France

PARIS (AP) — Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo declared victory in her reelection bid as municipal elections postponed by the coronavirus crisis have seen a strong breakthrough from the greens across the country.

Sunday’s voting also appears as a setback for French President Emmanuel Macron’s young centrist party, which was fielding municipal candidates for the first time and still lacks local roots across France.

PARIS (AP) — France is holding the second round of municipal elections in 5,000 towns and cities Sunday that got postponed due to the country’s coronavirus outbreak.

The voting to fill local offices in Paris and thousands of other places was suspended after the first round of the nationwide municipal elections on March 15, which produced decisive outcomes in some 30,000 other mostly small communes.

PARIS, June 25 (Xinhua) -- France is launching a "large scale" coronavirus testing campaign to identify any "dormant clusters" and to get ready for a potential resurgence of the epidemic, Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Thursday.

Speaking to Le Monde newspaper, Veran said the massive testing campaign will target people who live near previous COVID-19 risk zones and will aim to detect asymptomatic individuals who may be transmitting the virus without knowing it.

PARIS, June 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) — French President Emmanuel Macron will hold a videoconference with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Friday, with the coronavirus pandemic and the crises in Libya and Syria on their agenda, France announced Wednesday.

The situations in Iran and Ukraine will also be raised, as well as “cooperation in the fields of health and the environment” the French presidency said.

PARIS, June 20. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s article on preserving the historical truth about WWII is ‘profound’ and ‘extensive,’ French historian Jean-Pierre Arrignon has told TASS.

"This is a profound and extensive work," he said. "I totally agree with what Putin said in his article. History must never be forgotten, as its lessons give us a better understanding of the present-day situation in the world."

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron ordered on Friday a top judicial oversight body to review potential pressure on a prosecutor in a case targeting one of his former rivals in the presidential election that brought him to power.

The former head of France’s financial prosecutors, Eliane Houlette, told lawmakers earlier this month that she had come under pressure over her handling of former prime minister Francois Fillon’s case about the misuse of public funds.

PARIS, June 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The novel coronavirus has killed at least 450,386 people since the outbreak began in China last December.

At least 8,410,400 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 3,866,200 are considered recovered.

The tallies probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.

PARIS (Reuters) - Failure to work towards an international deal on taxing big digital companies could trigger a dangerous trade war, the OECD said on Thursday, urging countries to remain engaged in talks after Washington announced it was pulling out of them for now.

“Absent a multilateral solution, more countries will take unilateral measures and those that have them already may no longer continue to hold them back,” OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said in a statement.

PARIS, June 18 (Xinhua) -- France will apply taxes on digital giants this year "whatever happens," Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Thursday.

He called the U.S. decision "a provocation" to withdraw from the talks for a global deal on international taxation at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

18 June 2020; MEMO: An official from the French Defence Ministry told Reuters yesterday that Turkish frigates carried out an “extremely aggressive” intervention against a French navy vessel said to be taking part in a NATO mission in the Mediterranean and denounced Turkish manoeuvres as “very dangerous”.