washington in January, Mr Trump had referred to his French ally as a “great guy” and a “friend of mine”. But Mr Macron has struggled to convert this bromance into influence.

President Trump takes French President Macron to task tweeting that no country more nationalist than France; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.' FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as…

In an exclusive interview on "Fareed Zakaria GPS," French President Emmanuel Macron said he prefers "having direct discussion" rather than discussing diplomacy through tweets with President Donald Trump. His remarks came hours after Trump, who had just landed in Paris,…

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s strange insistence that trace amounts of American Indian DNA confirm her past claims to minority status has drawn snorts from her fellow liberals, as well as from conservatives. Even the Cherokee Nation piled on, saying she is “undermining tribal interests.” Americans from all sides who disdain identity politics should recognize, however, the yeoman’s work the senior senator from Massachusetts is doing to expose the empty core of our new national pastime, the victimhood Olympics. From protected statuses to grievance-mongering, set asides, racial preferences, bias training, political correctness and hegemonic narratives, the whole edifice of identity politics rests on the foundational notion that we are all members of monolithic groups. Each is imbued with group-think and scrambles for pole position on the national stage through power relations — or some such. Warren is making it plainly obvious that we’re all a mix, a bit of this and a dash of that. If there is a power struggle taking place, it is internal — your French genes fighting your English ones in some intestinal Waterloo. Warren is soldiering on, claiming the DNA results she released Monday vindicate her long-standing claims of Native American heritage. For the record, what the DNA revealed was that Warren has between 1.56 percent and 0.097 percent American Indian DNA — and measured, at that, against DNA samples from Peru, Mexico and Colombia, not from the United States. “A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship. President Trump will doubtless continue ridiculing Warren’s claims of inherited disadvantage, keeping the issue alive.

An attempt by officials in Paris to tackle public urination by installing open-air urinals, or "uritrottoirs," has outraged some residents of the French capital. CNN's Lynda Kinkade reports.