The Alpes-Maritimes is one of the departments in France with the sharpest rise in reported cases of racist, xenophobic and anti-religious crimes. That's according to a new report from France's interior ministry, based on figures from municipal and national police and gendarmes.
It found what it described as a "clear acceleration" in such crimes - up 32% last year, with 15,000 reported offences nationwide linked to ethnicity, nationality or religion. The Alpes-Maritimes had the third-highest number of reported racist crimes per capita last year, with Paris coming top. The majority of cases relate to what police describe as "provocations, insults and defamation", with people of African origin the most common victims. Meanwhile, earlier this year, the Council of Jewish Institutions in France warned of a sharp rise in the number of anti-Semitic acts recorded in France, in the context of the conflict in the Middle East, while SOS Racisme in Marseille warned that anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts were on the rise.
Police with sniffer dogs were called into a secondary school in Nice yesterday to deal with what turned out to be a hoax bomb alert. The warning was sent from the hacked email account of a student at the Don Bosco lycée, threatening to blow the school up. 1,600 students and 200 staff were ordered to stay away from the school all day yesterday until explosives experts gave the all-clear.
A nurse in Marseille has gone on trial accused of defrauding the French health insurance system to the tune of more than €1.5 million. Prosecutors accuse the 67-year-old of wrongly billing
