The French are up in arms again over fast food, but instead of tearing down a McDonald’s, this time they are fighting to save one from closing.

The land of haute cuisine is no stranger to protests against malbouffe, or “junk food”. But Marseille residents are now waging a legal and political battle to keep a McDonald’s outlet that has become a “centre of community life” and a much-needed job provider.

Marseille’s conservative mayor, Jean-Claude Gaudin, and its Socialist senator, Samia Ghali, have joined the campaign. If McDonald’s goes ahead with a plan to close its branch in Saint-Barthélémy, a north Marseille neighbourhood plagued by gang violence, drug trafficking and high unemployment, the senator has vowed to “oppose its presence throughout Marseille”.

With a staff of 77, the McDonald’s restaurant is the second-biggest private-sector employer in Saint-Barthélémy, which has an unemployment rate of 30 per cent — more than triple the national average. 

McDonald’s has won hearts and minds by hiring school dropouts and local youths desperate for work after serving prison terms. Many now fear losing their jobs.

The area’s bakery, butcher’s shop and hairdresser have already closed. Salim Grabsi, a member of a residents’ association, said: “There’s nothing left in areas like this and McDonald’s is a centre of community life, a place where families can sit down and relax with their kids.”

Annick Villanueva, a retired teacher, said: “My neighbours bring their grandchildren every week.”

Staff at the branch are challenging the legality of the plan to sell the outlet, owned jointly by a local franchise-holder and McDonald’s France. Kamel Guemari, the assistant manager, said the buyer’s proposal to convert it into an Asian restaurant “is nothing but a smokescreen dreamed up to allow McDonald’s to close without redundancy payouts.”

The franchise-holder, Jean-Pierre Brochiero, says the branch makes a loss. Staff obtained a court order last week suspending the sale on the grounds that he had failed to comply with a legal obligation to consult employees. The court is to rule on the case tomorrow (on Monday).  

The radical French farmer, José Bové, made international headlines by bulldozing a McDonald’s in a protest against punitive US taxes on Roquefort cheese and other French dairy products nearly 20 years ago. Since then, the American fast food chain has become a huge success story in France, which is now one of its most profitable markets. 

Nevertheless, McDonald’s continues to raise Gallic hackles. A court is to rule later this month on whether a McDonald’s can open on the Île d’Oléron, a major tourist destination off the coast of western France. A petition to keep McDonald’s out of the island has gathered more than 81,000 signatures. The local mayor says a McDonald’s would cause traffic jams on an island that is “not about mass consumption.”

An explosive account from a senior official of Donald Trump’s administration  has claimed the cabinet were so worried by the president’s erratic, impulsive behaviour they discussed using the 25th amendment to remove him from power. 

Published in the New York Times, the anonymous op-ed reveals that senior figures considered deploying the extreme measure to oust the president.

The 25th amendment is designed to be used in the case of an incapacitated commander-in-chief.

It is not the first time during his presidency that the amendment has been mentioned in relation to Mr Trump. 

In August last year the president’s freewheeling campaign speech in Phoenix – during which he rounded on the media, attacked…

Belgian police have charged one of the country’s leading football TV presenters with armed robbery after a major police probe into burglaries and drug dealing.

Stephane Pauwels hosts French-speaking Belgian coverage of the Champions League, as well as a show on the country’s leading private broadcaster RTL-TVI called “Storms of Life”.

He is suspected of “armed robbery with a firearm, at night, as part of a gang”, the federal prosecutor’s office said.

Mr Pauwels, who has also hosted football shows on French television, was arrested in connection to a  “home invasion” in the affluent town of Lasne, which is to the south of Brussels. Mr Pauwels, 50, was arrested in Mons, in the French-speaking region of Wallonia, on Tuesday. On Wednesday he was charged by a judge and granted conditional bail. The 2017 attack involved three men armed with a pistol, screwdriver and knife.

Belgium’s Le Soir reported that the victim of the robbery was in a relationship with an ex-girlfriend of Mr Pauwels.

RTL Belgium, the broadcaster’s parent company, announced that the host was suspended with immediate effect. “The management of RTL Belgium strongly hopes that clarity can be brought as quickly as possible to this affair,” it said.

The arrest was part of a probe into a string of robberies believed to be linked to organised crime that has led to 12 arrests. Belgian media reported that Mr Pauwels was arrested after a map of a London home was found at the house of a Belgian professional boxer called Farid Hakimi, who was jailed in November 2017.

The map connected Hakimi to another man, suspected of acting as a middle man between Hakimi and Mr Pauwels.  “Explicit” texts regarding the case from Mr Pauwels were reportedly found on the middle man’s phone. 

Mr Pauwels’ lawyers released a statement on Thursday, which branded the charge not even “a hypothesis” of an investigation and said the TV host would prove his innocence.

He had a string of roles at Belgian and French football clubs before becoming a TV star. He is credited with discovering Demba Ba, the Senegalese former Chelsea striker best known for scoring the goal that effectively ended Liverpool’s title challenge in 2014.

A Swedish nationalist party with neo-Nazi roots made major gains in elections on Sunday, robbing the mainstream centrist parties of a majority and pushing the country towards a hung parliament. 

Sweden Democrats, which has blamed a recent surge in rapes, sex attacks and riots on immigrants, is set to secure 18 per cent of the vote.

The ruling centre-left Social Democrats were in the lead with 28 per cent of the votes, down from 31 per cent in the 2014 election and its lowest score in decades. 

Meanwhile the centre-right Moderates scored just 19 per cent. 

Stefan Lofven, the Swedish prime minister, will have heaved a sigh of relief at the result for the nationalist Sweden Democrats, which according…

Russian news reports say a member of Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot has been hospitalised in grave condition for what could be a possible poisoning.

Relatives told the Meduza online news portal that Pyotr Verzilov had been undergoing emergency care since Tuesday. 

They said he fell ill after a court hearing for Veronika Nikulshina, a fellow member of the anarchist, art protest group.

News report quoted her saying his symptoms included losing his eyesight and ability to hear.

Ms Nikulshina said Mr Verzilov was being treated in the toxicology unit of a Moscow hospital, indicating a suspected poisoning.

Mr Verzilov, Ms Nikulshina and two other activists served 15-day jail sentences for disrupting July’s World Cup final.

They ran on to the field wearing police uniforms, briefly interrupting the match between France and Croatia. Pussy Riot said they were protesting excessive police powers in Russia. 

Mr Verzilov is married to Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, the Pussy Riot member who spent two years in prison after a protest-cum-performance at a Moscow cathedral. 

"My brother Petya in resuscitation may have been poisoned," she tweeted. "In the toxicological department in a very serious condition."

It has become the health trend of 2018, with an array of athletes and  celebrities ditching dairy and other animal products in favour of a vegan  lifestyle. 

But it appears the health movement is increasingly facing a backlash – with  food producers ditching the word "vegan" and replacing it with "plant  based".

Britain looks set to become the latest country to follow suit, according to  experts who say the moral finger-wagging associated with veganism is  putting people off. 

One industry body said Europe will be the next place where the trend will  take off, following the lead of the US, while a group of academics  from the London  School of Economics have found some customers are turned off by vegetarian  sections in menus. 

For years the term vegan has been seen as a possible selling point for  healthy foods. 

But now American food producers have suggested the word makes people think  the food could be bland – or are simply put off by the connotations. 

Michael Robbins, from the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA), told the  Daily Telegraph: "People liken plant-based to healthy eating and it’s a  very positive phrase and term. It’s certainly growing in popularity with a  number of food companies using plant based to promote their products". 

Such is the demand for plant based food among shoppers, the PBFA is working  to roll out a ‘plant-based certified’ food stamp to put on packaging. 

"There’s strong global demand for plant-based products – in many ways  Europe has been a leader on that," said Mr Robbins. 

Some companies have said they fear that the term has some stigma attached –  with some shoppers viewing the trend as a finger-wagging cult. 

Impossible Foods, a company which produces meat-free burgers designed to  replicate the taste of meat, has advised the 3,000 restaurants that serve  its burgers not to describe them as vegan on menus. 

Pat Brown, the company’s CEO, said: “For many people, their notion of a  vegan is someone who’s wagging a finger at them if they eat any animal  products. I’m vegan. But for a lot of people that term – it’s almost like  a cult”. 

British supplier Central Foods is already hoping its new range of frozen  meals will appeal to a wider audience. 

Its new Menuserve range – which includes cajun-spiced sweet potato roulade  and baked cheesecakes – is both vegan and gluten-free but markets itself as  plant based. 

“One of the key pieces of advice is to offer plant-based dishes that will  appeal to all diners, not just those who are vegetarian or vegan,” Gordon  Lauder, managing director of Central Foods, told The Caterer magazine. 

The same trend can be seen in restaurants, according to Bidfood, one of the  UK’s largest food wholesalers. “[They] need to position themselves as a  go-to destination for both meat eaters and vegans to remain competitive,”  Vicky Tripp, the company’s campaign manager told the magazine.

Beyond Meat, another meatless burger maker, also avoids the words vegan or  vegetarian in hopes of winning over carnivores.

It has pushed to have its  products sold in the meat sections of supermarkets, rather than what it  calls the “penalty box” of the frozen vegetarian foods section. 

A study by the London School of Economics earlier this year confirmed that meat  eaters can be deterred by distinctive vegetarian sections.

The researchers  found that presenting a vegetarian dish as the "Chef’s Recommendation" or  including a more appealing description of a non-meat meal lead to a greater  proportion of infrequent vegetarian eaters choosing a vegetarian option. 

Linda Bacon, one of the study’s authors, said: “Our findings suggest that  while certain restaurant menu designs can encourage some consumers to make  pro-environmental food choices they can have the opposite effect on others.” 

Since “vegan” is used to convey what’s not in a product, it can be  associated with deprivation, said Michele Simon, executive director of the  PBFA. “Plant-based,” she said, has a more positive connotation because it  explains what is in a food. 

“I think there’s room in the market for both terms,” she added, stressing  that some companies still proudly use the “vegan” label. 

Police in northern Spain launched an investigation after a dead wolf’s head and tail were left in a public swimming pool in a protest by farmers over attacks by wolves on their livestock.

The Guardia Civil’s wildlife protection unit is trying to find out who dumped the grisly remains at an open-air pool in the village of Infiesto, in the Picos de Europa mountain range of eastern Asturias.

The wolf is a protected species in Asturias, but angry protestors blocked country roads near the Picos de Europa National Park on Saturday, demanding more support as they fight to save their sheep, goats and calves from apparent wolf attacks.

To cries of “down with the National Park”, the leaders of the march read out a statement criticizing Asturian authorities who “publicise our area in order to attract people to visit our landscape and try our products, but who don’t care for the land or the people”.

Compensation schemes for dead livestock were insufficient and obsolete due to an increase in wolf attacks, protestors claimed, echoing farmers’ complaints in other areas of northwestern Spain, where the Iberian wolf roams.

“Our animals don’t die; they get killed,” said livestock farmers Jessica López and Kaelia Cotera.

But Spanish environmentalists paint a different picture of the health of the country’s wolf population, arguing that it is struggling to remain stable due to authorized hunting and poaching.

“The species is suffering a regression towards the northwest due to brutal hunting that prevents it from extending towards its traditional territories in the south,” said Ángel Sánchez at the presentation of a report he co-authored earlier this year that counted the number of Spanish wolves killed in 2017 at between 500 and 650.

The total number of Iberian wolves in Spain is estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000 grouped into around 300 packs.

Some regions north of the Duero issue a hunting quota on wolves each year, while south of the river, where few wolves roam, hunting is banned.