Excerpt:
Police in the French Alps have been forced to hand out notices to tourists wearing the full face veil, many of whom have come for a day trip from Switzerland, to remind them that France has a total burka ban in public.
The picturesque town of Annecy, in south eastern France, is described in tourist brochures as the Venice of the Alps, and it draws in tourists from all over the Alps region, especially from Switzerland.
However, locals in the idyllic tourist hotspot complained to authorities last summer that some of these tourists were wearing full face veils - known as burkas or niqab - which are legal in Switzerland but were controversially banned from all public places in France in 2011.