PARIS, Friday 5 Feb

Protesting taxi drivers are disrupting access to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport, amid tensions between traditional cabs and app-based car services as the French government loosens regulations in the evolving sector.

Rival drivers pelted each other with projectiles overnight at the Porte Maillot interchange in western Paris, according to police in the capital.

No-one was injured or arrested.

On Friday morning, taxi drivers began blocking the main road into Charles de Gaulle with about 50 cars, and the airport authority warned passengers to take the commuter train instead.

A police official said gendarmes were clearing one lane to allow access.

Recent weeks have seen protests both by taxi drivers, who complain of unfair competition from services such as Uber, and rival cabbies, who say they are victims of discrimination by the government.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/protesting-taxi-drivers-disrupt-access-to-paris-airport-719128.html

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OXFORD

 A TAXI driver has been acquitted of sexually assaulting a passenger in the early hours of New Year's Day.

Royal Cars driver Lutfur Rahman was accused of kissing the woman on the cheek in his taxi outside the Oxford Retreat on January 1 last year.

But a jury of eight men and four women at Oxford Crown Court found the 59-year-old not guilty yesterday.

The court heard the woman and four friends got the taxi to the Hythe Bridge Street pub from Bedford Street at about 12.30am.

Prosecutor Janette Hayne said Rahman had taken hold of the woman's arm as she went to leave the taxi, then kissed her.

She added: "She moved away so that the defendant, coming in towards her, kissed her on the cheek."

But Rahman, of Wood Farm Road, Oxford, said the woman had argued about the taxi fare being £2 more than expected and he had not kissed her.

He told the jury the group of women had been touching his hair and shoulders during the taxi ride.

He added: "I never considered anything like that because I am a professional taxi driver and I am doing my job."

The court heard the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sent an email complaint to the taxi firm on January 13 and reported the incident to police after being unhappy with the manager's response. 

http://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news/14258496.Taxi_driver_acquitted_of_New_Year_sexual_assault/?ref=rss