The painting is on loan for an exhibition that opens this weekend in the Provençal city where the painter became obsessed with the night sky and eventually descended into madness
In September 1888, shortly before he descended into the madness that led him to cut off part of his left ear, Vincent van Gogh completed one of his early starry night paintings. Fascinated by astronomy and the solar system, the insomniac painter had obsessed over the work in his mind, asking a fellow painter: “When shall I ever paint the starry sky, this painting that keeps haunting me?”
Now the scene he finally captured, Starry Night over the Rhône, has been returned to Arles, where he painted it, for the first time in 136 years.
Woman from Riposte Alimentaire arrested after sticking poster on impressionist painter’s Coquelicots
A climate activist has been arrested for sticking an adhesive poster on a Monet painting at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to draw attention to global heating, a police source said.
The action by the woman, a member of Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) – a group of environmental activists and defenders of sustainable food production – was seen in a video posted on X, placing a blood-red poster over Coquelicots (Poppies) by the French impressionist painter Claude Monet.
Interior ministry says 18-year-old Chechen suspected of planning ‘Islamist-inspired’ attack in Saint-Étienne
French security services have arrested a Chechen teenager suspected of plotting an “Islamist-inspired” attack on a football game during this summer’s Olympics, the interior ministry has said.
The domestic intelligence agency DGSI arrested an 18-year-old of Chechen origin in Saint-Étienne, in south-east France, the ministry said on Friday, calling it the “first foiled attack against the Olympic Games”.
Marine Le Pen’s rupture with her German allies reveals a tactical fault line between the ‘old’ right and the ‘new’
Momentous change is afoot within Europe’s far right. Just as voters across 27 countries prepare to go to the polls in EU elections, a split over the German far right’s allegiance to the Third Reich is driving a realignment.
The far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European parliament last week expelled the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) faction from its ranks after a furore involving the leading AfD candidate Maximilian Krah.
On the eve of D-day, the wartime British PM drafted a letter that could have ended De Gaulle’s political career
It is a letter that might have changed the course of European history- had it been sent.
In early June 1944, a vast armada was gathering on the south coast of England with the task of liberating France and, despite concerns about leaks from the French camp, the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, had invited Gen Charles de Gaulle to fly to London on his personal plane from Algiers.
Edouard Baer says he ‘does not recognise himself’ in allegations of harassment and assault by six women
Edouard Baer, a French actor best known for playing Asterix on screen, has become the latest star to feel the impact of sexual assault allegations as his live show in Paris was cancelled.
Baer, who played the fictitious Gaul in the 2012 blockbuster Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia alongside Gérard Depardieu, was accused by six women of harassment and sexual assault in a joint article by online news site Mediapart and the feminist website Cheek last week.
Gabriel Attal cautions against backing Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which leads solidly in polls for European elections
The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has said voters choosing the far right in the European elections next week risk becoming like British people who regret backing Brexit.
“Don’t be like the British who cried after Brexit,” he told RTL radio on Thursday. “A large majority of British people regret Brexit and sometimes regret not turning out to vote, or voting for something that was negative for their country.
Political funding in France has swerved to the right, with private donations to the small nationalist group backed by Marine Le Pen’s niece overtaking those raised by President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling party.
Reconquête received €5.5m (£4.7m) from private donors in 2022, the year Macron secured a second term after a final round showdown against Le Pen, analysis by the Guardian of the annual reports of the 15 main French parties shows.
The unrest that has gripped Kanaky-New Caledonia is the direct result of Emmanuel Macron’s partisan and stubborn political manoeuvring to derail the process towards self-determination in my homeland.
The deadly riots that erupted two weeks ago in the capital, Noumea, were sparked by an electoral reform bill voted through in the French National Assembly, in Paris.
Deaths of members of British al-Hilli family and French cyclist in remote layby have baffled detectives since 2012
Detectives from France’s cold case unit have ordered DNA analysis of evidence in the unsolved killing of a British family and a French cyclist in a remote Alpine village 12 years ago.
Clothes belonging to one of the victims, cigarette butts found at the scene and pieces of the gun used in the killings are to be tested in the hopes of solving the mystery of the murders, described by the local prosecutor as “an act of gross savagery”.
On a state visit to Germany, the French president called for an EU reset to combat the threat of the radical right. He should be listened to
Ahead of the most consequential European elections of recent times, the signs of a significant rightward shift are unmistakable. In France, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National is now polling more than double its nearest rivals and looks set to record a disturbingly decisive victory. In Germany, the far-right AfD is out-polling all three parties in the governing coalition, despite being embroiled in a series of high-profile scandals.
Whether such parties will be capable of forming a cohesive force after the election is another matter. As a Guardian investigation into their funding reveals on Thursday, the financial backing is there. But the pan-European radical right is split into fractious and rivalrous blocs, and internally divided over issues such as the war in Ukraine. The AfD has just been expelled from the Identity and Democracy group, after its former lead candidate, Maximilian Krah, sought to exculpate the actions of some members of the Nazi SS. Nevertheless, the rise of nationalist, populist and Eurosceptic parties across the continent has become a defining phenomenon of the times.
The actor, who became the first transgender woman to win the best actress prize at Cannes, had earlier dedicated her award to ‘all the trans people who are suffering’
The first transgender woman to be awarded the best actress prize at the Cannes film festival filed a legal complaint on Wednesday over a “sexist insult” from a far-right politician after her win.
Karla Sofía Gascón and co-stars jointly received the accolade on Saturday for their performances in French auteur Jacques Audiard’s Mexico-set narco musical Emilia Perez.
From potentially pivotal EU elections to a series of sporting extravaganzas, Europe will be the focus of the world’s attention over the next few months. A good job our coverage is stronger than ever, then
Europe’s going to be big news this summer. Big news deserves a big response and from the Guardian, it will get it.
In early June, elections for the European parliament are expected to bring a surge in support for populist, far-right and nationalist parties. The results could end up changing the face – and direction – of the EU.
A parliamentary employee’s home and offices raided amid accusations they were ‘paid to promote Russian propaganda’
Ukrainian military shot down 13 drones out of 14 launched by Russia in an overnight attack on three regions, the country’s air force said on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday.
Drone debris fell on energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s northwestern region of Rivne, governor Oleksandr Koval said on Telegram. The attack triggered a defence mechanism that cut power to some localities, although it has since been restored, Reuters reported.
Archaeologists trying to determine whether animals were killed in battle or buried as part of a ritual
French archaeologists have uncovered nine large graves containing the remains of horses from up to 2,000 years ago, in a find described as “extraordinary”.
The 28 stallions, all around six years old, had been buried shortly after they died, each placed in pits on their right side with their head facing south. Nearby a grave contained the remains of two dogs, heads facing west.
Former French president’s bike, on which he was snapped riding to visit his lover in 2014, sells for double its listed price
It was the vehicle that sparked a French presidential scandal, the end of a secret love affair and legal action from a bodyguard nicknamed “Croissant Man”.
The former French president François Hollande’s scooter was sold for more than €20,000 (£17,000) at auction this weekend, double its listed price and many times more its secondhand value.
French far right leader suggests alliance of ID and ECR groups, including Italian PM’s Brothers of Italy
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has suggested the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, join forces with her in a new alliance, as the EU’s resurgent but divided nationalist parties gear up for European parliamentary elections next month.
The move came as European centre-left parties reiterated a warning to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, that they would not support her bid for a second term if it entailed the backing of hard-right parties – including Meloni’s.
Event aims to reverse decline in local people visiting boulevard, which has become hub for wealthy tourists and designer stores
Thousands of people have gathered on the Champs-Élysées for a giant free picnic organised by a committee of local traders and businesses fighting to halt the slow decline of the boulevard long known as “the most beautiful avenue in the world”.
Once a favourite promenade for Parisians, the Champs-Élysées has in recent years been steadily abandoned by local people as popular stores and cinemas have given way to luxury boutiques and the avenue has become the preserve of wealthy tourists.
This revealing memoir about the author’s 20 years in the City of Light identifies the complex codes of behaviour that newcomers are obliged to master
In 1990 the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo published a short essay called Paris, Capital of the 21st Century. By the end of the 20th century, he had decided that Paris was exhausted. The city of avant gardes, ideas, revolutions and class struggle, which had defined so much of European and world history, was now no more than a museum. As almost a lifelong Parisian and a lover of the place, Goytisolo desperately wanted Paris in the 21st century to retake its place as a great metropolis. But this could only happen, he argued, if Paris reinvented itself by “de-Europeanising” itself. By this, he meant it had to look towards the world beyond Europe, welcoming its sometimes dissident non-French, non-European voices to make itself a truly global city. Only in this way could Paris be brought back to life.
More than 30 years on from that essay, Simon Kuper has written a book about what it has actually been like to live in Paris during the past two decades. I have lived in the city for exactly the same period, in the working-class district of Pernety, and seen all the changes that Kuper has. The view from Pernety and the view from his hipster right bank world have not always been the same. He often underestimates, for example, the severity of racial and class tensions in Paris. To his credit, however, he is always aware of his limitations as a foreigner and as an apprentice Parisian.
Nearly 80 years since the Allied invasion, the testimony of Charles Shay, a 99-year-old former US army medic, reminds us of the significance of that day
Next month will see the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, when about 156,000 troops crossed the Channel to fight their way on to five Normandy beaches.
No one who took part in that day, 6 June 1944, the largest seaborne assault in history, would ever forget the experience. Indeed, many were haunted by memories of it for the rest of their lives. Yet no matter how momentous an event might be – in this case it amounted to nothing less than the securing of western Europe’s liberty – a kind of societal amnesia inevitably deepens with each new generation.
The bills of fare for dinners with kings, presidents and dictators show how tastes have changed over 150 years
On Friday, 22 May 1896, guests of Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle had a lot on their plates. A handwritten menu shows “Her Majesty’s Dinner” offered soup with vermicelli, trout meunière, boudin (black pudding), quails, ducklings and spinach with croutons followed by peaches and cream, then cheese. For those still peckish, hot and cold meats including pork tongue and beef were laid out on a side table.
The finely decorated card is one of 4,600 menus in a unique collection being sold in Paris on Friday, spanning 150 years of high-society dining from the late 19th century.
Demonstrators gathered outside Paris meetings of energy giant and Amundi, with some forcing their way into fund manager’s tower block
The head of TotalEnergies has told shareholders that new oilfields have to be developed to meet global demand, as the annual meetings of the French energy giant and one of its biggest shareholders were picketed by climate activists.
Police said they detained 173 people among hundreds who gathered outside the Paris headquarters of Amundi, one of the world’s biggest investment managers and a major TotalEnergies shareholder.
Organisers expect 75% of identified bacterial pollution will be gone by the time the starting gun fires for the open water events
Beside a sign saying “No swimming”, Pierre Fuzeau defiantly pulled on his swimming cap, slipped into the green water of the Ourcq canal on Paris’s northern edge, and set off with a strong front-crawl.
The 66-year-old company director regularly joins his open-water swimming group for well-organised illegal dips, including in the River Seine, where swimming has been banned since 1923 largely as a result of the health risk from unclean water and bacteria from human waste.
Destiny’s Child singer confronted usher at Marcello Mio premiere earlier this week
Kelly Rowland, the Destiny’s Child singer who has gone on to have a successful acting and solo singing career, has addressed a highly publicised incident at the Cannes film festival where she argued with a festival usher, suggesting she was racially profiled.
Rowland was attending the premiere of Catherine Deneuve film Marcello Mio on Tuesday, where she smiled and waved to fans and photographers on the red carpet. She was then led up stairs by a pair of ushers who formed a barrier with their arms behind her. Rowland turned to one of the ushers and spoke sternly to her with an outstretched finger.
Electoral reform was the spark for unrest, but Indigenous protesters say they are fighting to correct years of widening inequality
“I don’t know why our fate is being discussed by people who don’t even live here.”
The 52-year-old Indigenous Kanak – who gave his name as Mike – spoke from a roadblock just north of New Caledonia’s capital, in the hours before France’s president arrived in the Pacific territory that has been paralysed by violent protests.
Cannes film festival Gilles Lelouche’s new movie aims for a Springsteenesque blue-collar energy but buckles under the weight of its own naivety
Gilles Lelouche’s new film is a giant operatic crime drama of star-crossed lovers and hurt feelings; it’s very French, but aiming for some blue-collar Springsteen energy. There are some good performances, and a very serviceable armed robbery scene. But Beating Hearts suffers from a lack of subtlety and bloat, with an increasingly insistent cry-bully sensitive-macho ethic, and a colossally inflated final section belatedly reassuring us of the film’s belief in the power and importance of love. In the end it is sentimental and naive, particularly about the legal consequences of beating your husband half to death in a phone box, however abusive he has been. And I had a strange taste in my mouth after a late scene in which the heroine, working on the checkout of a supermarket where her boyfriend is employed in the loading bay, coolly tells the obnoxious manager who’s been yelling at him for lateness, that her man is an ex-con who could go around to his house to scare him and his family if he wished. (Is the audience supposed to give a pro-underdog cheer?)
Lelouche, with co-writers Audrey Diwan, Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini, has adapted Irish author Neville Thompson’s 1997 novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK?, transplanting the action from Ballyfermot near Dublin to a northern French town dominated by its oil refinery. Clotaire is a tough kid from the neighbourhood; he is played by Malik Frikah as a teen and later by François Civil as a grownup gangster. He and his other dropout mates amuse themselves by hanging around shouting facetious abuse at the girls getting off the school bus in the morning; this includes Jackie, played by Mallory Wanecque and later by Adèle Exarchopoulos. They meet-cute when she fearlessly stands up to him and talks back; there is a spark and soon they are deeply in love, with badass Clotaire doing wild and crazy things like stealing a box of Jackie’s favourite kind of pudding for her from the food wholesaler’s van.
While Jackie works hard at her studies, Clotaire gets involved with a gang run by scary drug dealer La Brosse (Benoît Poelvoorde) and he winds up going to jail for 10 years, taking the rap for La Brosse’s son shooting a security guard; he only got caught because he hung back while the others made their getaway, nobly trying to revive the fatally injured man. Of course, he loyally keeps quiet and does his time, but feels he is the innocent, injured party. No-one points out to him that as an armed member of a gang collectively committed to violent crime his innocence isn’t quite as pristine as all that. He comes out to find La Brosse’s creepy son running the show and Jackie now married to a beta-male salaryman, trying to convince herself she’s happy – and his emotions boil over.
The first act of the film has verve, showing the teen destinies of Jackie and Clotaire at first thrillingly united in rebellion and romance. The next act shows Clotaire using his inside knowledge of the oil refinery (where his father had just been laid off) to help La Brosse steal the wage delivery; it’s the apex of his criminal career, and that too has energy and punch. But then his post-prison life becomes uglier and meaner and then very unconvincing about what happens when you have a romantic road-to-Damascus change of heart about your criminal career. (The police might still want to question you about your recent unfinished criminal dealings, and your former colleagues in crime will be nervous about what you might say to them.) Civil and Exarchopoulos (and Frikah and Wanecque) give it everything they’ve got and that is a great deal. But this can’t prevent Beating Hearts being an unsatisfying experience.
Three top officers close to Bashar al-Assad are on trial in absentia over the deaths of a student and his father
Witnesses have told a Paris court how children and elderly people considered enemies of the ruling Syrian regime were tortured in a notorious military prison, at the trial of three high-ranking officers close to the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
The three are being tried in absentia for crimes against humanity and war crimes in connection with the deaths of two French-Syrian dual nationals, Patrick Dabbagh, a 20-year-old student, and his father, 48.
I took to the red carpet alongside other activists to highlight sexual violence. Now women of colour need a bigger place in the movement
The 77th Cannes film festival reaches its climax on Saturday when all eyes will be on the Croisette, as the winners of the prestigious Palme d’Or are announced. Hollywood greats such as Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda and Greta Gerwig have been in town, but this year, I found myself on the red carpet, hand in hand with some of the most courageous women in the business.
Behind the facade of movie-star glamour and fashionable edge, there are burning issues that have been agitating the grande famille du cinéma in France for years – but have been kept out of sight. The Cannes festival, as a symbol of the French film establishment, can no longer shy away from them.
Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist
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French security forces will remain in New Caledonia as long as necessary, Emmanuel Macron has said, after France’s president arrived in the Pacific territory in an urgent attempt to calm tensions after more than a week of riots that have left six dead.
Macron was due on Thursday to hold a day of talks aiming to turn the page on deadly riots, sparked by anger among Indigenous Kanak people over constitutional changes backed by Paris that would give voting rights to tens of thousands of non-Indigenous residents. Local leaders fear the change will dilute the Kanak vote and undermine longstanding efforts to secure independence.
The lead candidate for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the European parliamentary election has resigned from the German far-right party’s leadership, as growing divisions between Europe’s nationalist parties threaten to undermine their expected gains in next month’s ballot.
Maximilian Krah, who last weekend told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”, said in a statement on Wednesday that his comments were “being misused as a pretext to damage our party”.
Reports say investigators looking into possibility that Russian security services ordered vandalism in Paris
France is investigating whether graffiti painted on the wall of Paris’s Holocaust memorial last week was a destabilisation operation coordinated from Russia, French media have reported.
On the morning of 14 May, about 20 spray-painted red hand symbols were discovered on one of the memorial’s exterior walls, which is dedicated to honouring individuals who saved Jews from persecution during the Nazi occupation of France.
Director Quarxx’s underworld car-crash drama chances little humour as it dolorously teases out morals and metaphysics
This Stygian jolly, in which dumbstruck driver Nathan (Hugo Dillon) finds himself out of the mortal coil after colliding with a motorcycle, has some of the heavy-metal-album-cover energy of Bill and Ted gawping at hell’s gnarly sights. But French director and multimedia artist Quarxx’s metaphysical vista is so unredeemably bleak that you find yourself wishing for San Dimas’s finest’s “You’re dead, dude!” amazement, or at least the odd air-guitar riff.
Pandemonium squeezes out a little angry and disoriented humour at its start as Nathan, confronted with his shattered corpse, finds himself squabbling on a mountain road with Daniel (Arben Bajraktaraj), the motorcyclist he killed instantly. But when two disembodied gateways – a celestial blue forcefield and gigantic red double-doors – appear next to them, it is only the self-righteous Daniel who hears singing. So Nathan, who admits to having killed his chronically ill wife as an act of mercy, starts to panic, especially when what he can hear is screaming.
Xavier Decramer and his family made a home in Nouméa but the eruption of violence has prompted them to leave ‘with a heavy heart’
New Caledonia was only ever supposed to be a stopover, a pause on a family sailing trip around the world. “But we discovered,” a French national, Xavier Decramer, says from his boat in the Nouméa marina, “a very nice place to stay and to live. The infrastructure was amazing as far as the roads, the libraries, the schools … and also a very peaceful place.
“It’s small, people are kind to each other … say hi to everyone … It was a very courteous place, and, and we really enjoyed that.”
The French president will travel to the Pacific island of New Caledonia on Tuesday, just over a week after riots erupted in the French overseas territory leaving six dead and hundreds injured.
The unrest over plans for an electoral overhaul has resulted in dozens of shops and businesses being looted and burned, with cars torched and road barricades set up. A state of emergency and curfew remain in place, with army reinforcements.
Step into a grocery store in France and you’re liable to see a green, yellow or red score on the front of most packaged foods: a green “A” for the healthiest, a red “E” for the least nutritious. Zip across the globe to Chile, and that traffic light-like label becomes a stop sign, warning consumers when a food contains a high amount of sugar, salt, saturated fats or calories.
Today, more than a dozen countries require that companies print nutritional labels on the front of food packages – a move that’s come as the rate of diet-related diseases, like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and obesity, increases worldwide.
French forces launch operation on Sunday to regain access to parts of Nouméa and allow airport to reopen
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has called a meeting of his defence and security council to discuss the deadly unrest in the Pacific territory of New Caledonia.
It is the third such meeting in less than week, the previous two having resulted in the decision to declare a state of emergency in the French territory and then to send reinforcements to help government forces on the ground restore order.
Passengers were left abandoned and humiliated after operator banned staff from providing assistance
Eurostar has reversed a new accessibility policy that left a wheelchair user stranded and has retrained its London staff following pressure from the Observer.
Travellers with disabilities claimed that they would be barred from Eurostar services after the company banned its London staff from pushing passenger wheelchairs. Those who require assistance were told they must travel with a companion or cancel their ticket if they were unable to access services unaided, according to passengers who contacted the Observer.
Operation will aim to retake road linking airport with Noumea, as the capital’s mayor says the situation is ‘not improving’
French forces have launched a “major operation” to regain control of a road linking New Caledonia’s capital Noumea to the main international airport, as another person was killed in a sixth night of violent unrest.
Officials said more than 600 heavily armed gendarmes were dispatched to secure Route Territoriale 1, the main road connecting the capital with the airport. Flights to and from New Caledonia’s main island have been cancelled since the unrest began, stranding travellers and cutting off trade routes.
Prosecution of three high-ranking Syrian officials to be tried in absentia could pave way for president’s case
At midnight on 3 November 2013, five Syrian officials dragged arts and humanities student Patrick Dabbagh from his home in the Mezzeh district of Damascus.
The following day, at the same hour, the same men, including a representative of the Syrian air force’s intelligence unit, returned with a dozen soldiers to arrest the 20-year-old’s father Mazzen.
Cannes film festival Noémie Merlant’s first film as a director is relentlessly silly, self-indulgent and unsuited to its themes of misogyny and sexual violence
Here to prove that “actor project” movies are always the ones with the dodgiest acting is the otherwise estimable French star Noémie Merlant who presents her writing-directing debut in Cannes, with herself in a leading role and Céline Sciamma on board as producer and credited as script collaborator. It’s got some funny moments and there’s a great scene in a gynaecologist’s treatment room whose calm, straightforward candour completely annihilates all those other coyly shot gynaecologist scenes you’ve ever seen in any movie or TV drama. And the opening sequence is very dramatic, centring on a woman whose story is sadly neglected for the rest of the film in favour of the younger, prettier people.
But I have to say that the film is relentlessly silly, self-indulgent and self-admiring with a certain tiring kind of performer narcissism, always tending towards a jangling tone of celebratory affirmation which can’t absorb or do justice to the themes of misogyny and sexual violence that this film winds up being about. The cod-thriller scenes of corpse disposal do not convince on a realist level (though given that these corpses keep coming back as unfunny ghosts, a realist level is not needed) and do not work as comedy either.
From price rises to a ridiculous mascot, the French have had it up to here with the event
We tend to view Paris as a fairytale princess, all romance and half-seen glitter. But for all its glamour, Paris has actually been depressed and irritable for a couple of hundred years now.
Far from being subdued by it, the citizens of Paris wear this perma-gloom like a disconsolate badge of honour. More tightly packed than in any housing estate high-rise, Parisians lead their stressed, underpaid lives defiantly. They mock and complain. They rail and grumble. Unlike anywhere I’ve ever known, in this city, if you say something nice about the place, the citizens disdainfully correct you. Paris doesn’t believe it is the best place. It just knows everywhere else is worse.
Myrteza Hilaj and Kreshnik Kadena convicted after NCA operation into Albanian crime group involved in illegal migration
Two men who used a plane to smuggle people from northern France to an aerodrome in Essex have been jailed.
Myrteza Hilaj and Kreshnik Kadena, both from Leyton in east London, were found guilty at Southwark crown court in March of facilitating the commission of a breach of immigration law.
The frustration that erupted into deadly violence in the French territory last week has been building for years
In the middle of the main road in Rivière-Salée, north of Nouméa, sits a burnt-out car. After days of rioting, young men with masked faces wave a Kanak flag as vehicles pass. All around is desolation. Shops with gutted fronts, burnt buildings, debris on the pavements and roads. Gangs of young people roam the area.
The violence that erupted last week is the worst in New Caledonia since unrest involving independence activists gripped the French Pacific territory in the 1980s.
‘Bakery scent’ added via microcapsules to postage stamp celebrating ‘jewel of French culture’
The French Post Office has released a scratch-and-sniff postage stamp to celebrate the baguette, once described by President Emmanuel Macron as “250 grams of magic and perfection”.
The stamp, which costs €1.96, depicts a baguette decorated with a red, white and blue ribbon. It has a print run of 594,000 copies.
French police shot dead a man armed with a knife and an iron bar who set fire to a synagogue in the Normandy city of Rouen on Friday.
The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, travelling to visit the fire-damaged synagogue, said France was “deeply affected” by what he called an antisemitic act. He said the government was “extremely determined to continue to fully protect Jewish people in France, wherever they are, and Jews should practice their religion without fear”.
Mistral, a French start-up considered a promising challenger to OpenAI and Google, is getting support from European leaders who want to protect the region’s culture and politics.
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