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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.

Four officers of France's Foreign Legion are on trial for alleged manslaughter over the deaths of six recruits in an avalanche in January 2016 while on a training exercise in the French Alps.

Members of the European Parliament have voted overwhelmingly to reject France's candidate for a top post at the European Commission amid doubts over the probity of Sylvie Goulard, implicated in an investigation into ghost jobs at the parliament and her links with a US think-tank, prompting Emmanuel Macron to denounce 'petty' political manoeuvring.

French utility giant EDF has announced that welding repair work ordered by France's nuclear power safety watchdog to its under-contsruction, third-generation nuclear reactor at Flamanville in northern France will add another 1.5 billion euros to the cost of the project, which is already running more than 7 billion euros over budget, while its entry into service, initially planned for 2012, is not now likely before 2023.

Calling on France to mobilise against 'underground Islamism', President Emmanuel Macron led a ceremony on Tuesday in homage to four staff who were stabbed to death at Paris police headquarters last Thursday by one of their colleagues in an attack which investigators believe was motivated by his allegiance with Islamist extremists.

The trial of six former high-ranking French government officials accused of taking part in the secret siphoning off of funds from arms sales to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to finance the presidential election campaign of former prime minister Edouard Balladur has opened in Paris.