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Muslims in France voted overwhelmingly for Emmanuel Macron, with 85 per cent of Muslim ballots going towards keeping the French President in power. 85 per cent of votes from Muslims in France during Sunday’s general election went to keeping Emmanuel Macron in power, a poll seen by a French Catholic paper has found. It stands in stark contrast with the incumbent’s overall vote tally, with the reelected president winning just over 58 per cent of total ballots. According to a poll conducted on behalf of the Catholic La Croix magazine, around 85 per cent of Muslim voters gave their ballot...

Between 2014 and 2020, the number of children reported being exploited and sold by sex traffickers in France increased by 600 per cent, according to the country’s human trafficking agency. The French Central Office for the Suppression of Human Trafficking (OCRTEH) revealed that the number of minors reported as being exploited as child prostitutes was 28 in 2014, but the number rose to 198 in 2020, representing a 600 per cent increase in just six years. One of the areas in which the number of child prostitution cases has especially multiplied in recent years is Lille, where prosecutor Carole Étienne...

This Tuesday, the French celebrated Bastille Day, the mob attack on a Parisian prison that has come to symbolize the French Revolution, a period of massive violence that produced nothing other than a lot of dead Frenchmen. Their revolution was the screech of a mob, much as we are seeing in several of our own cities and towns today. So let’s review this absurdly celebrated event. As is common with mob violence the storming of the Bastille was set off by a rumor. People began to whisper that the impotent, indecisive king, Louis XVI, was going to attack the new...

A BBC World Service opinion poll has found sharply higher overseas approval ratings for US President Barack Obama than Republican challenger Mitt Romney. … France was the most strongly pro-Obama (72%). …

Quelle horreur! Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has been skewered in a new political attack ad - for speaking French. The ad, released by rival Newt Gingrich, seeks to draw unflattering parallels between Mr Romney and another Massachusetts politician, John Kerry. Entitled The French Connection, it features a clip of Mr Romney talking in French when he ran the Winter Olympics. Video at link

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - FedEx Corp. said Tuesday it has canceled its order for 10 Airbus A380 jets, the new jumbo double-decker plane that has been dogged by numerous delays. The company's FedEx Express unit has ordered 15 Boeing Co. 777 Freighters, and has options to purchase an additional 15, FedEx said in a news release. The company cited Airbus' production delays as the reason for the decision.

PARIS (AFP) - The French navy made a red-faced admission that it had lost a multi-million dollar sonar navigation device after its cable ripped in stormy waters. Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie confirmed a report in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine, and said an investigation had been launched into how the three-million-euro (3.7-million-dollars) device was mislaid. "An inquiry is underway to determine whether a technical or a human error is at the origin of this problem," she told reporters. Le Canard Enchaine reported that the captain of the De Grasse frigate, decided against his lieutenants' advice to try out the...

The inauguration of George W. Bush has left-wingers all over the world foaming at the mouth for the usual reason: Mr. Bush makes them feel cheap. In Paris, American voters living overseas sponsored an "anti-inaugural" that made the French proud of their little tail-wagging guests. A leading French newspaper (the famously obnoxious Le Monde) explained that, "in the eyes of Bush the criterion for tyranny is above all hostility towards the United States." In Britain, the Daily Star summarized Mr. Bush's second inaugural address this way: "Have I got nukes for you!" At home, left-wing Democrats noted that the president...

French 'calamity' carrier heads for sea - again By Julian Coman in Paris (Filed: 11/03/2001) ONE of the most embarrassing sagas in French maritime history took a further twist last week when France's most accident-prone warship began the countdown to another attempt to take to the high seas. In the Ministry of Defence and on the quayside at Toulon, where the 40,000-ton aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle had been dry-docked, sceptical observers crossed their fingers and prayed for a fair wind. The idea of France's first nuclear-powered carrier was dreamt up in 1986. It soon became a pet project of...

Maybe it's a matter of respect. Sooner or later you have to go up against the best if you want to be taken seriously. That could be one reason France's Peugeot finally is eyeing a return to the United States -- the world's most competitive automotive market. Since facing down poor quality and productivity issues in the late 1990s, Peugeot has been on a tear. Its once vastly underutilized factories now are operating at an overheated pace to meet demand in Western Europe, where it has picked up a full point of market penetration in the last year alone. In...

Sunday, 6 October, 2002, 09:36 GMT 10:36 UK Oil tanker explodes off Yemen A French-owned oil tanker is on fire off the coast of Yemen after an explosion on board. Yemeni officials say they do not consider the blast an act of sabotage, but a diplomat at the French embassy told the AFP news agency it was believed to be a terrorist attack. "The oil tanker was rammed by a small boat stuffed with explosives," the French Vice-Consul, Marcel Goncalves, said. The tanker burst into flame as it headed towards the port of al Dabah on the eastern coast of...