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Normandy rail strike: five lines disrupted this Friday and Saturday
Ticket inspectors walk out after a knife attack on a colleague, with four unions backing the action
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French PM says diesel stockpile release will cut prices by up to 18 cents per litre
Sébastien Lecornu used televised speech to promise release of ten million barrels of diesel and address lycée protests
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Temperatures to drop by 12C as first snowfall to hit Pyrenees and Alps
Storms to continue in the south
Monet garden Unesco bid
Giverny and the gardens that inspired impressionist artist Claude Monet are being proposed as a Unesco World Heritage site.
Monet lived in his house at Giverny for 43 years from 1883 and the gardens are seen by many as a work of art in their own right.
With around 700,000 visitors a year they are the second most popular tourist site in Normandy after the Mont-Saint-Michel and for the past six years they were cared for by British gardener James Priest who recently retired.
Just 70km from Paris, the Eure gardens are a homage to Monet and they were recreated by philanthropist Gérald Van der Kemp and head gardener Gilbert Vahé exactly as the artist would have known them with their weeping willows, waterlily pond and the wisteria-framed Japanese footbridge.