164
votes
Accepted
Are these 'French children held at gun point'?
Are they being held? Yes.
The Telegraph article you quote has the key facts. This article in Le Monde (Google Translate) has more details.
Are they children? Technically yes.
The Le Monde article ...
- 15.7k
149
votes
Are there officially pronounced "no-go" Islamic zones in France?
TL;DR: Those regions are poor areas considered as priority for public help by the French government to reduce inequalities. It has nothing to do with Islamic law or police patrols.
I'm a French ...
- 2,945
117
votes
Accepted
Did Emmanuel Macron call a teenager an "idiot?"
To summarise up front, he used the word imbécile which is more or less like "idiot", but he used it as an element of an idiomatic figurative phrase which means "you can play-act someone who doesn't ...
- 26.2k
108
votes
Accepted
Was it ever illegal to name a pig "Napoleon" in France?
According to this article (French), there has never been such a law in French codes, but the rumor is persistent over time.
It seems that it all come from the censorship of George Orwell's Animal ...
- 1,021
86
votes
Accepted
Was the 45.9°C temperature in France in June 2019 the highest ever recorded in France?
The 1930 measurement was taken incorrectly.
The claim was also made in domestic newspapers at the time, including L'Express du Midi:
50° AU SOLEIL A SAINT-ETIENNE
Saint-Etienne, 27 août. Le ...
- 11.1k
81
votes
Accepted
Did France kill millions of Muslims?
It is hard to define where "the history of France" actually started. There was the realm of Francia since 481, the Kingdom of France since 987, experiments with different forms of ...
- 2,063
77
votes
Did the French government print posters explaining COVID-19 vaccination passport policy already in January 2020?
According to several French newspapers, e.g. Liberation, the explanation is that the 2020 date was a typo.
Plusieurs affiches sur le pass sanitaire indiquent une date au 20 janvier 2020, avant les ...
- 49.3k
71
votes
Accepted
Are all French citizens who go outside their home legally required to carry official papers with a reason why they are out (Covid-19 lockdown)?
Yes, it's true (but imprecise). All residents of France (this is unrelated to citizenship) need to carry an authorization and the police is checking these authorizations. The authorization is a sworn ...
69
votes
Accepted
Did the UK slip to sixth largest world economy from fifth, less than 24 hours after the EU referendum vote?
It's impossible to definitively prove: GDP is calculated annually, and compared based on purchasing power, rather than currency fluctuations - countries can't officially change position like this ...
- 8,794
51
votes
Accepted
Did French police fine homeless persons for not being confined at home?
It is a bit unclear at the moment. But it is certainly not just "fake news". It is an ongoing situation with "his word against his", with the police being one "his", and a not particularly trustworthy ...
- 43k
45
votes
Accepted
Are there shanty towns in Paris?
The image is true in the sense that it was not manipulated in its pixels, and it is true that it depicts mainly Roma people who set camp on the railway line in Paris. But the date of "meanwhile" is ...
- 43k
38
votes
Accepted
Do African countries have to pay a "colonial tax" to France?
No.
Here's a news article from April 2014,
African Monetary Union Stirs Criticism of France
A hoard of cash sits in the Bank of France: $20 billion in African money held in trust by the ...
- 26.2k
37
votes
Accepted
Were the Paris attackers youths from Syria?
No-one connected to the attacks has yet turned out to be from Syria - they were almost all (around 12 so far) EU citizens from France and/or Belgium. There appears to have been at least one Algerian ...
- 8,794
37
votes
Did Emmanuel Macron call a teenager an "idiot?"
The French word Macron used to address the teenager was "imbecile", although in an advisory form: "You can act like an imbecile, but..."
Video here: Emmanuel Macron tells teenager: 'Call me Mr. ...
- 49.3k
37
votes
Is this letter from Madame de Sévigné authentic?
A similar text was published on Instagram on April 29, 2020 by Véronique de Bure, a French author and one of the directors for Flammarion, a well-known French publishing house.
Un texte similaire a ...
- 403
32
votes
Are there shanty towns in Paris?
Although, as LangLangC stated, the image you provided doesn't show an actual migrant camp (the Roma people didn't come to France during the migrant crisis of 2015 but rather since 2008 when Romania ...
- 421
32
votes
Accepted
Is this letter from Madame de Sévigné authentic?
It's hard to prove a negative, but here are some points against its authenticity:
This 12-volume edition of Madame de Sévigné's letters doesn't have any letter dated 30 April 1687 (the date given in ...
- 7,565
26
votes
Accepted
Is this an old church being destroyed in France?
From the link posted by @SVilcans:
Fewer than 300 churches had been demolished between 1905 and 2014, the Catholic newspaper La Croix reported, out of more than 42,000 in total.
From the La Croix ...
- 18.8k
26
votes
Was there a trial by combat between a man and a dog in medieval France?
This appears to be a folk tale with little contemporary evidence of the event actually happening, but the tale itself does seem to date to the 15th century.
According to Volume 17 of the 1911 ...
- 11.4k
20
votes
Accepted
Has the Eiffel Tower gone dark in the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks?
This article of "Le Monde" dated November 14th updated 14:29 reports on some rumors that followed the terrorist attacks. (Le Monde is a French daily newspaper and one of the most important ...
- 1,044
20
votes
Did France kill millions of Muslims?
There has been a recent political agenda by Turkey's government to expose French violence in Algeria as Genocide, in response to France's recognition of the Armenian genocide. Consequently, English ...
- 847
16
votes
Accepted
Were postal stamp depicting LTTE symbols and its chief, Prabhakaran, released by government of France?
Post stamps bearing the image of Prabhakaran and other LTTE symbols were issued in France, not by the French government but by private users using the ability to create personalized post stamps from ...
- 28.8k
16
votes
Did the policeman in charge of the Charlie Hebdo investigation take his own life?
Helric Fredou was the second-in-command of the Limoges SRPJ (regional branch of the judicial police) . I can't find his nomination but here is a 2014 administrative decision that cites him in this ...
16
votes
Is there a French law governing the shape of the croissant?
I'm pretty sure there's no law (but the habit is genuine). I cannot find a definitive answer, but since it's difficult to prove a negative, I'm going to offer some fairly strong evidence.
None of the ...
16
votes
Did 16% of French citizens support ISIS in 2014?
The French news magazine L'Express reported on this poll. They give information about the poll that complements the Newsweek article. In particular, the poll question was (my translation): ”According ...
14
votes
Accepted
Are Muslim headscarves banned in France?
The claim isn't accurate - you won't be prosecuted for wearing a headscarf in public. However, it might be a misinterpretation or conflation of one or two things that do exist.
There is the French ...
- 38.4k
14
votes
Are there officially pronounced "no-go" Islamic zones in France?
I looked down the list
Atlas des Zones urbaines sensibles (Zus)
A lot of those places you could walk around if you wanted to. Fire crews would probably need to be accompanied by the police in some of ...
- 249
13
votes
Are there officially pronounced "no-go" Islamic zones in France?
Here's a very straightforward reference: The French penal law. Specifically, Article 113-2 makes this law applicable to the full territory of the French republic.
And of course it does not employ that ...
- 308
13
votes
Accepted
Did people run through the military graveyards at Verdun?
Yes.
German Tagesschau from May 29th (Verdun remembrance starting at 04:53, live footage of the performance at 07:24)
Euronews on YouTube with some more live footage
The production was conducted by ...
- 18.8k
13
votes
Are there shanty towns in Paris?
To answer more precisely on the where part of the question, the shantytown is on BD Ney, 75018 Paris (48°53'53.1"N 2°21'05.6"E):
Google Maps screenshot
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible