France

PARIS, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Airbus signed a follow-on Contractor Logistics Support (CLS) contract with the U.S. Army, the European multinational aerospace corporation said in a press release on Monday.

The deal is the largest helicopter performance-based support contract managed by Airbus worldwide, it said.

Airbus will provide spare parts, material, and engineering support for the Army's helicopter models UH-72A and UH-72B Lakota fleet of 482 utility and training helicopters. It will support 67 Lakota sites in the United States and overseas.

24 May 2022; MEMO: The killing of a guard at the Qatar Embassy in Paris in the early hours of Monday was a "heinous and unjustified" crime, the Embassy said, as French prosecutors opened an investigation, Reuters reports.

The incident did not appear to have any links to terrorism, a source close to the probe said.

The incident took place at around 0630 (0430 GMT), the source said, adding that the suspect had entered the Embassy and had a row with the security guard, who died after being punched.

21 May 2022; MEMO: A French appeals court confirms a charge of complicity in crimes against humanity against the cement group, Lafarge, over alleged payoffs to the Daesh terror group during Syria's civil war, France 24 reports.

According to the report, a court in Paris has indicted the French company, Lafarge, for their "complicity in crimes against humanity" in Syria.

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.