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Half of the Vladivostok was assembled in Russia, then towed to France.The evening attraction in Saint-Nazaire this summer is watching Russian sailors practise their marching drill along the quayside.Some 400 Russian ratings are living in the western French port, awaiting delivery of their controversial new command-and-control ship, the Vladivostok. By day the sailors receive instruction at an on-shore facility run by the Vladivostok's builders, STX France. This week they have finally been allowed on board the vessel for the first time. At the end of the afternoon they return to the Russian navy ship which serves as their sleeping-quarters. The...

Franch government calls of immediate arms to Kurds News / World France Calls for Immediate Shipment of Arms to Kurds 12.08.2014 BasNews, Erbil France Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius again asked for an urgent meeting of  European countries’ Foreign Ministers to discuss immediate arms shipments to the Kurdistan Region for use against Islamic State (IS) militants. “It is necessary to help Kurds and Iraqis and give them help to fight IS insurgents. It needs to be impressed on them that IS insurgents wish to kill all those that don’t have the same ideology, thinking and religion as them,” said Fabius....

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has sent a letter to France's interior minister to demand that a tiny hamlet south of Paris called "Death to Jews" be renamed. The group's director of international affairs, Shimon Samuels, wrote to Bernard Cazeneuve saying he was "shocked to discover the existence of a village in France officially called 'Death to Jews'." "It is extremely shocking that this name has slipped under the radar in the 70 years that have passed since France was liberated from Nazism and the (pro-Nazi) Vichy regime," he wrote. However, the deputy mayor of the village of Courtemaux -- population...

Germany, France and Britain have proposed reactivating a European Union mission on the Egypt-Gaza border to help stabilize the Palestinian enclave after a month-long war, a German diplomatic source said on Wednesday. […] Egypt, which was not involved in the negotiation of the 2005 agreement, has repeatedly shut the Rafah border over the past year, significantly increasing pressure on Gazans, who already face a rigid land and sea blockade imposed by Israel. […] Egypt wants any discussion over Rafah to take place bilaterally with the Palestinian Authority, rather than as part of any deal between the Palestinians and Israel to...

Paris (AFP) - France, in consultation with its EU partners, is looking at supplying arms to Iraq's Kurds to fight against Islamic State jihadists, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Sunday. "One way or another, they must receive, in a sure way, equipment that will allow them to defend themselves and to counterattack," Fabius told France 2 television from Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. "We will look into that over the coming days but in liaison with the Europeans," he said from the city, which is not far from the IS frontline. France and Britain...

1,200 migrants – mainly from Eritrea, Sudan and Afghanistan, with groups from Somalia, Pakistan and Chad – are now camped out in Calais' forests, hoping one day to cross the Channel to Britain.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) In his 20 years as a lorry driver, Sean Baker, a former soldier, thought he had seen it all. But nothing, he said, compares to the chaos in Calais at the moment. "Just this morning I was filling up my truck with fuel and two migrants jumped in," he said. "I shouted at them and they hopped out. It's mayhem. It happens every hour. "I had one...

Is the West waking up, or is it hoping too much? And is it too late anyway, when the genocide is accomplished? The Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev Justin Welby, has called on the UK government to offer asylum to thousands of Iraqi Christians driven from their homes by jihadists. He backed similar calls by several bishops. The vicar of Baghdad's Anglican church, Canon Andrew White, said the believers' flight is bringing "the end of Christianity very near" in Iraq. France has already done what the Archbishop proposes. Last week the country declared itself ready to give asylum to...

Arming a geopolitical foe is a grave mistake, especially one led by a cunning and utterly amoral character like Vladimir Putin. However, NATO-member France is on the verge of selling Putin's Russian regime two highly capable Mistral amphibious assault ships. The first warship, the Vladivostok, is almost ready for delivery. The second, ironically named the Sevastopol (Crimea's chief seaport), is under construction. Unfortunately, the two warships are ideal naval platforms for landing tanks and marines on Ukraine's Black Sea coast. Russia, while led by the likes of Putin, is a foe of the United States, NATO and the European Union....

France, the once atheistic land, has really began to find a spine in recent weeks. I reported a little over a week ago that France had banned Pro-Palestinian terror protests and leveled stiff penalties for violators. Now, word is that France is opening up their borders for asylum to Christians suffering persecution from Islamists in Iraq.

On more than one occasion, international media reporters working in Gaza have stood before the cameras showing the devastation from an Israeli strike only to have a rocket unexpectedly fired nearby toward Israel as they speak. (snip)Some reporters, such Finnish TV’s Aishi Zidan, have become furious when their disclosures of Hamas firing rockets from amidst civilians are picked up and used to support Israel. Others however, seem to learn from their experience. Consider the case of France 24 TV reporter Gallagher Fenwick. In the midst of his initial report, focused on the plight of Gazans under attack by Israel, he

PARIS: Israel’s right to security does not justify its actions in Gaza, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Monday, as he called for a political solution to be “imposed” by the international community. “How many more deaths will it take to stop what must be called the carnage in Gaza?” Fabius said in a statement. “The tradition of friendship between Israel and France is an old one and Israel’s right to security is total, but this right does not justify the killing of children and the slaughter of civilians.” The statement comes amid global outrage over an Israeli strike next...

With Europe’s Muslim 'immigrants' come ancient hatreds and a revival of anti-Semitism. The Bergische Synagogue in the German town of Wuppertal has a history with arson. The nearly 120-year-old synagogue was burned down during Kristallnacht in 1938. Rebuilt after World War II, it was targeted again about a week ago by arsonists who threw Molotov cocktails at the house of worship (although, thankfully, they failed to set it aflame). Welcome to the New Europe, where the street thugs have learned a lot from the Old Europe. Their protests of the Gaza War during the past few weeks haven’t been anti-Israel...

The lights are going out in the land of the Enlightenment. The violent, anti-Semitic nightmare Europe thought it would never see again after the Nazi Holocaust is raising its ugly head once more, this time on French soil. Jew-hatred, mostly among France’s six and a half million Muslims, is reaching such threatening proportions that an increasing number of the country’s 500,000 Jews feel forced to leave their native land to ensure their safety. At one Jewish agency that assists French Jews to emigrate to Israel the telephone, it was reported, “does not stop ringing. “For 2014, one will have to...

A reporter for France 24, Gallagher Fenwick, was reporting from Gaza Friday and explaining how its residents' “food security” has been affected by the fighting there, when something unexpected happened. "This was a rocket,”, a rattled Fenwick told his audience, “this was a rocket, rockets were just shot right next to where we are standing, so I'm not going to stand here very long because usually there's a strike just moments after this occurs.” The occurrence proves Israel's contention that Hamas fires rockets from among civilians, using them as human shields and manipulating any civilian casualties that are thus incurred,...

A team of archaeologists working on a site at Saint-Aubin-des-Champs in France have discovered the remains of a Merovingian necropolis dating to the 5th -7th centuries AD... The graves were found at a variety of depths with some up to 1.50 m deep. Each burial contained the deceased once contained within a wooden coffin, now completely rotted away. An examination of the contents of these burials allowed them to be split into three main groups or periods of inhumation. Fewer grave goods are in evidence after 5th century AD as the population has become Christian. 7th century AD burials are...

Buried secrets of life in medieval Leith have been uncovered after the results of a five-year project to analyse bodies discovered during an archaeological dig were unveiled... the remains of almost 400 men, women and children were discovered on the Constitution Street site – previously a section of the South Leith Parish Church’s graveyard – during preparation work for the trams in 2009... bones which have been dated between the 14th and 17th centuries. One skeleton, of a woman aged between 25 and 35 who died anywhere between 1360 and 1435, was found to be 4ft 11in, 1.5 inches shorter...

U.S. naval ship vendors could learn a thing or two from the French, as they’ve thus far fought off extensive American efforts to intrude on France’s niche market in small surface combatants. It’s almost embarrassing. Despite American efforts to sell the Littoral Combat Ship, the French Gowind-Class corvette “family of ships” has quietly taken big bites out of the LCS’s international market. With the Gowind ships, France has simply out-hustled the LCS program, picking up two big orders from Malaysia and Egypt–and DCNS is actively looking to seize other key markets. The United States should take a good long look...

Translated: A search was conducted tonight at the drug squad of the Paris police, at 36 quai Goldsmiths, after the disappearance of some 50 kilograms of cocaine. The men of the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN, "police the police"), assisted by specialized dogs, investigating the disappearance. The drug was, according to our information, seizure early July after the dismantling of a network of traffickers Senegalese gang. It was found in the 18th and 19th districts of the capital in cars, hidden through highly sophisticated systems. A flight of a value of € 3.5 million Police sources, this is...

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6a09af64-18a7-11e4-a51a-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz397k1epX7 The growing threat to France’s mainstream political leaders posed by Marine Le Pen, head of France’s far-right National Front, has been underscored by an opinion poll putting her in the lead for the first time in the race for the next presidential election. The charismatic Ms Le Pen has overtaken former centre-right president Nicolas Sarkozy in voting intentions if the first...

The Archbishop of Lyon has travelled to Iraq to show the country’s Christians his solidarity. “I will say the Our Father in Aramaic until you are finally able to return home. French visas are not the solution” BARBARIN ON HIS VISIT TO IRAQ (PHOTO BY: LYON.CATHOLIQUE.FR) Rome On Saturday he was out in the streets of Mosul demonstrating, in an act of solidarity towards the city’s Christians who are forced to flee their homes. On Monday he flew to Erbil in person to go and meet Christians. The Archbishop of Lyon, Philippe Barbarin, one of the French Catholic Church’s most...