The world’s second-largest fresh produce market caught fire in Paris on Saturday, blanketing the French capital in a dense cloud of smoke visible from kilometers away. 

The fire, which originated in the Rungis International Market’s 7,000-square meter warehouse, broke out around midday. The inferno spewed a dense cloud of smoke into the sky, which could be seen creeping several kilometers over the center of the city.

France is working up to fully nationalizing the currently 84% state-owned nuclear energy company Électricité de France (EDF) at the same time that the company is anticipating a massive downturn in profits.

A man in the southern French city of Marseille is just the latest victim of fatal gun violence as the city continues to see gang violence carried out by those wielding illegally owned Kalashnikov-type rifles.

The fatal shooting took place on Sunday afternoon in front of a bakery in the 14th district of the city, as the victim, a 40-year man, was heading to the bakery where he worked.

French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed an overhaul of immigration and asylum policies that would include redistributing migrants to rural areas facing population decline. He condemned the current policies as “inefficient and inhumane,” announcing on Thursday that the matter would be put to a vote at the start of next year.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his French counterpart Catherine Colonna discussed on Monday the situation in Ukraine, focusing on the need to ensure the safety of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported after their phone call.

"In the furtherance of the telephone contact of the Russian and French presidents on September 11, the foreign ministers discussed in detail the situation in Ukraine, focusing on ways to ensure the safety of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant," the ministry said.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally faction in the lower house of France’s parliament, has slammed Paris’ participation in the anti-Russian sanctions as a geopolitical mistake.

"France has made a geopolitical mistake by taking part in the inapt and ill-considered sanctions against Russia," she said at a party conference on Sunday.

With record inflation already established and long-term recession looming, few could deny that Europe’s sanctions war on Russia has backfired economically, so far. A new poll from a top French TV news channel has found that the French have become extremely pessimistic about the conflict in Ukraine, and increasingly fed up with the price they have to pay for a country which is not even a part of the European Union or the eurozone.