Wedding party procession brings to Paris ring road to a standstill

A word of warning if you're ever invited to a wedding in Paris.

Make sure you don't get too carried away in the festivities by infuriating other drivers in the capital or worse still the police by joining in the potential havoc of the procession of vehicles making its way from the official ceremony to the reception.

Le Boulevard Périphérique, Porte Maillot (screenshot YouTube video)

You could end up facing a prison sentence, a fine and the suspension of your licence.

That's a lesson two guests learned the hard way after they attended a wedding at the end of April.

After tying the knot, the newlyweds and their cortège made their way on to the four-lane ring road le boulevard périphérique, creating a two-kilometre tailback.

It's a practice which according to police has become "more and more frequent in Paris" and one which "frustrates other motorists caught up in the congestion."

As the accompanying video posted on YouTube last year of a similar marriage cortège on le boulevard périphérique attests, the wedding party might be having fun, but is sure doesn't help the flow of traffic - far from it.



April's celebrations all proved too much for one motorist who put in a call to the police to put an end to the festivities after being caught up in the jam,

When they arrived, the police arrested two guests who had been "weaving from lane to lane without warning"  apparently "unaware that their behaviour constituted a criminal offence."

They now face a court date at the end of May, a possible two-year prison sentence and a €4,500 fine as well as the withdrawal of their licences.

A wedding some certainly won't forget in a hurry.

"Hey honey, where's Junior?" Parents "forget" son at a roadside rest area

"Home alone" might only have been a 1990 film dreamt up by scriptwriters as a comedy in which Macaulay Culkin played the part of an eight-year-old boy mistakenly left behind when his parents fly off to Paris for their Christmas hols.

But let's face it, fact can be - and often is - stranger than fiction as the parents of an eight-year-old French boy can attest to after their weekend "lapse of memory".

They reportedly "forgot" their son on the side of the road, leaving him at a rest area and only realising he was missing half an hour later.

Lourdes Basilica (Wikipedia, author Milorad Pavlek)

The couple from the suburbs of Paris were on their way to the market town of Lourdes at the foot of the Pyrénées in southwestern France.

It is of course famous as a destination for Catholic pilgrimage and alleged miraculous healings.

They had set off on their holidays early on Saturday morning; mum, dad and three children in a camping car.

The roads were pretty busy with holidaymakers, just as they are every Saturday in August in France.

As Agence France Presse reports, at around nine o'clock in the evening, after having completed just over 700 of their 800 kilometre journey, the couple decided to take a break, and they stopped at a rest area on the nationale 21 in the département of Gers.

A few minutes later, refreshed and ready for the final stretch, they set off again, and it was only when they arrived in Lourdes that they realised one of their children was missing.

They immediately rang the emergency services, to be told that their son was with the police who had been alerted by other motorists who had seen the child alone at the rest area.

About turn - they were reunited with him a couple of hours later.

So, how could parents apparently "forget" one of their children?

It sounds even weirder than the recent case of the man who left his wife at the side of the road in the dead of night without realising she was missing.

That also happened in the southwest of France - is there something in the water perhaps?

Well there's a simple and innocent enough explanation according to the national daily France Soir.

When the family stopped, all three children were apparently asleep in the back of the camping car.

But while the parents stretched their legs, the eight-year-old slipped out without them noticing.

So they didn't really "forget" him. They just didn't realise he wasn't there.

In their infinite wisdom, the police have decided not to pursue the case, putting it all down to fatigue and a momentary lack of attention at the end of a long journey.

Maybe though, as the regional daily Midi Libre comments, the couple will light up a candle or two in thanks at their final destination.

One thing is for certain - it's a holiday neither the boy nor his parents will forget in a hurry.

Paris "cake burglar" caught

It's the end of the line for the so-called "cake burglar".

(From Wikipedia, author - Algont)

Paris police have arrested and charged a 64-year-old man who had, for over a year, been preying on elderly people in the northern suburbs of the capital.

No he didn't get his nickname because he had been stealing their cakes - just in case that was what you were thinking.

Instead he was robbing them of their bank cards after having offered them cakes and pastries laced with sedatives.

According to RTL radio the methods he employed to steal from his victims, aged from 75 to 88, had always been the same.

He befriended them in local shops or on the street, engaged them in conversation and gained their confidence enough to get himself invited to their homes.

When he turned up it was never empty handed but, as RTL reports, "Always with a French pastry or a cake."

But the 64-year-old was no social do-gooder, because the cakes were spiked with Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and after getting his victims to reveal their personal identification numbers and ensuring they had fallen asleep, he would steal their bank cards and use them to withdraw cash.

And that, according to Le Parisien, was how he managed to commit almost 20 robberies dating back to 2009.

The police, the paper reports, hadn't wanted to alarm elderly people living in the area but had "warned them to be vigilant".

Their inquiries investigations had been made more difficult apparently by the "sometimes unreliable descriptions" provided by the victims.

In the end though they were able to identify the man after they had managed to discover where he had been buying the cakes.

Britain's "Super Granny" to the rescue as an elderly lady foils a robbery WITH UPDATE

It was real handbags-at-dawn-type stuff in the East Midlands town of Northampton on Monday morning as an elderly woman attacked a gang of men attempting to rob a jeweller's store.

Screenshot from YouTube video

There were, according to the BBC, six of them armed with sledgehammers.

There was just one of her, armed with...what else, but a handbag.

Video footage of what happened was broadcast on ITV's Anglia Tonight show and, in the way these things are, soon went viral on the Net.

Take a look at the video and you can see exactly what happened; one old lady, dressed in red, rushing across the street and laying into the men without any apparent concern for her own safety.



It was a case of, as the Guardian puts it, once the cavalry arrived "the thugs - twice her size - didn't stand a chance."

Passers-by eventually lost their British reserve and helped hold down one of the men as he fell from the getaway scooter.

Police later arrested three others and were searching for the other two who managed to get away.

Nobody - least of all Super Granny - was hurt, although she wishes to remain anonymous.

"Clearly we will recognise her for her bravery," Peter Chisholm, a local police inspector told the Guardian.

"We won't be releasing her name though," Inspector Peter Chisholm is quoted as saying.

"There might be more members of the gang out there and we wouldn't want to put her in any danger," he added.

UPDATE

The woman has now been named as Ann Timson, who is quoted in the Daily Mail as saying, "My mother’s instinct kicked in and I ran across the road shouting at the lads to stop it. Only then did I realise that they were smashing glass and that it was a raid."

Read more

"Miracle" of Parisian toddler surviving seven-storey fall - where were the parents?

You might remember the tale of the 18-month-old "miracle baby" who fell from the seventh floor of a building in Paris on Monday afternoon, but survived the fall unharmed after he landed in the arms of a passerby.

It was a story that made the national headlines of television, press and radio.

Tabac le Vincennes - awning which broke the toddler's fall (screenshot BFM television)

The accumulation of events made it even more of a miracle than it at first appeared; the boy's fall being broken by the awning of a café closed for All Saints Day holiday, the fact that the awning should have been folded, but the device for closing it hadn't been working the day before, and of course the passerby, Philippe Bensignor, who happened to be on hand to catch the boy in his arms.

Dr. Philippe Bensignor who caught the 18-month-old toddler (screenshot France 2 television)

But but one vital question remains unanswered. Where were the child's parents?

The toddler had been playing with his three-year-old sister before the incident, but apparently they had been left alone in the apartment for at least a couple of hours.

"When we managed to get into the apartment we looked around to see whether the children's mother was home," Samia Benmoussa, a neighbour in the same building told Europe 1 national radio.

"There was nobody else apart from the little girl crying."

The parents had reportedly been out 'taking a walk" and only returned a couple of hours after the afternoon's drama.

Police took the couple in for questioning and they remained in custody until Wednesday morning before being released to appear before a court in two months to face charges of "neglect and unintentional injury".

L'actualité sociale

Drunk in charge of a lawnmower

For one French man this year's May Day celebrations finished before they had begun after police pulled him over for being drunk in charge of a...motorised lawnmower.

May Day was last weekend - a day recognised in many countries as International Workers' Day or Labour Day if you will.

Here in France it's a public holiday even though this year of course May 1 fell on a Saturday.

And there's a tradition that unions take to the streets to demonstrate "solidarity".

There's also a much older and perhaps more quaint custom associated with the day, which dates back to the 16th century; that of offering and receiving a sprig lily of the valley, which is not only a symbol that Spring is well and truly here but is also supposed to be "lucky".

For one man though in the village of Le Pasquier in the eastern département of Jura, the celebrations never really got underway and fortune certainly wasn't on his side as the day before, after apparently having spent a couple of hours in the forest collecting flowers, he was stopped by police as he made his way home.

The 56-year-old was, according to the regional daily Le Progrès, happily driving along not in a car but aboard his motorised lawnmower when he was pulled over.

Hardly a chase reminiscent of those US action films probably as the thing barely goes faster than walking pace, but nonetheless, as the police reminded the newspaper, a motorised lawnmower is not a vehicle "authorised to circulate on public roads in France."

And it didn't take long for the two officers to realise that the man wasn't exactly fully in control of his "capacities".

"It was clear when we started questioning him that he wasn't in a 'normal' state," one of the officers told the newspaper.

"He was talking incoherently and smelled of alcohol."

Sure enough when breathylised, he was found to be well over the limit, and the police immediately impounded his unusual "mode of transport".

Not surprisingly perhaps he'll face charges on two counts when his case comes to court next month; driving an unregistered vehicle and doing so while drunk.

But although he's likely to face a hefty fine, he won't lose his licence, as he doesn't have one.

Motorway madness in France - changing drivers at 130km/h

While most motorists might get from A to B with only the slightest of hitches and the minimum of mistakes there are also of course plenty of daft driving stories, plain stupid ones, those involving reckless fools and others simply defying belief.

What follows surely is a tale that falls into each of the idiotic categories - and then some.

And it just goes to show that mad motorway stories aren't confined to summer speeding when the media is hunting around for the unusual to fill the airwaves or column inches.

On Tuesday highway police patrolling a stretch of the A10 motorway in the département of Vienne in central-western France stopped a car because they had spotted the driver and passenger exchanging seats.

Maybe that should be capitalised to add emphasis.

No, obviously the car wasn't stationary as the driver and passenger swapped places otherwise the police wouldn't have had to stop it.

Instead it was cruising along at the official speed limit on French motorways of 130 km/h or just over 80 mph!

The less-than judicious manouevre came to the attention of the police because as the two attempted to change places their vehicle (not surprisingly perhaps) suddenly dropped speed to a more modest 60 km/h or 37 mph.

When the car was pulled over at the next rest area and the police had checked the papers of both the driver and the passenger, it transpired that son who had been trying to hand over control of the vehicle to his 70-year-old father had in fact had his licence suspended:

"Something that probably explains why the two were willing to take such a risk", according to police.

Among the offences with which both men have been jointly or individually charged are driving with a suspended licence, not wearing seat belts and - as if it needed to be spellt out - "driving under conditions that didn't allow for easy manouevring."

Legalese presumably for "dangerous driving".

Their fate will be determined by a judge.

Titi the croc - another French reptile tale

Police in the northern French town of Maubeuge found exactly what they were looking for when they raided the cellar of a squat last Friday.

For there, among the stolen stereo systems, scooters, and motorcycles was a vivarium.

No big deal you might be thinking, especially as it was only half full with water and pretty much hidden from view.

Except it contained a baby crocodile.

Even though drugs and illegal firearms were also found in the cellar, it was actually the croc the police were after.

They had reportedly got wind of its existence from children who had been paying regular visits to feed it with live fish.

Just as well perhaps that someone had been taking care of "Titi", as the baby reptile has been named, because the owner or owners of the croc hadn't apparently been looking after him.

His only company among all the stolen merchandise was 300 grammes of cannabis and €2,000 in cash - hardly an appropriate diet for a fast growing and hungry reptile.

Why exactly Titi was being kept in the cellar remains as much a mystery at the moment as the identity of the person or persons to whom he belongs.

But police have dismissed one story doing the rounds that his eventual fate would have seen him being used been to be used in combat in dog fights as a rumour.

For now Titi has been "released" from the confines of the cellar and taken to the zoo in Maubeuge, where he'll stay until a permanent home is found for him.

Ah the French and their croc stories.

Perhaps flushed with success, the police in Maubeuge could give their colleagues in the village of Xertigny in eastern France a hand.

Authorities there have been trying to hunt down a crocodile on the loose since June, and even though they've drained a local pond all they've came up with so far has been a 94-centimetre pike.

Police suspect admits he was behind Sarkozy death threats

French police seem to have "got their man" in their long-running hunt to find the identity of the person nicknamed "le corbeau" (the crow) in the French media.

A 51-year-old man taken in for questioning at the weekend has reportedly admitted that he alone was behind a series of letters and death threats sent to a number of leading politicians, including the French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The suspect, Thierry Jérôme is, according to the weekly French newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, an unemployed husband and father who lives in the Hérault département the south of the country.

According to investigators, he's apparently "someone who is unbalanced" and a member of a local gun club.

The paper says his arrest came on Sunday following a DNA match with a sample taken for the stamp on one of the anonymous letters which had been sent from the region since the end of 2008.

That was when Sarkozy as well as several government ministers (past and present) as well as high profile media figures started receiving threatening letters, some of them accompanied by a bullet.

Over the past couple of weeks, says the paper, police have been taking DNA samples from members of local clubs in an effort to find a match and identify the suspect.

On Monday police extended Jérôme's custody although they released his wife, Ariane and are now questioned his 27-year-old daughter Angélique, to have a "clearer understanding of the character of her father".

Should Jérôme be charged, it would see the end to an investigation which has seen 12 other people taken in for questioning this year.

In March a military reservist from Montpellier was taken in and held after being "denounced" by his former girlfriend, but later released without being charged.

And at the beginning of this month police swooped on around 20 homes in l'Hérault taking 11 people in for questioning before releasing them.

Police step up investigations in Sarkozy death threat case

There has been a development in the case of "le corbeau" (the crow) - or perhaps that should be put in the plural.

On Thursday, police swooped on around 20 homes in the southern French département of l'Hérault and took 11 people in for questioning

You might remember that the affair of le corbeau dates back to the end of 2008 when a number of leading politicians, including the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and several government ministers (past and present), as well as high profile media figures started receiving threatening letters, some of them accompanied by a bullet.

All the letters reportedly carried a postmark indicating they had been sent from l'Hérault.

At the beginning of this year there were two waves of letters, each one warning the recipients that their lives and those of their families were at risk.

While the media speculated as to whether the (anonymous) letters were the work of a group or a cell, the nterior minister at the time, Michèle Alliot-Marie, also suggested that it could be the ramblings of an unbalanced individual or "someone who was a little deranged".

The most recently reported case (you can read about it here) was just last month, when a letter addressed to Sarkozy was intercepted at the central sorting office in the southern city of Montpellier.

Thursday's operation took place early in the morning in the town of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières as well as the neighbouring villages of Prémian and Riols (you'll need to get your maps out to locate them precisely).

Those questioned and detained were a mixed bunch, according to the regional daily Midi Libre, from all walks of life.

But some of them, says the paper, had a number of points in common such as their opposition to a local (Socialist) politician, were members of a local gun shooting club or were hunters.

This time around the police are being, as the national daily Le Figaro puts it, "prudent" in their investigations and remaining tight-lipped.

That might well have something to do with the last occasion on which someone was taken in for questioning back in March this year, when a military reservist from Montpellier was taken in held after being "denounced" by his former girlfriend, but later released without being charged.

Fined for smoking at the wheel

Motorists who smoke beware!

Think twice before lighting up when taking the wheel of a car - at least here in France.

Because if the police catch you with a ciggie in your mouth, you might just end up facing a fine.

Well at least it could happen if the case of Yoni Bismuth is anything to go by.

The 28-year-old Parisian locksmith enjoys the more-than-occasional puff even when on the road, and that's exactly what he was doing when police stopped him last weekend for having run a red light.

He was of course handed down a fine for his first offence, but then to his surprise - and shock - he received another one for smoking.

"I asked the policeman not to fine me, telling him that now that I knew it was an offence I wouldn't do it again," he said.

"But all he said is 'I'm not listening, a fine is a fine'."

And it was indeed - €22 worth, although Bismuth didn't lose any points.

Well that's one side of the story but of course, as is typical in such cases, the forces of law and order have a slightly different tale to tell as to the version of events.

First of all there was the contravention of having run a red light at an intersection while driving in a bus lane, according to Frédéric Cheyre of the police precinct in the capital's 19th arrondissement, and then there was that issue with the cigarette.

"What the officer on duty saw at the same time as the driver not stopping at the traffic lights was that he had a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other," he said.

So did that make him incapable of driving? And more importantly did the act of smoking (or even the intention to) constitute an offence under the law?

Well the highway code in France is a bit fuzzy on the issue, unlike that of using a mobile 'phone while driving, which has been an offence since 2003.

And as far as Jean-Baptiste Iosca, a lawyer specialising in road traffic offences, is concerned, the police overstepped the mark.

"It's strictly stupid, illegal and above all abusive," he said.

"And something absolutely must be done about it."

Bismuth intends to contest the fine, just as a nurse successfully did in the Gironde department of southwestern France in January this year.

"I don't find it normal," he said.

"Even with a cigarette in the hand, you can drive without any problem. Millions of people do it every day," he added.

"Today I've had a fine for smoking, next time perhaps it'll be because I haven't shaved properly."

Anyone got a light?

French police in child porn swoop

Early Tuesday morning police arrested 90 people in a nationwide sweep to break up a suspected online child pornography ring in France.

More than 300 officers were dispatched throughout the country following an investigation that had lasted more than four years and had centred on the sharing of images and videos of children reportedly as young as one year old.

Police also seized computers in Tuesday's operation with one of them alone, according to James Juan, the public prosecutor of the northern city of Beauvais (Oise), containing more than 30,000 images.

"That was just the pictures," he told a news conference. "There were also around 1,000 videos on that single computer."

The roots of the operation go back to December 2004, when a site containing pornographic pictures and videos of children first came to the attention of the police.

The creator, from the northern town of Clermont (Oise), was just 17 years old at the time when he set up the site.

Even though he was arrested in May 2005, the pictures and videos were still on the Net and others were downloading and sharing material from his server; proof as far as the police were concerned, that there was an "organised network in place" for diffusing child pornography.

And so began "Némésis" - the code-name for the investigation - to trace and locate those involved in the suspected ring. It was carried out by a specialised police unit to monitor cyber crime.

It was a process which Robert Bouche, the commander in charge of one of the sections in the northern city of Amiens (Somme), admitted was long, but necessary under the circumstances.

"We were dealing with people who knew how to use the Internet and technology easily," he said

"Many for example were computer experts (data processors or computer scientists) more than capable of making the job of investigators all the more difficult and ensuring they couldn't easily be identified," he added.

The 90 men, whose identities have not been released as investigations are still ongoing, apparently come from all walks of life.

If charged and found guilty they could face prison sentences of up to 10 years.

A clear case of racism within the French police

The following story first began well over a year ago, and although it has only now been partially resolved, it shows perhaps that racial discrimination within the French police is still very much alive and a force with which to be reckoned.

The least that can be said is that this country's highest administrative court and the one that provides the government with legal advice, the Conseil D'Etat, has taken an exceptional step in an effort to stamp out racism.

In 2007 Abdeljalel El Haddioui, an officer in the French police, applied to enter an examination which would allow him to move up a grade.

He was one of 700 original candidates nationally for just 27 posts and after completing six of the seven required stages with an average which put him in the top 20, he was one of 50 remaining candidates to be called before a jury for the final oral phase.

And that's when his problems began and racial discrimination appeared to rear its ugly little head.

The 40-year-old, who had been in the police since 1998, was the only remaining candidate with a name that marked him out as being obviously Moslem.

And here's a taste of just some of the questions he claimed the jury chose to put just to him during that oral session.

"Does your wife wear a headscarf?"
"Do you practise Ramadan?"
"Don't you find it strange that there are Arab ministers in the government?"
"What's your view on corruption within the Moroccan police force?"

As he pointed out afterwards the other candidates were apparently not asked whether they celebrated Christmas.

El Haddioui's score for the oral was just 4/20, which meant that he had failed.

When he made an initial complaint, the president of the jury at the hearing, Jean-Michel Fromion, refused to comment.

But El Haddioui didn't let the matter lie there and instead found himself a lawyer and took his case to the French Equal Opportunities and Anti-Discrimination Commission (Halde) saying that, "The jury had based its questions on his ethnic origins and his religion in order to eliminate him as a candidate."

With Halde's backing the case finally reached the Conseil d'Etat, which has now taken the unprecedented measure of recommending that the results for all the candidates be annulled.

The final decision as to the fate of the "class of 2007" and the future of El Haddioui lies with the interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie.

She has yet to make an official statement on the matter.