French President Emmanuel Macron called on Chinese President Xi Jinping to help convince Russia to hold negotiations toward ending the war in Ukraine as the two leaders met in Beijing on Thursday.

French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to press Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a trip to China this week to limit support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, according to French officials, amid growing Western concerns over Beijing’s deepening economic and political ties with Moscow.

France is eager to prevent the crisis from spiralling further as it recognises it is in its national interest, and President Macron’s favour, to end it. But damage has been done, writes Ahmed Aboudouh.

French admiral says US has broken a pact among nuclear powers on the UN Security Council by agreeing to sell nuclear submarines.

"Still now I have the images of the corpses next to my feet": Olivier Laplaud and his wife were in the Bataclan enjoying themselves amongst a crowd of 1,500 people when everything changed in an instant.

France has repatriated more than half the people it defined as radical Islamists living in the country without a residence permit since 2018. Now it wants to extend the penalty and deport even more.

PARIS - France said Thursday it would suspend joint military operations with Malian forces after the West African country's second coup in nine months, adding to international pressure for the military junta to return civilians to positions of power.

When Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron sign a new Franco-German treaty in the historic city of Aachen on Tuesday, there will be much soaring rhetoric about the deepening ties between the two countries. To critics, though, the Treaty of Aachen is thin gruel. Anyone hoping for a new, tighter alliance between France and Germany, and for signs that the two countries might once again drive European integration, will be disappointed. 

Sentinel represents a watershed development in French military operations. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the number of French army soldiers actively deployed in metropolitan France roughly equals that of overseas operations. But the military establishment here is far from unified on the value of an operation often seen as a costly and superficial means of reassuring civilians and tourists at the expense of substantive improvement to national security.

Read the article

The alliance is struggling to assemble four battalions to safeguard its eastern flank from a possible Russian attack. In addition, many member states are falling short of their financial commitments to the alliance.

Read the article