France

11 Mar 2021; MEMO: France's foreign minister said on Thursday time was running out to prevent Lebanon collapsing and that he could see no sign that the country's politicians were doing what they could to save it, reported Reuters.

10 Mar 2021; MEMO: France announced yesterday that researchers and historians will get easier access to classified government documents, especially those related to the controversial Algeria war, Anadolu news agency reported.

The French Presidency said in a statement that President Emmanuel Macron has ordered the French archives services to speed up access to documents that are more than 50 years old, "notable documents relating to the Algerian war".

PARIS, March 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,581,034 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019.

At least 116,031,470 cases of coronavirus have been registered.

The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.

These figures are based on daily tolls provided by health authorities in each country and exclude later re-evaluations by statistical organisations, as has happened in Russia, Spain and Britain.

LYON (France), March 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Security officials in China and South Africa seized thousands of counterfeit doses of the coronavirus vaccine, the global police agency Interpol revealed.

The international police force said in a statement that 400 vials, equivalent to about 2,400 doses, containing the fake vaccine were found at a warehouse in Germiston outside Johannesburg in South Africa, where officers also recovered fake masks and arrested three Chinese citizens and a Zambian national.

PARIS, March 3 (Xinhua) -- A total of 3,810,316 people in France have been diagnosed with COVID-19 after 26,788 positive cases were confirmed in the past 24 hours, the biggest daily increase since Feb. 24, official figures showed on Wednesday.

The number of people who lost their lives to the coronavirus increased by 322 to reach 87,542, the seventh highest in the world.

The number of hospitalized patients fell by 152 within a day to 25,111, while the number of serious cases rose again by 51 to 3,637, taking up 70 percent of the country's 5,100 resuscitation beds.

02 Mar 2021; MEMO: A French senator has called on the government to allow Algerian access to colonial archives in France, but only if there is reciprocal access for French researchers to Algeria's colonial-era archive. The latter, insists Stéphane Le Rudulier, is not easy now, hence his call for the intervention of the government with its Algerian counterpart.

PARIS, Mar 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) – France registered 19,952 new cases and 122 related deaths in the past 24 hours, according to figures released by the Public Health Agency yesterday.

The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases stands at 3,755,968, and the total number of fatalities at 86,454, since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Over the past seven days, 9,613 COVID-19 patients were in hospital, of whom, 1,871 were put on ventilators, the agency added.

PARIS (Reuters) - A French court will deliver its verdict in the corruption trial of former president Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday, with prosecutors demanding he face jail time.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012 and remains influential among conservatives, is accused of trying to bribe a judge and of influence peddling in exchange for inside information on an investigation into his presidential campaign finances.

PARIS, February 28. /TASS/: Twenty-five years after joining the Council of Europe Russia is set to actively cultivate cooperation with the organization and its member-states, and the rumors on its imminent withdrawal are unfounded, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe Ivan Soltanovsky told TASS on Sunday.

"The media regularly circulate rumors without any real basis that Russia will soon withdraw from the Council of Europe. Such escalation of the situation does not benefit the common cause," Soltanovsky stated.

PARIS, Feb 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,453,070 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019.

At least 110,700,000 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Of these, at least 67,895,900 are now considered recovered.

These figures are based on daily tolls provided by health authorities in each country and exclude later re-evaluations by statistical organisations, as has happened in Russia, Spain and Britain.