Covid-19-French scientist Delfraissy sees no return to post-Covid-19 normal before autumn 2021,

French scientist Delfraissy sees no return to post-Covid-19 normal before autumn 2021

The French population will probably not return to a "normal" post Covid-19 life before autumn 2021, a senior government scientific adviser said on Friday. "We have a virus which continues to circulate strongly while we are just coming out of a second lockdown," immunologist Jean-François Delfraissy also told BFM television.

President Emmanuel Macron rides out the coronavirus in a presidential retreat at Versailles. While Macron routinely wears a mask and adheres to social distancing rules, he hosted or took part in multiple group meals in the days before testing positive Thursday.

Apparently, telling lies about a nonexistent election fraud scheme Democrats used to unseat Donald Trump as the rightful heir to the American throne didn’t sound like much fun to Michigan Rep. Paul Mitchell.

And since he suspects that’s exactly what the public will hear from the GOP for the next four years, Mitchell announced on December 14 he was officially defecting from the party. Then on December 18, he gave an interview to The Detroit Free Press (DFP) in which he said he will never again run for elected office.

“I have nointention of running for elected office again,” Mitchell told the newspaper. “I have disagreements with the [Michigan] governor on a whole range of things, but I’m going to go home and inflict my opinion on my family, who will probably tell me to please shut up.”

As the representative of one of Michigan’s most Republican districts, many in the GOP hoped Mitchell would challenge the state’s current Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer when her term ends in 2022. He has been an outspoken critic of the way she’s handled the coronavirus pandemic, even suing her in May for her use of state police powers to enforce public health orders.

However, Mitchell said he’s become increasingly disaffected with a party that tolerated Trump’s tyrannical attempts to overturn the 2020 election. In a letter Mitchell sent Republican National Committee Chairwoman Rona McDaniel and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, he said the party’s “raw political considerations” concerning the 2020 election factored heavily in his decision to call it quits.

“I agree there have been some disconcerting aspects to this election,” Mitchell wrote. “With more than 155 million people voting, both administrative errors and even some fraudulent voting likely occurred…However, the President and his legal team have failed to provide substantive evidence of fraud or administrative failure on a scale large enough to impact the outcome of the election.”

While Mitchell’s absence won’t affect the balance of power on the Armed Services and Transportation and Infrastructure committees, his defection is a symbol of what’s to come for the GOP if they continue to “stand up and say, Stop” to Trump, Mitchell told DFP.

Republicans fared well in the 2020 election, picking up nine seats in the House and successfully defending a majority of their Senate seats.
The same is true at the local level. To the left is a county-level map of the 2020 election. One glaring conclusion that can be drawn is that the GOP holds a considerable grassroots advantage over Democrats.

At the state executive level, the GOP controls 22 states, including two of the most critical in the 2020 election: Arizona and Georgia. The GOP also has considerable representation in other states with divided governments. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and North Carolina, the GOP controls both the state House and Senate while Democrats occupy the executive wing.

Mitchell is suggesting that the GOP’s continued kowtowing to Trump will end in an erosion of this advantage, one the party has worked for generations to build.

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An Islamist militant who opened fire aboard a high-speed train travelling through northern Europe but was overpowered by three Americans before he killed anyone was sentenced to life in jail by a French court on Friday.

A host of European leaders and top French officials rushed into isolation on Thursday after President Emmanuel Macron tested positive for Covid-19, upending political agendas across the continent. Macron, 42, was tested after the "onset of the first symptoms" and will now self isolate for seven days in accordance with national regulations, his office said in a statement.

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Thursday Prime Minister Jean Castex said museums, cinemas and theatres would not re-open before at least the beginning of January as the target of keeping daily new infections below 5,000 had not been met. How French museums are adapting to the Covid-19 era? FRANCE 24's Clovis Casali reports from Le Louvre, in Paris.

French President Emmanuel Macron met numerous heads of state and high-level officials in the 10 days before he tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday, including most European leaders at a summit on Dec 10-11. FRANCE 24's French Politics Editor Marc Perelman tells us more.

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People in France could start receiving the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech in the last week of December if European Union authorities approve it next week, French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Wednesday. Castex told parliament that the vaccination campaign in France would be stepped up in January and he confirmed that the elderly would come first in the queue.

Two prominent Italian intellectuals announced Monday they were returning their Legion of Honor awards to France to protest that Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was given the prize despite his government's human rights abuses. Corrado Augias, a longtime journalist for La Repubblica daily and onetime European Parliamentarian for Italy’s center-left, returned his prize to the French Embassy on Monday. Giovanna Melandri, a former Italian culture minister and the president of Rome's Maxxi contemporary art museum, announced she would follow suit.

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A French court on Wednesday convicted 14 people of crimes ranging from financing terrorism to membership of a criminal gang in relation to Islamist attacks in 2015 against the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket. The trial has reopened one of modern France's darkest episodes, just as another wave of Islamist attacks on home soil this autumn, including the beheading of a schoolteacher, prompted the government to crack down on what it calls Islamist separatism. FRANCE 24's Sharon Gaffney tells us more.

The first doses of Covid-19 vaccines could be administered to people in France in the last week of December, French Prime Minister Jean Castex told parliament on Wednesday.

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A French court on Wednesday convicted Hayat Boumeddiene, the former partner of an Islamist militant who killed four people in a 2015 attack on a Jewish supermarket, of terrorism-related charges. FRANCE 24's French Politics Editor Marc Perelman tells us more.

A French court on Wednesday convicted Hayat Boumeddiene, the former partner of an Islamist militant who killed four people in a 2015 attack on a Jewish supermarket, of terrorism-related charges. Sharon Gaffney reports.

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A Paris court was set Wednesday to issue its verdict in the trial of 14 suspected accomplices of the Islamist gunmen who murdered some of France's most famous cartoonists at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in 2015, killings that horrified the nation. FRANCE 24's Sharon Gaffney reports.

'Vaccination will start in retirement homes,' Professeur Alain Fischer, President of the French Council of Covid-19 strategy, said on Tuesday.

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Tuesday brought new freedoms for people in France because it was the end of a stay-at-home order. This had meant that, around the clock, people could only venture out for a limited time and for essential trips, to shop, or to exercise. But that was replaced instead with a nightly curfew. From 8:00 p.m until 6:00 a.m. people can only go out for work, on official business, or for medical reasons.

Arts and culture sectors protested Thursday in Paris after Prime Minister Jean #Castex announced museums, cinemas and theatres would not re-open before at least the beginning of January as the target of keeping daily new infections below 5,000 had not been met.
 
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French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday he plans to call a referendum on changing the constitution to include a commitment to fight against climate change and for the protection of the environment. FRANCE 24's Environment Editor Mairead Dundas tells us more.

France's government announced in November that a lockdown imposed at the end of October to tackle a second coronavirus wave would be partially lifted by Dec. 15 and would include the re-opening of cultural venues. But last Thursday Prime Minister Jean Castex said museums, cinemas and theatres would not re-open before at least the beginning of January as the target of keeping daily new infections below 5,000 had not been met.

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Just five days before they were due to perform before a live audience for the first time in almost two months, the singers of the Paris Opera learned they could not re-open before January as France's coronavirus cases remained stubbornly high.  

So they decided to film their performance of works by a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and 18th century French composers Chevalier de Saint-Georges and Andre Gretry and offer it on a new video-on-demand portal launched last week by the Opera de Paris, which runs the Garnier and the Bastille opera venues.

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"Of course it is sad, but we're very lucky to be able to film this concert, especially because some pieces of music that will be played have never been recorded", said French soprano Pauline Texier.

France's government announced in November that a lockdown imposed at the end of October to tackle a second coronavirus wave would be partially lifted by Dec. 15 and would include the re-opening of cultural venues.

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But last Thursday Prime Minister Jean Castex said museums, cinemas and theatres would not re-open before at least the beginning of January as the target of keeping daily new infections below 5,000 had not been met.

"For me, it's really a shame that we currently cannot perform. Because we, as artists, are incomplete without the public", Fernando Escalona, a countertenor from Venezuela, told Reuters during the rehearsal.

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People from the arts and entertainment world protested in Paris on Tuesday against the government's decision.
Castex said extra financial aid would be granted to artists and there would be a Jan. 7 meeting to see if some reopening was possible.

Not being able to perform in front of an audience has "become the new normal", American bass Aaron Pendleton said.
"But we're still able to share our work and we're still able to work so we've been lucky to have that", he added.

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French government announced on Thursday it would lift the six-week-long partial lockdown on December 15 and impose a night-time #curfew instead. But in a severe blow for the cultural sector, it said that museums, theatres, concert venues and cinemas would remain closed for three more weeks. FRANCE 24's International Affairs Editor Philip Turle tells us more.

Starting on Tuesday, the French will no longer need to fill out forms justifying their reason for leaving home. They will, however, be subject to a new 8pm-6am curfew as the country battles to avoid a third wa