France

Minister of State Nikos Pappas has uploaded on Facebook several photos taken during Alexis Tsipras first tour as Prime Minister.

Pappas has accompanied the Greek Premier in all his official trips travels since he assumed office and he seems to have a soft spot for photography.

Thracian treasures possessions of King Seuthes III will be transported to the Louvre in Paris for an exposition entitled The Epic of the Thracian Kings, opening in April this year.

The most probable date for the transportation of the collection is set for March 23 and many of the artefacts will be travelling by plane, as reported by Pressa daily.

A police operation was under way Monday in a housing estate in the French city of Marseille where residents said "Kalashnikov shots" were fired "in the air", sources close to the case said, adding there were no victims.
      
According to an AFP photographer on site, special forces entered the La Castellane estate, which is known for being a drug trafficking hotspot.

A group of pro-Syrian regime hackers briefly took over the Twitter account of France's Le Monde newspaper early Jan. 21, tweeting several messages including one reading "Je ne suis pas Charlie".
      

A local Turkish court has ordered to block access to pages on websites publishing the Jan. 14 cover of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, featuring the Prophet Muhammad.

The issue is the first since a deadly attack on the magazine?s Paris office claimed the lives of 12 people, including prominent cartoonists.

Notorious French comedian Dieudonné was arrested Jan. 14 for being an "apologist for terrorism" after writing a Facebook comment suggesting he sympathised with one of the Paris attacks gunmen, a judicial source said.

President Francois Hollande vowed Jan. 13 that France would "never yield" to terror in an emotional tribute to three police officers shot dead in an Islamist killing spree, as four Jews gunned down in the attack were buried in Israel.
      

As my Turkish Airlines flight landed at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, I became more anxious...

The difficulties I endured the first time I went to the United States, six months after Sept. 11, are still vivid in my memory. I have many friends who no longer want to go to America because of these difficulties.

A group marched in central Paris on Jan. 10 in protest at the fact that the suspects of the killing of three Kurdish women have still not been brought to justice, on the second anniversary of the assassinations. 

The interior ministers of 11 European nations on Sunday urged the tightening of controls at the EU's external borders in order to prevent a repeat of this week's terrorist attacks in Paris that left 17 people dead.