France

PARIS (AP) — France is pushing ahead with a landmark tax on tech companies like Google and Facebook despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of retaliatory tariffs on French wine.

That’s rattling French vintners, who sold 1.6 billion euros ($1.78 billion) worth of wine last year to American consumers. But neither Trump nor French President Emmanuel Macron appears ready to back down.

After Trump slammed the “foolishness” of the tax in a tweet Friday and promised reciprocal action, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said France will implement it anyway.

PARIS, July 26 (Xinhua) -- French Minister of the Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, said on Friday that the digital tax on internet giants was "a national decision" that the government would put on the ground, defying U.S. threat of "a substantial reciprocal action".

"France will implement its national decisions," French newspaper Le Figaro quoted Le Maire as saying, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's warning.

26 July 2019; DW: Police stopped a man who was crossing the border to Belgium with grenades and guns packed into his car. A bomb disposal unit needed to be called in after they made an explosive discovery.

Police confiscated a stash of weapons including 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of explosives and around 300 grenades after they pulled over a car on the French-Belgian border in late June, the French government said Thursday.

PARIS, July 22. /TASS/: The search group of France’s Ministry for the Armed Forces managed to spot the Minerve submarine that had gone missing on January 27, 1968, Minister for the Armed Forces Florence Parly reported on Monday.

18 July 2019; AFP: Three months after a fire ravaged Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave.

Journalists were on Wednesday given unprecedented access during a tour around the inside of the 850-year-old World Heritage landmark.

17 July 2019; AFP: A senior French cabinet minister and close ally of President Emmanuel Macron resigned on Tuesday after reports accused him of extravagant state-funded lobster dinners and misusing public housing in a blow to the centrist government.

Francois de Rugy, who was named environment minister in September 2018, announced his departure after a week of revelations from the leftwing website Mediapart.

STRASBOURG, France, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Germany's Ursula von der Leyen was elected to be the next president of the European Commission on Tuesday with a slim majority.

PARIS (AP) — Finance officials from the Group of Seven rich democracies will weigh risks from new digital currencies and debate how to tax tech companies like Google and Amazon when they meet at a chateau north of Paris starting Wednesday.

Those issues, raised by the impact of digitalization on the world economy, are at the top of the agenda for a two-day gathering hosted by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and including U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

14 July 2019; DW: On the eve of Bastille Day, the president confirmed plans to boost the country's defense capabilities by harnessing outer space. China, Russia and the US have recently fueled fears about the militarization of space.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday announced the creation of a new national military space force command, as France becomes the latest of the world's top powers to boost defense capabilities in outer space.

13 July 2019; DW: The Pantheon in Paris houses the tombs of some of France's greatest citizens. The migrants occupied the building to call for the right to stay, and for a meeting with the prime minister.

Police escorted the protesters out of the ancient building in central Paris on Friday afternoon after hundreds of people without official documents, mainly from West Africa, made their case to stay in France, and to hold a meeting with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.