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At a court in Versailles, French prosecutors on Thursday called for a suspended prison sentence to be handed to footballer Karim Benzema, the star striker of Real Madrid and the France national team, for his alleged part in an attempt to blackmail team-mate Mathieu Valbuena over a sexually explicit video recording, for which four others are also standing trial.  

Hervé Gattegno, editor of Paris Match magazine and weekly newspaper Le JDD, has been sacked by Vincent Bolloré, the media tycoon who owns the publications, in a move precipitated by photos that embarassed far-right essayist  Éric Zemmour, another Bolloré employee, who is expected to run for the French presidency in elections next year. 

Sergey Savelyev, a 31-year-old Belarusian who worked in a prison office while serving a jail term in Russia, when he accessed and copied more than 1,000 videos of physical abuses of prisoners which he gave to Russian human rights group Gulagu.net, has escaped to France where he is seeking asylum.

Social media giant Facebook has agreed a deal with an alliance of French national and regional press groups by which it will pay for their content uploaded and shared by its users. 

The largest skeleton ever found of a triceratops dinosaur, dating from the the Cretaceous period around 66 million years ago, discovered in the US in 2014 and composed of 200 pieces, has sold at the Paris Drouot auction house for 6.65 million euros.

Sarkozy, who benefits from presidential immunity in the case, had said he would not appear as a witness in the case after being tried and convicted twice this year in separate affairs.

In all, two French teachers in the region of Aix-en-Provence have been sent threatening letters, the public prosecutor's office said.

France's ambassador to Belarus has left the country, reportedly following Minsk's order. The move comes after his meeting with a banned civil society group and a diplomatic snub to President Alexander Lukashenko.

Jean Castex's visit to the Vatican on Monday morning was  overshadowed by reactions following the publication of the conclusions of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church. 

Macron told relatives and activists on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the bloodshed that "crimes" were committed on the night of 17 October, 1961, under the command of Paris police chief Maurice Papon.