Latest news with #Montreuil
Malay Mail
7 days ago
- General
- Malay Mail
Ex-Ubisoft exec denies seeing harassment, admits ‘misplaced' sexual remarks in trial
BOBIGNY (France), June 4 — A former executive at French video game giant Ubisoft, on trial with two others for alleged sexual and psychological harassment of employees, denied on Tuesday witnessing any abuse in the office. Serge Hascoet, the company's former chief creative officer, said that he had been unaware of incidents that prompted several employees to complain of regular public humiliation and hazing. He said he never heard any sexist or homophobic remarks or insults, but after hours of questioning admitted making some 'misplaced' comments with sexual connotations to women employees. Overall, the atmosphere in Ubisoft's open-plan offices in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil was 'studious and focused on work', Hascoet insisted, although he said that 'water fights' did break out 'when it got hot'. Hascoet, in his 60s, is on trial with the company's former vice-president of editorial and creative services, Thomas Francois, and former game director Guillaume Patrux. All three were dismissed for serious misconduct following an internal inquiry in 2020, and all three deny the claims made against them. Francois is the focus of the most damning claims of systematic psychological and sexual harassment over years, including watching pornographic films in the office and commented on women employees' appearance. He allegedly forced one skirt-wearing employee to do a headstand and drew on her face with a felt-tip pen before forcing her to attend a meeting. Francois is additionally being prosecuted for an attempted sexual assault. Hascoet is accused of lewd behaviour and posing intrusive questions of a sexual nature, as well as racist comments and behaviour. Asked about the felt-pen allegation involving Francois, Hascoet said: 'I don't remember that episode at all.' When the court's judge asked about another incident, in which Hascet's company male assistant — known for selling drugs — brandished a knife to a woman employee, the ex-chief creative officer said 'I don't know' how the victim took the armed threat against her. In Monday's hearing, several women who worked under Hascoet testified that he made them run personal errands for him, including picking up his daughter from school. Hascoet said he was forced to give such orders because of lengthy meetings, and because his wife was suffering from incurable cancer. The trial runs to Friday. — AFP
New York Times
02-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Inside Paris chaos: Violence and disorder prove familiar footnote to historic game
Desire Doue's deflected shot had barely had time to nestle in the net before the first firework broke across the sky in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil. Here, as across the French capital, fans piled into bars and cafes, squeezed themselves onto beer-garden benches and crowded around televisions in their sitting rooms to witness Paris Saint-Germain's historic 5-0 annihilation of Inter in the Champions League final. Advertisement It was a success that had been a long time coming: five years since PSG's only previous appearance in the final, 14 years since the club's agenda-changing takeover by Qatar Sports Investments, 32 years since hated rivals Marseille had claimed France's first — and hitherto only — men's Champions League success. PSG may be a young football club, having only come into being in 1970, but their supporters, young and old, had been waiting for this moment their entire lives. Expectation had turned into tension in the days preceding the game and the nearer it came, the greater the tension grew. But then, in the blink of an eye, the tension was gone. Doue's goal made it 2-0 after only 20 minutes and when he added PSG's third goal with half an hour remaining, shortly to be followed by a fourth, and then a fifth, the cork came off the bottle, turning the entire city into a riot of booming fireworks, bright flares, honking car horns and deliriously celebrating fans. Very quickly, however, and well before the game in Munich had finished, a darker note crept into the celebrations as disturbing videos began to pop up on social media. Cars burning in the streets. Bus stops smashed. Groups of youths flooding across the Peripherique ring road, bringing traffic to a standstill. A young man violently robbed of his scooter. A cyclist left slumped in the road after being knocked from his Velib rental bicycle by a car. Shockingly graphic images showing the aftermath of a collision between a car and a group of people, this time in the south-eastern city of Grenoble, which left two people seriously injured. On the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, police deployed water cannon and tear gas to disperse supporters who attempted to break through crash barriers in order to reach the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the iconic cobbled street. Running battles between troublemakers and members of the CRS, France's notorious riot police, continued throughout the night. Advertisement 'We arrived on the Champs and we saw the first lines of CRS,' says Mathieu Faurie, who was out watching the celebrations and witnessed some of the disorder first-hand. 'We got to the first shops and some people started smashing the windows in Foot Locker. Behind us, the police started tear-gassing people, so there was a moment of panic and everyone started running towards the top of the street. 'It started to get chaotic everywhere. There were crowds of people surging this way and that. People were trying to leave but the cops weren't letting people down the side streets — you had to walk back down the street towards the Place de la Concorde. 'It took a long time to get out and that killed the atmosphere a bit but we carried on towards Grands Boulevards, where there were loads of people, and it was much better.' At Place de la Bastille, east of the city centre, fans massed in their thousands to celebrate PSG's triumph. But a journalist from the German newspaper BILD reported having had to take shelter at the back of a restaurant after it came under attack from rioters. 'Paris made it 4-0. Again, there was great cheering. But this turned into hatred,' wrote Torsten Rumpf. 'The guests in the restaurant were attacked with fireworks and bottles, chairs and tables were thrown. Windows were broken. Fights broke out. 'I saw children and young women crying and heard loud screams. The air became stuffy with the smoke from the fireworks. After 10 minutes, the security guards brought the situation under control.' The French authorities reported that 491 arrests were made in Paris during the night of the game. Paris prefect of police Laurent Nunez told a press conference that 192 members of the public and nine police officers had been injured. In Paris, a 23-year-old scooter rider was killed after being hit by a car, while in the southwest town of Dax, a 17-year-old boy died after being stabbed in the chest. Investigations into both incidents are under way. Advertisement France's Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau posted on social media that 'barbarians have taken to the streets of Paris'. If it was a tragic footnote to append to a significant football match, it was also familiar. The following afternoon, a helicopter hovers in the overcast sky above the River Seine as PSG supporters exit the Invalides metro station and make their way across the Pont Alexandre III towards the Champs-Elysees for their team's triumphant trophy parade. Ousmane Toure, clad in a PSG home shirt and accompanied by his girlfriend, Angeline, had watched the match along with 45,000 fellow fans on the big screens at the Parc des Princes the night before. 'The atmosphere was incredible,' he says with a smile. 'Truly memorable.' But after setting out across Paris on his scooter after the game to revel in the festivities, he saw scenes that left him with memories that he will not look back on with any kind of fondness at all. 'I went out on the Periph (ring road) and it was a bit of a s*** show, to be honest,' he says. 'There were lots of people — I don't know where they'd come from — on motorbikes, blocking the traffic. They were trying to have a party but it wasn't very cool for the people in the cars. 'You'd go past certain streets and there were scenes of chaos. It was unfortunate because it gives a bad image of football and a bad image of the people of Paris. They should have been scenes of joy and they turned into scenes of horror.' On either side of the bridge, street vendors have opportunistically set up stalls offering refrigerated drinks. Cars speed past honking their horns, some twirling PSG flags and scarves from their windows, while youngsters in small groups nimbly dart and weave their way through the crowds on bicycles. Although the atmosphere is relaxed and festive, the sound of police sirens and the whir of the helicopter's blades serve as reminders that the authorities remain on high alert. Advertisement Eliot Nivet, strolling across the bridge with his friend, Pierre-Francois Kerbrat, says that the scenes that had marred the previous evening's celebrations were simply par for the course. 'It started kicking off during the match, which shows it can't have been connected to real supporters,' he says. 'We went to the Champs after and I was there from 11 o'clock until two in the morning. There were fires, like there always are; bikes that were set on fire but nothing out of the ordinary. 'Then the police did their job. There was a fair amount of tear gas. There were just loads and loads of people in every street. There was so much fervour and it's difficult to contain. We're not worried about today.' Arriving on the Right Bank of the Seine on Sunday, police have blocked off Avenue Winston Churchill, which leads straight to the Champs-Elysees. Three dark-grey police vans are parked across the street. Beside one of them, a black-clad police officer eyes the small crowd that has formed beside the crash barriers and mutters something into his walkie-talkie. The supporters there seem more concerned about missing the parade than inadvertently wandering into a riot. There were further skirmishes between supporters and riot police shortly before the trophy procession, as reported by L'Equipe. The clashes continued during Sunday evening, with Reuters reporting that police deployed tear gas when dozens of ticketless fans sought to enter the security perimeter, and again after supporters threw fireworks at police as the stadium emptied out. It was something of an achievement that it was even allowed to take place at all. Mindful of the scenes of serious disorder that had marred a previous PSG trophy parade in 2013 at the Place du Trocadero, which overlooks the Eiffel Tower, Paris authorities were initially minded to reject the club's request before being persuaded into performing a U-turn. Advertisement To cite a more recent example, Liverpool supporters will not need reminding of the carnage that took place before and after the 2022 Champions League final at the Stade de France, where fans were kettled and tear-gassed by police prior to the game, and then picked off by opportunistic muggers as they left the stadium afterwards. Patrick Mignon, a sports sociologist and author, says that eruptions of violence around sporting events in Paris reflect the underlying mistrust that exists between the police and disaffected young people from the city's disadvantaged suburbs. 'When you get events like this, which bring masses of people into the streets, they're an opportunity for people to display the tensions that exist within French society and the phenomenon of political polarisation,' he says. 'The conflict between young people from working-class neighbourhoods and the police is an old story. We also had riots here in 2022 and 2005. Paris is the place where all the tensions within French society are focused. 'We also know that any event that brings lots of people into the streets for a party also attracts young people who see these events as opportunities for all kinds of criminal activity: looting shops, pickpocketing, seeking confrontations with other young people or provoking the police.' Even at the most glorious moments in France's footballing history, tragedy has seldom been far away. After the great Saint-Etienne squad of the mid-1970s returned from beating Dutch side PSV in the European Cup semi-finals in 1976, one of the fans who rushed onto the runway at Boutheon airport to greet them was killed by the plane's propellers. When crowds flocked to the Champs-Elysees to celebrate France's victory over Brazil in the 1998 World Cup final, a panicked driver drove her car into a crowd at the Arc de Triomphe, killing one person and injuring 35. Two men died in different areas of France during the celebrations that followed Les Bleus' triumph at the 2018 World Cup, which also prompted scenes of violent disorder on the Champs-Elysees. Advertisement Of course, excessive celebration, enormous crowds of people and alcohol have proven to be a deadly combination after all manner of sporting events across the world. But as they sweep away the broken glass and patch up the wounded in Paris, there is no shrugging off a troubling sense of deja vu. (Header photo:)
Daily Mail
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS French rapper dies of cardiac arrest aged 31 just hours before concert
French rapper Werenoi has died of a cardiac arrest at the age of 31 just hours before he was due on stage. Jeremy Bana Owana, known as Werenoi, was hospitalised on Friday night after going into cardio-respiratory arrest, according to French outlet Pure Charts. After being admitted into intensive care, he reportedly died in the early hours of Saturday morning. Werenoi had been due to appear at the Azar Club in Lyon for an exclusive showcase on May 17. No official statement has yet been shared by his family or management but tributes were quick to flood in from the French music scene on social media. Spotify France shared a tribute to X which, translated from French, read: 'Werenoi left us last night. 'In just five years, the Montreuil rapper left a lasting mark on rap and French music as a whole. Our condolences to his family and loved ones.' In a post believed to be in tribute to Werenoi, music producer Babs wrote: 'Rest in peace my brother I love you!!!' French hip hop duo Djadja & Dinaz added: 'The release of the new music video has been postponed. All our thoughts to Werenoi's loved ones.'
