France

PARIS, May 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Pollution caused about 9 million people to die prematurely in 2019, according to a new global report, with experts raising alarm over increasing deaths from breathing outside air and the “horrifying” toll of lead poisoning.

Human-created waste in the air, water and soil rarely kills people immediately, but causes instead heart disease, cancer, respiratory problems, diarrhoea and other serious illnesses.

PARIS, May 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The war in Ukraine and drought fuelled by climate change has sent global prices for grains, cooking oils, fuel and fertiliser soaring.

Rising prices for basic food staples is fuelling protests from Indonesia to Iran.

European wheat prices have jumped 74 per cent and benchmark palm oil futures went up 24 per cent since January.

The trend is growing and is alarming policymakers, with United Nations agencies warning that the price hikes will worsen an existing food crisis in Africa and could cause “catastrophic” child malnutrition.

CANNES, France (AP) — The last two times the Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov had films playing at the Cannes Film Festival, he couldn’t attend. He was under a travel ban in Russia as part of a conviction for fraud in what was widely protested as unwarranted repression of the arts in Russia. Last year, Serebrennikov, one of Russia’s most celebrated directors of film and theater, appeared at a Cannes press conference by FaceTime.

PARIS, May 16 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday named Elisabeth Borne as the country's new prime minister.

Borne, 61, is a former minister of transport, ecology and labor. She is the second woman to hold the position after Edith Cresson (1991-1992) under President Francois Mitterrand.

PARIS, May 16 (Reuters) - The European Union and the United States agreed on Monday to cooperate more closely to counter disrupted supply of industrial commodities and food caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and to combat disinformation from Moscow.

Senior EU and U.S. officials convened in Paris for the second Trade and Technology Council, a forum initially seen as a transatlantic counterweight to China, but now with a clear focus also on Russia.

PARIS, May 14 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a trip to the United Arab Emirates to mourn the death of Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan and display his support for the ruling family, with whom France holds lucrative business and military ties.

Macron will travel to the UAE on Sunday, his administration said in a statement, to pay tribute to Khalifa, who died on Friday, and "express his support to his brother Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and the rest of the family, and the entire Emirian people",

PARIS (AP) — The stakes are high, the fight nasty and the party of centrist President Emmanuel Macron is the one to beat. But to a visitor from outer space, June’s parliamentary election in France could look like a contest between the far right and the hard-left.

A month before the first round of voting, the campaign for the 577 seats in France’s lower house of parliament has been brutal. Pressure has been mounting since the April presidential election when Macron won a second mandate, beating far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the run-off to quash her third bid for the job.

PARIS, May 12 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday told his Finnish counterpart that France fully supported the country's choice to join NATO, the Elysee presidential office said in a statement.

Finland must apply to join the NATO military alliance "without delay", its president and prime minister said on Thursday, in a historic policy shift triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

12 May 2022; MEMO: French prosecutors have opened an investigation into global police agency Interpol President, Ahmed Nasser Al-Raisi over allegations that he may have been an accomplice to torture, an official said, and Reuters reports.

Raisi, a United Arab Emirates official, was appointed President of Interpol, which is headquartered in France, in November 2021 despite accusations from rights groups that he had failed to act on allegations of torture of detainees in the UAE.

NEUILLY-SUR-SEINE, France, May 10 (Reuters) - The Russian military's failure to seize the Ukrainian capital was inevitable because in the preceding years they had never directly faced a powerful enemy, according to a former mercenary with the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group who fought alongside the Russian army.

Marat Gabidullin took part in Wagner Group missions on the Kremlin's behalf in Syria and in a previous conflict in Ukraine, before deciding to go public about his experience inside the secretive private military company.