Just one day after the UK’s public spending watchdog described the £130M ($185M) back-tax paid by Google in the country as “disproportionately small,” France is demanding a rather larger sum. Reuters reports that the country’s finance ministry believes Google owes €1.6B ($1.76B).

“As far as our country is concerned, back taxes concerning this company amount to 1.6 billion euros,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said […]

Earlier this month, Finance Minister Michel Sapin ruled out striking a deal with the U.S. search engine company as the British government recently did, saying the sums at stake in France were “far greater” than those in Britain … 

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In the wake of some absolutely tragic and terrifying events tonight in Paris, Google has made international phone calls to France free on Google Hangouts. In other tragic past events, many companies that offer calling services have offered similar opportunities.

In a related initiative, Facebook has tonight launched a feature called Safety Check, which allows you to “quickly find and connect with friends in the area” and mark them safe if you know they’re safe. You can also let your friends know if you’re in the affected area.

You can head over to the Play Store or the App Store to grab the app for free, or head to hangouts.google.com to make free international calls to France straight from your browser.

Google has appealed against France’s order that it must implement ‘Right to be forgotten‘ requests globally, rather than just within Europe, reports the WSJ. The company argued in a blog post that to comply would mean the Internet would only be as free as the least free country in the world …  expand full story