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As the wait for Project 75 India gets longer, and as an RFP gets more elusive, both France and Russia are in discussions with the Indian Navy to supply two submarines quickly off the shelf. As SP's had reported last year, France's DCNS has already offered to quickly build two Scorpene attack submarines and supply them. Reports now suggest that Rosoboronexport has made a similar offer. In such an instance, the Amur 1650 is on offer, and would be the first of the type ever built. The tantalising underwater battle between the French and Russians has veered from one side...

A French politician was so upset after seeing a Muslim woman sitting on a French beach fully clothed and in a headscarf that she decided to take a picture and write a provocative opinion piece on Facebook. In her rant former minister Nadine Morano, from the UMP party, said Muslims should go elsewhere if they don’t want to integrate. The former French deputy used a picture of former sex icon Brigitte Bardot alongside that of the veiled woman on the beach to make her point that France has a proud history of women being free to dress how they wish....

Two base jumpers, including an Australian, were killed in separate accidents in the French Alps on Sunday (local time) after parachuting off mountains in their wingsuits. Their deaths bring to four the number of people killed taking part in the extreme sport in France this month. ... On August 6, two base jumpers, one from Switzerland, the other from France, died in similar accidents in the Alps and French Pyrenees. ... Unlike skydiving, which involves leaping from an aircraft, base jumpers take off with a parachute from a fixed point, usually a cliff or a bridge. The sport carries high...

On July 19, 2014, the P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China, coordinated by EU High Representative Catherine Ashton) and Iran affirmed that they will continue to implement the commitments described in the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) and the U.S. government has extended through November 24, 2014, the sanctions relief provided for in the JPOA. This extended relief comes into effect on July 21, 2014. The following documents are key components of the implementation of the JPOA as extended. Guidance Relating to the Provision Of Certain Temporary Sanctions Relief in Order to Implement the Joint...

The European Union (EU) on Friday offered to take charge of Gaza's border crossings and work to prevent illegal arms flows, according to The Associated Press (AP). The EU is prepared "to play a strong role" in managing the crossings while assuring that Israel's security is guaranteed, said the 28-nation bloc's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton. The EU offered to reactivate and extend its monitoring of the Rafiah crossing with Egypt and other border posts, provided there will be a UN Security Council mandate for the mission and a sustainable cease-fire in place, according to AP. In addition, the EU...

US drones fired on an Islamic extremist mortar position in northern Iraq on Tuesday to protect Kurdish forces battling to rescue a group of Yazidi civilian refugees, the military said. The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), the region's most powerful Sunni jihadist group, has driven thousands of members of the Yazidi minority from their homes and is besieging the refugees on an exposed mountain. Last week, the United States launched an air campaign to break the siege of Mount Sinjar, bring humanitarian relief to the Yazidis and support Kurdish troops protecting their capital Arbil. "US military...

Or so says French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius: French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has a message about Iraq for Barack Obama: Get back to the White House and do something. 'I know it is the holiday period in our Western countries,' Fabius told a radio interviewer Tuesday in France,' but when people are dying, you must come back from vacation.' Full-time workers in France are guaranteed a whopping five weeks of paid vacation every year, making his plea all the more urgent. Obama is on a family and golfing holiday in a ritzy neighborhood of Martha's Vineyard but says he...

France has seen an explosion in the number of households requesting a deferral or cancellation of part or all of their tax bill in recent years. The country’s public finance body, the DGFiP, says there was a 22% rise in the number of such requests between 2011 and 2013, from around 177,000 to more than 216,000. Over the same period, the number of reminders for payment sent out by the French government has soared from 4.5 million to nearly 10 million. …

France’s army of roadside speed cameras may be more numerous than ever, but the revenue they pulled in through fines was almost €70 million less than the government expected last year. […] French newspaper Les Echos reported that the 4,150 speed cameras that litter the country’s roads yielded €579,300 last year. While that sounds a healthy amount to be taking out of the pockets of speeding motorists, it was less than in 2012, when rogue drivers boosted state coffers to the tune of €620 million. […] What makes it worse for the government, whose finances seem to be Europe’s biggest...

* Obama is on Martha's Vineyard while Iraq undergoes regime change and terrorists slaughter ethnic and religious minorities * Calling heads of state to lobby participation in humanitarian assistance program – in between golf and fundraising * Washington Post columnist wrote that the president 'risks fueling the impression that he is detached as the world burns' French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has a message about Iraq for Barack Obama: Get back to the White House and do something. 'I know it is the holiday period in our Western countries,' Fabius told a radio interviewer Tuesday in France,' but when people...

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