French President Emmanuel Macron held a closed-door, low-key meeting on Monday with the US President Donald Trump’s top diplomat, a delicate tip-toe around the ticklish fact that France has already recognized President-elect Joe Biden as the US election winner, AP reported.

Bars and cafes were shuttered in Paris on Tuesday for two weeks under new measures to fight the rapid spread of the epidemic, although restaurants have been allowed to remain open, news wires reported. Labour Minister Elisabeth Borne in a tweet urged employers and workers in Paris and other zones on maximum alert "to work from home as much as possible to slow the spread of the virus".

Paris is to be placed on maximum Covid-19 alert, meaning bars will be forced to close for two weeks and restaurants will have to put in place new sanitary protocols to stay open, the prime minister's office said cited by news wires. The reinforced restrictions will take effect from Tuesday.

Anne Hidalgo, a Spanish-born socialist who has waged a divisive but ambitious campaign to push cars out of the centre of the French capital, was re-elected Paris mayor on Sunday. Retaining the Paris mayor position is a boost for the left in France after its dismal showing in the 2017 presidential election, AFP reported.

The Paris emblem, the Eiffel Tower, re-opened on Thursday for visits but with strict restrictions due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Until 1 July, the landmark will be accessible only by stairs in order a safe distance between people to be ensured to limit infection risks. The landmark will emerge from its longest closure since World War II in time for the summer season, but with limited visitor numbers at first, and with mandatory face masks for all over the age of 11.

Orly airport south of Paris is to reopen on Friday after shutting down on 31 March due to the coronavirus pandemic, but with just a fraction of its normal flights, news wires reported. Around 25 destinations are to be served via 70 takeoffs and landings, compared with 600 a day before the virus crisis grounded aircraft worldwide. Only the third of Orly's four terminals will reopen at first.

Anti-racism protesters rallied again around Britain on Saturday, with scuffles breaking out in London as counter-demonstrators also came out to protect monuments targeted for their links to colonial history, news wires reported. In Trafalgar Square, police separated two groups of about 100 people each, one chanting “Black Lives Matter”, the other racial slurs.

Riot police were deployed in force as youths set cars ablaze in some low-income housing estates in the Paris suburbs overnight, online news reports and postings on Twitter showed on Wednesday. The latest unrest in the banlieues - high-rise, low-income neighbourhoods - flared after an 18-year old died last weekend in a motorbike accident in the suburb of Argenteuil.

French mayors representing the Ile-de-France region, which includes the city of Paris, have called on President Emmanuel Macron to delay the reopening of schools until after May 11, denouncing the plan as a “forced march” out of the country's coronavirus lockdown, news wires reported.

Police and youths clashed for a second night in a low-income Paris suburb on Sunday as strict lockdown rules to curb the spread of the coronavirus threaten a fragile social peace in deprived areas.