France news

France news

Airports in Paris and Amsterdam were the worst affected, with the Dutch authorities saying more than 1,000 travellers had been forced to spend the night at Schiphol, one of Europe's busiest hubs. Six people have died in weather-related accidents as the continent reels from the most bitter cold snap of the winter so far. Five of those deaths were confirmed in France on Tuesday, while a woman died in Bosnia as heavy snow and rain sparked floods and power outages across the Balkans.

The French civil aviation authority has reportedly asked airlines to reduce by 15 percent flights in an out of Paris' three airports (Charles de Gaulle, Orly and Beauvais), leading to some cancellations. Anyone with a flight is advised to contact their airline before travelling to the airport. Other arrivals into Paris were delayed because of the snow, although flights are still taking off and landing in Paris. A cyclist walks on the snow-blanketed Champs-de-Mars in Paris on January 5, 2026.

A restaurant has been fined €8,000 for refusing to serve tap water, contrary to French law which says that free tap water must always be available if requested. The restaurant in the upmarket ski resort of Val Thorens has been fined €8,000 by the country's anti-fraud office, for telling customers that tap water was not available in the establishment. A press release from the Direction générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des fraudes (DGCCRF), said that the restaurant, Les Aiguilles du Péclet in Val Thorens,

A Paris court has found 10 people guilty of online harassment of the French first lady, Brigitte Macron, by posting or reposting malicious comments on social media that claimed falsely that she was a man. Eight men and two women, aged 41 to 60, including a school sports teacher, an art gallery owner and a publicist, were on Monday given sentences ranging from a compulsory course in understanding online harassment to an eight-month suspended prison sentence.

Public space is often understood as belonging to no one in particular, collectively accessible yet institutionally maintained, yet a growing number of initiatives are challenging this assumption by testing shared management and distributed ownership models. In Paris, Adoptez un banc introduces a sponsorship-based approach, allowing individuals and groups to support temporarily and symbolically claim responsibility for historic public furniture without compromising its collective use.

Nine meters (30 feet) beneath the waves, they found it: a vast, man-made stone wall, averaging 20 meters (66 feet) wide and two meters (6.6 feet) tall. The structure consists of some 60 massive granite monoliths, set directly onto the bedrock in pairs at regular intervals. Smaller slabs and packing stones fill in the gaps, locking the whole into a single, deliberate construction. With an estimated total mass of around 3,300 tons, this is the largest underwater structure ever discovered in France.

It has been a cold start to the year across much of Europe, particularly in central regions, where temperatures dropped to double-digit negatives. Heavy snowfall hit parts of eastern and central Europe on New Year's Eve, notably in Poland and Ukraine, with similar conditions across the Alps on the first few days of the year. The cold is likely to continue this week as an Arctic air mass sinks south across Europe, pulling temperatures well below the seasonal average outside south-east Europe.

La Poste and La Banque Postale were once again difficult to access on New Year's Day due to a cyberattack. The disruption comes just days after a similar attack disrupted parcel tracking during the Christmas period. The website laposte.fr and all information systems of the French postal company were hit by a cyberattack on Thursday morning, according to radio station RFI. The website and app of La Banque Postale, the postal company's banking division, were also largely inaccessible.

French officials said that foreign nationals who contribute to the country's international influence and economic well-being are eligible for naturalization under French law. George Clooney's international star power and its potential benefits for French cinema, combined with Amal Cloony's steady work with French academic institutions and international organizations as a human-rights lawyer, fit the bill. They contribute, through their distinguished actions, to France's international influence and cultural outreach, the government said of the Clooneys. They maintain strong personal, professional and family ties with our country.

The exodus from Hollywood to shores not presided over by Donald Trump has been busy and loud. Ellen DeGeneres, Robin Wright and Courtney Love moved to England; Rosie O'Donnell opted for Ireland; Eva Longoria, Spain. Other Trump critics, including Richard Gere, Lena Dunham and Ryan Gosling, have upped sticks without citing the re-election as a motivating factor. In the case of Clooney, however, there has appeared little doubt that his decision to gain French citizenship was primarily because of Trump, whose re-election he energetically campaigned against.

This 20-year-old hotel ushered in a new chapter, thanks to Jean-Philippe Cartier, the founder and president of H8 Collection hotel group, who has a knack for reviving French heritage properties. Cartier teamed up with Prisca Courtin-Clarins of the Clarins cosmetics clan to make Le Mas Candille a leading beauty and wellness destination, masterfully refitted from head to toe by Franco-Mexican interior architect Hugo Toro.

France intends to follow Australia and ban social media platforms for children from the start of the 2026 academic year. A draft bill preventing under-15s from using social media will be submitted for legal checks and is expected to be debated in parliament early in the new year. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has made it clear in recent weeks that he wants France to swiftly follow Australia's world-first ban on social media platforms for under-16s, which came into force in December.

The Toulouse Administrative Court of Appeal has authorised construction of the controversial A69 motorway between Toulouse and Castres - the latest in a long-running legal saga over a road that has become a flashpoint for environmental protesters. Following the recommendations of the public rapporteur, the appeal judges ruled on Tuesday that "the motorway link project must be considered as responding to an imperative reason of major public interest".

Charles V kept his celebrated library here; Henri IV installed his cabinets of paintings, objets d'art and arms, and created within its walls a veritable city of artists, where cabinetmakers, tapestry-makers, painters and armourers lived and worked. Under Louis XIII, coins, medals and the Louvre's printing press were added; under Louis XIV came casts, antiquities and the academies of architecture, the arts and the sciences.

In 2018, the European Commission launched a public consultation asking people what they thought of scrapping the time changes. It was the most successful EU consultation ever: 4.6 million people participated, in some cases representing a signification portion of the national population (3.79 per cent for Germany and 2.94 per cent for Austria). People overwhelmingly said they wanted to stop moving the clock back and forward every six months - in fact 84 per cent of respondents agreed with the proposal.

The suspect in the stabbing of three women in the Paris metro has been released from custody and moved to a psychiatric hospital, prosecutors said Saturday. The man was arrested suspected of stabbing three women in the Paris metro on Friday as the capital's end-of-year festivities were in full swing. The three victims were attacked at three different locations along the Line 3 metro track that runs across central Paris. They were injured, but not critically.

The Treasury will insure the 70-metre embroidered cloth, which depicts the 1066 Norman invasion and Battle of Hastings, for damage or loss during its transfer from France and while it is on display at the British Museum from September. It will back the cover under the Government Indemnity Scheme, an alternative to commercial insurance that allows art and cultural objects to be shown in the UK.

The quiet village of Tremolat nestled in the Dordogne valley is best known for its cingle, where the sinuous river forms an Instagrammable loop. Home to about 700 people, along with restaurants, a cafe, boulangerie and wine bar, it is a picture-perfect French idyll and a popular place for a getaway or even retirement. Karen Carter, a 65-year-old British-South African national, knew the appeal of Tremolat well: she ran two gites in the village, a beautifully renovated 250-year-old farmhouse and neighbouring 18th-century stone barn collectively called Les Chouettes.