Author: Raimond Broussard

Geneva, London (29/7 – 50) Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, condemned the arrest and imprisonment of journalists, bloggers and civil society activists in Tajikistan, and questioned the credibility of the evidence presented in court against them. Lawlor was on a two-week official visit to Tajikistan last December. The report prepared by her and members of the delegation on the results of this visit was published in May of this year, but only now became available to the public. The authorities of Tajikistan will have to prepare an official response to the document, which…

There are a couple of scenes in this French drama where you might almost think that the film-makers have deepfaked the young Jean-Paul Belmondo back on to the screen, and that AI replicas in film – one of the flashpoints of the Hollywood actors’ strike – has already come to pass. Not so fast. The actor we’re watching is his grandson, Victor Belmondo, and in closeup, at certain angles, the resemblance really is uncanny: that nose (though a little less lopsided) and the pillowy lips arranged to smouldering leading-man effect. Belmondo appears in a supporting role in a tasteful literary adaptation that…

Two American tourists have been found sleeping off a heavy night in the heights of Paris’s Eiffel Tower, after dodging security the night before, the monument’s operator said on Tuesday. Security guards roused the men “in the early morning” as they were making their rounds before the French landmark’s 9am opening time on Monday, the publicly owned Eiffel Tower operator, Sete, said. They “appear to have got stuck because of how drunk they were”, Paris prosecutors told AFP. The inebriated Americans had spent their illicit night under the stars in a spot normally closed to the public between the tower’s second and…

French police have warned Alpine hikers they will be fined hundreds of euros if they pick too many blooming plants on their summer walks. Officers confiscated thousands of génépi sprigs and edelweiss flowers during a week-long enforcement operation this month. The local authorities said 20 hikers had been given verbal warnings and told they would be fined up to €750 if they broke the regulations again. While not all the mountain plants and flowers are officially protected, conservationists say the destruction of swathes of local flora is putting at risk the diversity of the natural heritage of the Savoie and…

Four people have been arrested in France after the deaths of six men whose boat capsized while crossing the Channel. French judges are considering charges including involuntary manslaughter against the Iraqi and Sudanese suspects, according to reports. At least two of those detained are suspected to have links to human trafficking networks. Last Saturday the six men died after their vessel got into difficulty near Calais. More than 50 other people were rescued by French and British coastguards. The confirmed dead were all Afghan men and were among 65 or 66 male passengers on the craft, most of whom were from Afghanistan. According to…

European conservatism is in crisis. Traditional centre-right parties are increasingly facing challenges from their right by parties with more energy and extreme proposals for addressing the multitude of crises facing the continent. While centre-right parties may not have much in the way of ideas to resolve Europe’s polycrisis, they do still know how to fight for power. Their instinctive drive for self-preservation means conservatives are radicalising, particularly over issues of race, in order to cut off their insurgent rivals. Take France, where the formerly dominant Les Républicains (LR) party has entered a death spiral, with its last presidential candidate, Valerie Pécresse, failing to…

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen could win the next presidential election in 2027, the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, has said, as he positions himself as a potential candidate for the centre-right. “The fact of the matter is that in five years’ time, a victory for Madame Le Pen is quite probable,” Darmanin told La Voix du Nord, in an interview published on Friday. Darmanin, 40, who is in charge of French policing, has faced several crises in recent months, including urban unrest after the police shooting of a teenager of Algerian origin at a traffic stop outside Paris in June, and violent gun…

Booksellers in Paris have hit out at plans to “hide” them during the 2024 Olympics, after they were told by local authorities to remove their stalls for the opening ceremony for security reasons. The bouquinistes along the River Seine make up the largest open-air book market in Europe and represent a 400-year-old tradition. However, about 570 of the stalls, which make up about 60% of the total along the river, need to be dismantled and moved, according to city authorities, for the opening ceremony on 26 July next year. Police told the booksellers earlier this week their stalls are within the perimeter of protection…

More than half the journalists at France’s only standalone Sunday newspaper have resigned after failing to prevent the arrival of an editor with far-right ties in a bitter dispute that has fanned fears of a further US-style polarisation of the country’s media. “We didn’t win,” said Antoine Malo, a roving foreign correspondent at the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) and member of its editorial association. “We didn’t stop him, and now there’s a mass exodus. But the bigger fight will go on – from outside.” The mainstream paper’s 100-odd journalists ended a 40-day strike – the longest media strike in France since the 1970s –…

In this potpourri of a book on the Paris Métro, British author Andrew Martin is not so much writing an ode to the Métropolitain as providing rail fanatics with a literary handbook. You don’t need to be familiar with “third-rail electrification” and “the MP73s, third-generation tyred trains” to enjoy the eclectic information and funny anecdotes of this charming book – but it would sometimes help. Perhaps better assembled as a dictionary of the Métro, in the style of the Dictionnaire amoureux series published since 2000 in France by Plon, Martin’s short book will nonetheless give Paris and Métro lovers what they are looking…