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Nicolas Sarkozy, who is fighting to regain the presidency that he lost to François Hollande in 2012, has finally come out of the closet as a climate skeptic. Speaking in front of business leaders, Sarkozy, a candidate for Les Republicains party primary in November, told them that man alone was not to blame for climate change. “Climate has been changing for four billion years,” the former president said according to AFP. “Sahara has become a desert; it isn’t because of industry. You need to be as arrogant as men are to believe we changed the climate.” …

Insanity Shortly after the Nice attack, in which an Islamic radical killed 86 people by driving a truck through a crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France would have to “learn to live with terrorism.” As you might expect, the remark landed with a thud, since people who appease terrorists have a tendency not to live at all. Still, France seems hell-bent on walking a self-destructive path that leans heavily on playing defense. Now, as Reuters reports , we know that the challenges created by such a strategy are growing by the day. Unless things...

It was 1am and we were just leaving dinner at a friend’s house behind Montmartre. We were tired, but the taxi we’d called for never appeared. So we headed down to the main road to try to hail a cab, along with a number of other stragglers now wishing, like us, they’d kept Metro hours. Within minutes, several men had urinated in plain sight very near to us; one had clambered up on a little raised platform with some shrubbery on it just to do so. Nearby, a woman yelled in French “You’re no better than beasts!” but the beasts...

First there was the burqa, then the burkini and now comes - the burkirndl. A woman in Germany has modified her traditional Bavarian dress - called a dirndl - after converting to Islam. Renate Hoffmann, 63 from the small village of Fensterbach was once like her neighbours: God-fearing, Christian worshipping, singing in the local choir, enjoying a beer at the local festivals and sporting the dresses designed to showcase the female figure.

Two 15-year-old boys reportedly intending to carry out terror attacks have been arrested in Paris. The first teen was arrested in the 20th arrondissement of Paris on Wednesday morning, sources close to the investigation told the BFM TV channel. A search was being carried out at the boy’s home following his arrest, reports say. It is believed he was not previously known to police or intelligence services. The boy had allegedly offered to carry out a terror attack and had been in touch with Rashid Kassim, a French jihadist who has been linked to several other recent attacks in France....

Donald Trump wants to build a "big, beautiful wall" to stop illegal immigrants — but Britain and other European nations are already doing it. The U.K. government has announced plans to begin constructing a 13-foot concrete roadside barrier at the French port of Calais, where truck drivers have been targeted by migrants trying to sneak through the Channel Tunnel.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Sunday there would be new attacks in France but proposals by former president Nicolas Sarkozy to boost security was not the right way to deal with threats. The French capital was put on high alert last week when French officials said they dismantled a "terrorist cell" that planned to attack a Paris railway station under the direction of Islamic State. "This week at least two attacks were foiled," Manuel Valls said in an interview with Europe 1 radio and Itele television on Sunday. Valls said there were 15,000 people on the radar of...

PARIS (September 12, 2016) — France's latest efforts to reduce pollution will also affect nature lovers hitting the countryside for an outdoor meal: Under a controversial new ban, picnickers won't be able to buy plastic goblets to drink their beloved wine, or plastic knives to make ham and butter baguette sandwiches. Life in the office will be different, too, as coffee machines will no longer cough out plastic cups, as part of the country's plans to be more environmentally friendly.

Full title: Deeply unpopular Hollande calls for France to 'embrace' Islam and rejects calls for a nationwide burkini ban Islam can co-exist with secularism, President Francois Hollande said Thursday, warning in a speech seen as preparing the ground for a re-election bid that the anti-terror fight should not undermine French values. The deeply unpopular Hollande has yet to announce whether he will run for a second term next year, but is widely expected to be a candidate. In a passionate plea for tolerance, he defended the country's Muslim minority following a vitriolic debate on the banning of the Islamic burkini...

French authorities have charged a woman in relation to an alleged ISIS plot to attack this city's famous Notre Dame Cathedral last week, the Paris prosecutor's office said. The woman, whose name was given as Ornella G., was charged Saturday night with "terrorist criminal association to commit crimes against people" and "attempted assassinations as an organized gang in connection with a terrorist enterprise," the office said. The prosecutor, Francois Molins, whose office handles terrorism investigations, said Friday that the woman's fingerprints were found last Sunday in a car containing a half-dozen gas cylinders and left parked in front of Notre...

ACTRESS Brigitte Bardot has led calls for Muslims in France not to slaughter animals in public during this weekend's Eid celebrations. ... In France the government has been providing skips because many followers discard their carcasses to rot in the streets after they have killed them. ... Thousands of Muslims order sheep and then go to their local abattoirs to kill them to celebrate the feast of the slaughter, while others still carry out the acts in the street. However, Ms Bardot, 81, has called for practising Muslims to avoid making religious sacrifices in public particularly after terror attacks in...

Nobody yet knows the winner of France’s presidential election next year, but the smart money is on one loser: The three-percent cap on government deficits enshrined in eurozone rules. A bedrock of euro stability for some, the requirement to keep government deficits to below three percent of gross domestic product (GDP) is seen by many as an insufferable strait-jacket on governments wanting to spend their way out of economic sluggishness. Many French politicians, on the left and right, wonder aloud whether France should start ignoring the EU Commission and three-percent defenders, including powerhouse Germany, and break free. “The European left,...

The following video from France shows an argument between the mayor of Boussy-St.-Antoine and one of his constituents. Boussy-St.-Antoine is where three women associated with the plot to bomb Notre Dame Cathedral were arrested the other day. The old man is obviously disturbed at present trends in Modern Multicultural France. The mayor’s response, however, is condescending and dismissive. Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

France and Germany are preparing joint proposals for a “more active and more useful” European defense policy, the French defense ministry told AFP on Friday. […] The Franco-German document proposes the establishment of a European defense headquarters, a common satellite surveillance system and the sharing of logistics and military medical resources, according to the Saturday edition of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. There would be a tighter circle of EU members for some defense projects where it proves impossible to gain agreement from all, the paper added, citing the document. …

Two women have been assaulted and their husbands severely beaten on the French Riviera, after a gang of “youths” called the women “whores” because they were wearing shorts. Attacks on women in ‘revealing clothes’ in Toulon, where the assault occurred, are becoming more common with residents fearing the emergence of a “morality police”.

With next year’s presidential elections looming large, the French government will make a raft of tax cuts for households and businesses. France’s government unveiled Friday plans to lower taxes on households and companies, as the ruling Socialists lined up their budget for the 2017 election year. The gesture to households would “take the form of a reduction in income taxes by 20 percent for the middle class,” Finance Minister Michel Sapin told AFP. Around 5 million households would benefit from the €1 billion ($1.1 billion) reduction in income taxes, worth about €200 per family. …

A French immigrant family that voluntarily moved to Great Britain is now complaining about their housing conditions, saying the five-bedroom home they were offered courtesy of the British taxpayer is too small because it “doesn’t even have a dining room.” The Daily Mail reports the Sube family moved from France to Britain in 2012 so the father, 33-year-old Arnold Mballe, could study mental health nursing at the University of Bedfordshire. His wife, Jeanne, is reportedly a stay-at-home mother who, like her husband, is not employed. The couple has eight children. After having been housed by the Luton Borough Council first...

French police were searching Thursday for two "radicalised" women linked to a car containing six gas cylinders found in central Paris, with four people already held as part of the investigation. Two new suspects, aged around 20, were arrested late Wednesday in connection with the grey Peugeot 607 found abandoned at the weekend near Notre Dame cathedral, a major tourist draw.

French President François Hollande is hinting that he could seek a second term in elections next year, even though he is the least popular French leader in modern times. The Socialist Hollande gave a sweeping speech Thursday laying out his vision of democracy and repeatedly suggesting that he is eyeing a re-election bid. “I will not let the image of France be spoiled … in the coming months or the coming years,” he said. […] “I will not let Europe collapse or dissolve; I will not let it be seized by nationalism, borders, extremism,” he said, a reference to recent...

Arson suspected after a building set to house 90 migrants caught fire this morning, the same day that Paris revealed plans for its first official migrant camps. The fire ignited at the migrant accommodation in Forges-les-Bains, southwest of Paris, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, reported to BFM TV. […] The building, which was set to house 90 migrants when it opens in October, had proved to be highly contentious in the local community. The night before it was burned, authorities had held a meeting about the center while around 100 locals protested outside. …