Tag: france

France detains Russian basketball star at request of US – AFP

Russian basketball player Daniil Kasatkin has been detained in France at the request of the US on suspicion of being a member of a hacker group, AFP reported on Wednesday evening.

Kasatkin, a point guard playing for Russia’s national team, was detained on June 21 at Charles de Gaulle Airport after arriving in France with his fiancée, AFP said.

At a hearing on Wednesday, a judge ruled to keep him in custody pending extradition.

The US alleges that Kasatkin, who had studied in the country, had negotiated ransom payments on behalf of a hacker gang that targeted around 900 companies and two federal institutions from 2020 to 2022.

The athlete denies any wrongdoing, his lawyer Frederic Belot told reporters, claiming that Kasatkin has “poor computer skills” and had bought a used computer that was “either hacked or a hacker sold it to him using another person’s name.”

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French Intelligence Chief: US Overstated Iran Strike Impact & We Don’t Know Where The Uranium Is

The head of France’s foreign intelligence agency stated Tuesday that last month’s Israeli and American airstrikes on Iran had destroyed only part of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, though the reality is that the exact whereabouts of the remaining material are unknown.

Chief of the country’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) Nicolas Lerner said in a televised interview the strikes had merely delayed Iran’s nuclear program by several months.

“Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged,” he said. “The nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months,” he added.

While France has some indications of where Iran’s uranium might be, Lerner emphasized in the remarks that definitive confirmation would only be possible once the UN’s atomic watchdog resumes inspections in the country; however, the problem is that Tehran just formally booted IAEA inspectors from the country.

“Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It’s very important. We won’t have the capacity to trace it (the stocks),” Lerner said.

Iranian officials have accused IAEA officials of actually spying on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program, secretly passing information on to Tel Aviv and Washington, which helped with targeting in the recent 12-day war.

Lerner’s assessment somewhat partially aligns with the view of US intelligence and the military, given that last week Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the strikes likely pushed Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by one to two years.

But the Trump admin has consistently claimed that Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan had been destroyed, amid conflicting reports and some international pushback on his assertions.

Other Western officials have indicated a setback of merely “months”. And even some US intelligence officials have been quoted in CNN and the NY Times giving a similar assessment.

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France’s Fiscal Reckoning: Is The Eurozone’s Second Giant Next In Line?

France is caught in a debt spiral. Now the president of the French Court of Auditors is warning of the consequences of political inaction.

Pierre Moscovici has served as president of the French Court of Auditors for five years, overseeing regular audits of the nation’s public finances. From 2012 to 2014, he was France’s finance minister and then spent five years as EU Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs. The man knows his way around empty coffers.

On Wednesday, Moscovici called on Prime Minister François Bayrou to take urgent steps to consolidate public finances. France’s budgetary situation, he said, has spun out of control, especially in 2023 and 2024. If a turnaround is not achieved soon, the capital markets will force one. “We can still act voluntarily,” he warned the government, “but tomorrow, the markets may impose austerity.”

For Now, Calm in the Bond Markets

Once the dominoes start falling, it goes fast. Investors dump French government bonds en masse. Yields spike, prices plummet, and refinancing the country’s massive debt becomes even more costly. Already, interest payments consume 10.6% of France’s state budget—roughly the same as education spending. As debt levels rise, fiscal maneuvering space shrinks.

With sovereign debt at 114% of GDP, the trap could snap shut unexpectedly. For now, European officials still point fingers at the U.S., whose debt ratios are similar. But no one can say how long that deflection tactic will work. Credit risk materializes suddenly—usually without warning.

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French Left-Wing MPs Introduce Amendment To “Reduce” Coverage Of Migrant Crime Stories

When reality does not mesh with the “narrative,” the left’s standard tactic is to turn to censorship, and the French left is no different. The French Greens and other left-wing parties now want to make sure that news stories are not used for ideological purposes by the “far right,” claiming that certain media outlets are causing a “moral panic” around immigration due to migrant murders.

According to a parliamentary amendment tabled on June 25, 2025, by a group of Green and left-wing MPs in the National Assembly, news stories of actual events that have happened, and actual lives lost, are being improperly used by the right.

Another post from the French Observatory for Journalism ,wrote: “BREAKING NEWS | Green and left-wing deputies submit an amendment to REDUCE the coverage of crime stories in PUBLIC media. The authors believe these stories are used for ‘political exploitation;’ the text cites the murders of Lola and Thomas.”

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France to Ban Smoking in Parks, Beaches, and Near Schools

France has struggled to kick its smoking habit. A new public health decree published Saturday aims to change that.

In the coming days, smoking will be banned in all French parks and sports venues, at beaches and bus stops, in a perimeter around all schools, and anywhere children could gather in public.

In a country where smoking has for generations been glamorized in cinema and intertwined with the national image, government crackdowns on tobacco use have met resistance.

“In France, we still have this mindset of saying, this is a law that restricts freedom,” Philippe Bergerot, president of the French League Against Cancer, told the Associated Press.

The ban aims “to promote what we call denormalization. In people’s minds, smoking is normal,” he said. “We aren’t banning smoking; we are banning smoking in certain places where it could potentially affect people’s health and … young people.”

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Narrative Busted: Immigration Costs France 3.4 Per Cent of GDP, Think Tank Finds

Immigration has failed to produce the promised economic panacea in France and has rather resulted in a negative strain on the economy, costing the nation an estimated 3.4 per cent in GDP, a think tank has claimed.

The Observatory of Immigration and Demography (OID) argued that immigration has not only negatively impacted the social structures within France but has also come with a “budget deficit” in which taxes collected from immigrants only make up 86 per cent of what they cost the taxpayer, Le Figaro reported.

The OID think tank attributed this imbalance to the fact that just 62.4 per cent of working-age immigrants are actively employed in France, the worst performance of any EU nation except Belgium at 61.4 per cent and well below the EU average of 67.5 per cent. In contrast, native French workers have a 69.5 per cent employment rate.

This means, according to calculations from the think tank, that if immigrants had the same employment rate as the native born population, the French GDP would be 3.4 per cent higher than it currently stands and taxable income would be one and a half points higher.

Observatory of Immigration and Demography director Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti said: “Immigration maintains a vicious circle which harms employment and the French economy: it aggravates the structural problems of employment in France, degrades public accounts and indirectly penalizes exposed sectors of the economy.”

Pouvreau-Monti said that while public discussion of immigration is often centred around specific sectors which have frequent short-term labour shortages, such as in the hotel and restaurant, and construction industries.

However, the OID founder said that the “short-term vision prevents us from thinking about the best way to make these professions more attractive for people looking for work.” Meanwhile, such immigration is often focused on low-skilled labour rather than on high-skilled workers that drive innovation.

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Paris Music Festival Descends into Chaos: 145 Report Being Pricked in “Syringe Attack” – Reportedly 1,500 Injured, 371 Arrested

Millions were in the streets across France on Saturday for a music festival, known as the Fête de la Musique, when chaos broke out in the streets with reported brawls, clashes with police, and stabbings, leaving hundreds or thousands injured. 

145 people were reportedly assaulted in so-called “syringe attacks,” with the suspected intention being to intoxicate one with a date-rape drug.

A local mayor said the festival had “broken all attendance records” as the FC Metz soccer team was playing in a play-off match.

Per France 24, “Nearly 150 people reported being assaulted with syringes across France during its annual “Fête de la Musique” summer festival, with Paris police reporting 13 cases in the capital alone. Twelve suspects in the attacks were arrested, the interior ministry said. More than 370 other people were detained nationwide on various other charges.”

Additionally, unconfirmed reports circulating on social media suggest that there was massive violence, leaving 1,500 injured.

Per Remix News, six were stabbed with one in critical condition, 371 were arrested, 13 police officers were injured, 51 cars were set ablaze, and 1,500 were injured.

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French Newspaper Le Monde FINALLY Discovers That the Ukrainian Army Is Rife With Neo-Nazis – Hundreds of Soldiers From 3rd Assault Brigade Openly Display 3rd Reich Symbols

It’s like they say: better late than never.

The western media has been willingly blind to one of the worst-kept geopolitical secrets of our times: that the heroic ‘defenders of democracy’ in Ukraine are, in many cases, a bunch of Neo-Nazis running around unchecked.

The French premier newspaper Le Monde has just released the result of a 10-day investigation on the 3rd assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and to their ‘surprise’ and dismay found out that the militants go around openly and proudly wearing neo-Nazi symbols.

Of course, no one needed the Le Monde deep dive, since the information is readily available about the Nazi Azov Brigades and their heirs of the 3rd assault brigade.

And, what’s more, no one is hiding the fact that the Nazi collaborator and war criminal Stephan Bandera has been turned into a Ukrainian national hero.

Just between us: they don’t make much of an effort to hide their extremist ideologies.

Slavyangrad reported:

“According to Le Monde, hundreds of servicemen of the 3rd Assault Brigade — the direct heirs of the Azov Regiment — continue to openly use Nazi symbols. The photo shows swastikas, greeting gestures, and SS emblems.

Despite the ‘reform’ and the formal inclusion of the brigade in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, radical symbols have not disappeared. Journalists note: this is not a matter of chance, but of a conscious choice – either based on ideological convictions or as a tool of intimidation.

On June 14, in Kiev, on the day of the ‘March of Equality’ [Gay Pride], radicals from the ‘Carpathian Sich’ held an alternative ‘March of Tradition’. Participants were captured on camera demonstrating a Nazi salute.”

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France Pushes Digital ID Check Laws For Platforms Like Reddit and Bluesky

Efforts by the French government to combat online access to pornography are quickly turning into a broader push to dismantle online anonymity, raising significant alarm among privacy advocates.

Authorities are now considering applying harsh age-verification mandates not just to explicit sites, but also to social networks like Reddit, Mastodon, and Bluesky, platforms where adult content may appear but where identity is not typically tethered to real-world credentials.

The shift doesn’t involve new legislation, but a reinterpretation of existing laws under France’s recently enacted regulations. This would allow the state to brand platforms that “enable the sharing of pornographic content” as porn sites, subjecting them to some of the most invasive digital ID checks yet proposed in the EU.

Digital Minister Clara Chappaz’s office stated, “Our focus is age verification for any platform that distributes or enables the sharing of pornographic content.”

Though framed as a move to protect children, the implications extend well beyond youth safety. Any service caught in this net would be forced to track the age, and by extension, the identity, of its users, undermining pseudonymity and threatening to make anonymous online activity impossible in practice.

The government’s renewed urgency follows the tragic killing of a teaching assistant in a high school, which President Emmanuel Macron used to reemphasize his call to ban social media for users under 15. While unrelated to pornography, the incident is being used to justify sweeping controls over digital spaces.

Platforms that fail to comply with the new age-check rules risk being fined, blacklisted by search engines, or even blocked entirely. Chappaz recently signaled that Elon Musk’s X is close to being designated as a pornographic platform, despite its primary function as a text-based social media site, highlighting how blurry and expansive the government’s definitions have become.

However, the legal path is anything but clear. Under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), decisions over “Very Large Online Platforms” rest with the European Commission, not individual member states.

These platforms are expected to assess and mitigate risks, including those tied to adult content, but retain discretion on how to do so. A legal review in France is reportedly underway, signaling the state’s intent to push this policy despite potential conflicts with EU law.

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France considers requiring Musk’s X to verify users’ age

The French government is considering designating X as a porn platform — a move that will likely have the platform implementing strict age verification requirements.

Such a designation could effectively ban children from accessing the social media app unless it curtailed adult content. Paris has recently upped its efforts to protect kids online by requiring age verification by porn platforms.

“X has indicated since 2024 that it accepts the distribution of pornographic content. It must therefore be treated as such,” Digital Minister Clara Chappaz’s office told POLITICO.

Her team has been tasked with “examining the designation of X in the decree concerning pornographic sites that must verify the age of their users.”

The confirmation follows an appearance by Chappaz on French TV show “Quotidien” on Thursday evening, where she said X will soon receive “the same pretty papers as YouPorn” instructing X to ban adult content or implement age screening.

Porn platforms serving content in France are required to implement age verification measures with a final deadline of June 7, although some are protesting.

Failure to comply could see sites fined, delisted from search engines or blocked completely.

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