France

05 June 2021; MEMO: More than 180 French MPs and city council members have signed a letter calling for Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi to immediately release prominent human rights defender Ramy Shaath, Arab48 reported on Friday.

01 June 2021; MEMO: Agence France Presse (AFP) has sacked its Palestinian correspondent in the West Bank, the journalist's union said yesterday. Nasser Abu Baker lost his job apparently after the agency came under "Israeli diktats", said the Syndicate of Palestinian Journalists.

PARIS, May 31 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that all must be clarified concerning reports that the United States intelligence agency had used the Danish infrastructure to spy on senior European officials, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

This "is unacceptable between allies, even less between allies and European partners," Macron was quoted by French daily Le Monde following a French-German council of ministers. He urged "all the clarity."

(Reuters) --- Air France (AIRF.PA) cancelled two more flights to Moscow on Monday after Russian authorities failed to approve flight plans that avoid Belarus airspace.

The European Union has urged its airlines to avoid Belarus amid outrage over the forced landing of a Ryanair (RYA.I) jet en route to Lithuania from Greece on May 23 and the arrest of a dissident journalist on board.

(Reuters) --- A radicalised French ex-prisoner on a watch list of potential terrorist threats stabbed a policewoman inside her station in western France on Friday before being killed in a shoot-out with police, a government minister said.

The victim was seriously wounded but expected to survive, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

The assailant had been released from prison in March following an eight-year sentence for violent crime and was on a security services register for individuals who might pose a terrorism risk.

(Reuters) --- A man who stabbed and badly wounded a policewoman on Friday in the town of La Chapelle-sur-Erdre in western France was reported by prison staff to have been radicalised in jail, a source close to the investigation said.

The source also said the man, who was released from jail in March following a conviction for violence, had psychological disorders.

(Reuters) --- A $20 billion plan to give NATO more flexibility in facing military threats, climate change and China's rise has hit firm resistance from France, which fears the move could undermine its defence priorities, four diplomats and a French defence source said.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg proposed in February that allies put more money directly into existing, albeit small common budgets, rather than rely on the current system that each government pays for its own military operations.

(Reuters) --- French President Emmanuel Macron said he recognised his country’s role in Rwanda’s genocide and hoped for forgiveness at a memorial in Kigali on Thursday, seeking to reset relations after years of Rwandan accusations that France was complicit in the 1994 atrocities.

"Only those who went through that night can perhaps forgive, and in doing so give the gift of forgiveness," Macron said at the Gisozi genocide memorial in Kigali, where more than 250,000 victims are buried.

(Reuters) --- France will impose self-isolation measures for people coming from the United Kingdom due to the presence of COVID-19 variants in the country, French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday.

"France will set up compulsory isolation for people coming from the UK," Attal told a news briefing after a cabinet meeting, adding that details would be given in "the coming hours".

PARIS, May 20 (NNN-AGENCIES) — More than 1.5 billion doses of anti-Covid vaccines have been injected into people’s arms around the world, six months after the vaccination drive started.

By Tuesday at 1530 GMT at least 1,500,017,337 doses had been injected in 210 countries or territories, according to a tally of official sources.

Nearly three fifths of the total have been administered in three countries: China (421.9 million), the United States (274.4 million) and India (184.4 million).