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Firefighters held a march in Paris on Tuesday in protest over working conditions, including low staff numbers, poor pay and inadequate protection against violence increasingly directed against them, when unions claimed a turnout of between 7,000 and 10,000.

The French conservative party, Les Républicains, once a main force in French politics but which has seen its support crumble since 2017 amid the emergence of Emmanuel Macron's centre-right movement and a series of fraud scandals surrounding its old guard, has elected MP Christian Jacob as its new leader.

Inès Madani, 22, and Ornella Gilligmann, 32, were sentenced to jail sentences of 30 years and 25 years respectively on Monday after being found guilty by a Paris court of attempting – although,  in the event, failing – to set off a car bomb close to Notre Dame cathedral in Septembner 2016, which prosecutors said could have killed or wounded around 60 people in a nearby bar.

Two bodies identified as those of a 17-year-old Iraqi Kurd and that of a 22-year-old Iraqi man were found washed up on a beach in northern France on Monday close to an inflatable boat believed to have been used in an attempt to cross the Channel to Britain.

French media reports citing official sources said five people, including an imam, have been detained in connection with the murders of four staff at Paris police headquarters on October 3rd during a stabbing rampage by an IT worker at the site, Mickaël Harpon, which is being investigated by anti-terrorism police.

The hitherto state-run French lottery operator Française des Jeux (FDJ) will begin opening up its capital to private investors as of November 7th, French economy and finance minister Bruno Le Maire has announced, amid expectations that the sales of shares will raise around 1 billion euros.

France joined Germany in announcing this weekend a suspension of weapons sales to Turkey for as long as Ankara continues with its military invasion of a neighbouring part of northern Syria, a ban which the French defence minister said concerned 'war materials that could be used in the context of this offensive'.

Police Scotland have confirmed that a man arrested at Glasgow airport on Friday on suspicion of being Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, wanted in France over the murders of his wife and four children in Nantes in 2011, has been released after DNA and finger print comparisons have proven he is not, contrary to earlier widespread media reports, the fugitive.

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, 58, who disappeared after the bodies of his wife and four children were found in the garden of the family home in Nantes, north-west France, in April 2011, is reported to have been arrested on his arrival in Glasgow on a flight from Paris after his fingerprints were positively matched.