French | News

French teen fined S$600 after viral video showed him returning a licked straw to a juice dispenser

Wildfires raging west of the French city of Bordeaux are threatening a number of France’s key defense-industrial sites.

A French modelling scout with close ties to convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home outside Paris, prosecutors and his lawyer said on Wednesday. Under investigation in France, Daniel Siad, 69, was one of several French men accused of aiding the convicted sex offender to traffic and abuse women. Siad had not yet been questioned by investigators, but had denied the allegations, saying he wanted to be heard and give his version of events. “An investigation to determine the cause of death was opened on Monday evening following the discovery”, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Nanterre said. An autopsy will be carried out as part of the probe. French investigators had been investigating Siad over allegations including rape and human trafficking. Siad’s lawyer Menya Arab-Tigrine said her client had requested to give his side of the story before he died. “He is dead and he was innocent,” she told AFP. “If he died of a heart attack, the unbearable waiting, the pressure a...

ANJ cited Similarweb estimates after operator-level controls were circumvented in practice while the platform's live odds remained visible. The post France blocked Polymarket after its transaction controls failed to stop 578,751 new French visitors appeared first on CryptoSlate.

France’s gambling authority has ordered the country’s internet service providers to geoblock Polymarket, citing illegal gambling and market manipulation concerns. France’s Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ), or the National Gambling Authority, has ordered internet service providers to block access to Polymarket. Prediction websites are considered illegal gambling, the ANJ said in a Friday press release. The regulator said that Polymarket’s operations are not authorized in France and that advertising unauthorized gambling sites constitutes a criminal offense with fines of up to 100,000 euros ($114,000). Read more

An international investigation in partnership with Haaretz exposes the role of Morocco's intelligence apparatus in the affair, the penetration of devices of senior French and Spanish officials, and the hackings that marred a Panamanian presidential election

An international investigation in partnership with Haaretz exposes the role of Morocco's intelligence apparatus in the affair, the penetration of devices of senior French and Spanish officials, and the hackings that marred a Panamanian presidential election

An international investigation in partnership with Haaretz exposes the role of Morocco's intelligence apparatus in the affair, the penetration of devices of senior French and Spanish officials, and the hackings that marred a Panamanian presidential election

The non-custodial Bitcoin exchange petitioned to annul a French decree implementing DAC8, arguing the rules could create surveillance and physical risks for up to 135 million European crypto holders. Bitcoin exchange Bull Bitcoin said Wednesday that it had petitioned France's Council of State (Conseil d'État) to strike down a French decree implementing the European Union's DAC8 crypto tax reporting rules. DAC8 requires crypto service providers to collect users' identity and transaction data and automatically report it to national tax authorities, which then exchange the information with their counterparts across EU member states. The directive went into effect on Jan. 1, 2026. The exchange said in a Wednesday press release that DAC8 risks creating a “mass database” linking legal identity and home addresses, including transactions with no relevance to taxation. Read more

Crédit Agricole’s CACEIS launches a euro-pegged stablecoin on Ethereum with 20.02 million tokens issued, targeting institutional flows and tokenized fund access. [Update July 1, 2:15 pm UTC: The article has been updated to add comments from CACEIS.] Crédit Agricole, Europe's third-largest bank by assets, has launched the EURO eXchange Token (EURXT), a euro-backed stablecoin issued through its asset servicing arm, Crédit Agricole Caisse d'Epargne Investor Services (CACEIS). CACEIS announced the launch on Wednesday, alongside the first subscription using EURXT into a tokenized Amundi Money Market Fund. Read more

French group SYCLEF, present in ten countries, is entering Romania by taking over a stake in Cluj-based company Unicool, active on the commercial refrigeration market.

The body of French mountaineer Pierre Guillaume has been recovered following a rescue operation after he lost his life in an avalanche on K-6 peak in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Ghanche district.

GILGIT: French climber Guillaume Pierrel lost his life after a snow avalanche hit as he attempted to scale the 7,282-metre-high K-6 peak in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Ghanche district. Mountains in the north of Pakistan are a popular destination for adventure tourism, with many climbers aiming to summit prestigious peaks such as K2 and Nanga Parbat. However, rough terrain and harsh weather conditions create a challenge, frequently causing deaths and injuries. Tour operator Ishaq Ali told Dawn that a foreign climbing team — comprising 41-year-old Pierrel and Boris Jule from France, and Christina Maria from Switzerland — was attempting to scale K-6 situated in Ghanche’s Hushe valley. The team set out on the expedition on June 6. He said that during the attempt, a snow avalanche hit the team at an altitude of about 5,000m. Pierrel died on the spot, while the other two climbers remained safe, the tour operator said. “Through satellite communication, they informed their relatives in France and ultimately, the relatives co...

French far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon sparked outrage after claiming ministers “follow orders” from CRIF, triggering antisemitism accusations from officials and Jewish groups.

A French appeals court on Friday confirmed that Moroccan football star Achraf Hakimi will face trial for the alleged rape of a woman in 2023, which the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) defender denies. In February 2023, a woman then aged 24 told police in the Val-de-Marne region southeast of Paris that Hakimi had raped her. The PSG right-back and captain of the Moroccan national team, whose second match of the 2026 World Cup kicks off on Friday against Scotland, has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Shortly after the Versailles Court of Appeal delivered its ruling, Hakimi wrote on X that he had been “waiting for this trial since day one”. “At last, I’ll be able to speak,” he said. A date has not been announced for the start of the trial at the criminal court in the Hauts-de-Seine department. “This confirmation was expected. Nothing here says that he is guilty of anything, he remains steadfast in his defence,” Hakimi’s lawyer Fanny Colin said. The plaintiff’s lawyer Rachel-Flore Pardo said the decision brought her ...

Last month, a Haaretz-Libération investigation uncovered systems for building an army of avatars, developed by Israeli company BlackCore, including a smear campaign of a left-wing French candidate

Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said the decision was based on Alice Froussard's alleged remark that the Hamas massacre should be seen 'in context.' French broadcaster RFI expressed outrage over the move, accusing Israel of curbing press freedom

Meanwhile, Germany will participate in French nuclear exercises as soon as September, joining them in an observer role.

In the year since Sequans Communications announced that it would adopt a digital asset treasury strategy, the price of Bitcoin fell by more than 30%. The France-based semiconductor company that announced a move into crypto is “no longer pursuing” a treasury strategy after less than a year. In a Thursday notice, Sequans Communications said it held 658 Bitcoin (BTC) worth about $48 million at the time of publication, which it said was “fully unencumbered” and unrestricted as it looks to refocus solely on Internet of Things (IoT) semiconductor growth. The company's NYSE-traded shares, which have shed more than 75% since last June, were up more than 14.5% in morning trading following the announcement. Read more

An American national and a French woman evacuated from the cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak have tested positive, officials said on Monday, as the complex operation to repatriate those on board continued. The French woman, one of five passengers from France flown back from the MV Hondius and placed in isolation in Paris, started to feel unwell on Sunday night, and “tests came back positive”, said Health Minister Stephanie Rist. Late on Sunday, the US health department said one American national evacuated from the ship had “mild symptoms” and that another had tested positive for the Andes virus, the only hantavirus strain that is transmissible between humans. Three passengers from the ship, a Dutch couple and a German woman, have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents. No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship set sail in April. But health officials have insisted that the risk for...