None of the three main forces in parliament - the Left, centre-right and far-right - came close to obtaining an absolute majority, while the formation of a coalition government appears ruled out by all at present, leaving the prospect of a lengthy spell of an ineffective caretaker government unable to legislate.
Two of emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's pistols, one of which he intended to use to commit suicide after a military defeat but was prevented from doing so by his grand squire, were sold at an auction in Fontainebleau at the weekend for 1.69 million euros.
France's outgoing prime minister Gabriel Attal handed in his resignation on Monday but will stay in the post at Emmanuel Macron's behest while the long process of forming a new government begins following the election results which gave no party or bloc an absolute majority.
France went to the polls on Sunday in the second and final round of crucial parliamentary elections to elect the members of the French lower house, the National Assembly. The snap elections were called by centre-right President Emmanuel Macron one month ago after the far-right’s resounding victory in France in the voting in European Parliament elections. Macron’s move, in which he hoped to defeat the far-right and diminish his opponents on both the Left and Right, was a gamble that threw the country into turmoil, with the far-right tipped to win an absolute majority after the second round. But after a knife-edge week, it was not to be. Follow the events on Sunday in our live coverage of results and reactions as they came in through the evening, and which saw an alliance of the Left win the day. Reporting by Michael Streeter and Graham Tearse.
Close to the border with Spain, the French town of Perpignan, where one-in-three people live below the poverty line, elected a far-right mayor in 2020 and has been regarded since as something of a laboratory for the Rassemblement National party's capacity for urban management.
Kitesurfers Martin Marescaux and Théo Vanmarcke crossed from Portland in England to the French port of Cherbourg in four hours and thirty minutes, each carrying barrels of sourdough bread from a British bakery to be used in beermaking at the Pain de Minuit brewery in Lille.
Organisers of this summer's Olympic and Paralympic Games said 'around' 2,500 air-conditioning units have finally been ordered for athletes' accomodation centres despite earlier pledges to employ more climate-friendly geothermal cooling systems.
An examining magistrate is to decide whether to follow the advice of French prosecutors that French filmmaker Benoît Jacquot, 77, should be placed under investigation for the separate rapes and sexual assaults of two actresses who filed complaints against him.
Roland Dumas, who after serving in the French Resistance went on to become a successful lawyer, later serving as French foreign minister under the presidency of François Mitterrand with whom he had close relations, who was embroiled in corruption and fraud cases and whose flamboyant lifestyle and latter political ambiguity caused controversy, has died at the age of 101.
As Britain heads to the polls for parliamentary elections on Thursday, when a leftwing government is expected to succeed 14 years of conservative rule, and while France anxiously awaits the results of final-round voting in its own parliamentary poll next Sunday, with the far-right expected to reach a relative or absolute majority, a cross-Channel vox pop report found voters on both sides expressing remarkably similar concerns.
The drag cabaret Chez Michou, which was founded by the late Michel Catty who opened the business in the French capital's Montmartre district 68 years ago where it attracted showbiz stars and a French president, has closed its doors over financial difficulties.
France was more than ever a nation divided on Monday, after the massive score of the Rassemblement National party in Sunday's first round of parliamentary elections raised the spectre of a possible far-right government emerging after next weekend's second round poll, and which would be the first to rule the country since the collaborationist Vichy regime of World War II.
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