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A young black man who claims he was raped by police with a baton in a Paris suburb has left hospital and thanked supporters in France and abroad for rallying around him.The 22-year-old man, identified publicly only by his first name, Théo, said in a Facebook video on Thursday that the notes and visits from supporters "helped me hang on ... made it possible for me to be here among you today."He said he was still not healed after the alleged rape on February 2, which occurred during an identity check in his hometown of Aulnay-sous-Bois, north of Paris.Paris suburbs rage over 'police rape'Théo suffered such severe injuries to his rectum that he needed major emergency surgery and was prescribed 60 days of total incapacity to work.One officer has been charged with rape and three others with “aggravated violence”. They deny intentional wrongdoing.Theo's ordeal prompted widespread anger and several nights of violence in some of the French capital’s most deprived suburbs, where police are rout International News 24/7 ...

A group of 80 refugees from France’s “Jungle” camp in the northe port city of Calais have been selected to attend university as part of an initiative to help them ea a degree in preparation for life in their new host country.They were chosen from a pool of 200 applicants from the “Jungle” – a sprawling camp that was home to as many as 10,000 people before it was demolished in October 2016 – to take intensive French language lessons and, eventually follow other coursework at the University of Lille in northe France."I spent two months in the Jungle, and was only able to lea the alphabet," said Abdul-Raouf Hussein-Fadul, a 26-year-old Sudanese man in a baseball cap and white sneakers. "I hope that one day I'll be able to become an engineer in France, like I was in Sudan... It's not easy, I'm going to have to work hard."Prospective students were recruited by university officials with the help of volunteer organisations at the camp. To qualify for the programme, applicants were req International News 24/7 ...

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Friday vehemently denied having ever admitted to anti-fraud investigators that she misused EU funds to pay her bodyguard, saying she is the target of outright lies. “It’s a shameless lie, I have never admitted such a thing to investigators,” the National Front leader told French radio France Bleu Besançon.The Idea come after French investigative news site Mediapart and weekly Marianne on Thursday published extracts of a report by the European anti-fraud body (OLAF) which claimed that Le Pen had admitted to falsely employing at least one of her staff as an EU parliamentary assistant.According to the extracts of the report, Le Pen had defended the move, claiming the parliament owed her and her party money from unpaid salaries and expenses.But according to Le Pen, this conversation with investigators never took place.“I never even saw the sight of them [the investigators],” she said.The persistent scandal, which erupted when the report was hand International News 24/7 ...