Romain Franck, 23, an employee with the French consulate in Jerusalem, was one of nine people arrested for their involvement in an alleged arms trafficking ring, in which the Frenchman is accused of using his consular vehicle to transport a total of 70 handguns and two assault rifles to the West Bank.
A group of residents in the French-ruled Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte, paralysed by turmoil since mid-February amid protests against dire economic conditions and the mass arrivals of immigrants from the nearby Comoros islands, are reported to be rounding up people they identify as foreigners with no legal status and handing them to police.
The French foreign ministry has written to the country's news organisations urging that due to the 'upsurge' in violence in Syria, 'in particular eastern Ghouta and the Afrin region' they should suspend sending staff to the war-torn country.
Britain's struggling National Health Service, which pro-Brexit leaders misleadingly promised would recieve a windfall from the country's exit from the EU, is discreetly sending patients on lengthy waiting lists for far quicker treatment in France, like this Brexit supporter who, facing a year to have knee surgery, found relief in just ten days.
Olivier Faure, 49, is to become the new leader of France's Socialist Party, which suffered a crushing defeat in last year's legislative elections, after comfortably winning the first of two rounds of voting and with the announcement on Friday that his only serious rival, former agriculture minister Stéphane Le Foll, will not stand for the final round on March 29th.
Following a call by the principal French railworkers' unions for twice-weekly rolling strikes over three months from April, in protest at plans to open up part of the state-run network to private competition and changes to workers' employment conditions, transport minister Elisabeth Borne on Friday urged further negotiations, hinting at a possible delay of the liberalisation reforms.
Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, 68, nicknamed Carlos the Jackal, who became one of the most notorious far-left terrorists during the 1970s and 1980s and who was already serving two life sentennces for terrorism in France, on Thursday lost his appeal before a Paris court againt a previous conviction for leading a hand grenade attack which killed two people and wounded 34 others in a shopping mall in the French capital in 1974.
French President Emmanuel Macron Thursday said the poisoning in Britain of exiled Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia apeared 'attributable' to the Russian authorities, describing it as an 'unacceptable attack on the soil of an allied country' and pledged to announce retaliation measures 'in the coming days'.
The adult children of French rocker Johnny Hallyday, who died last December, have applied for his will to be frozen in an attempt to block the singer's testament leaving all his wealth and future royalties to his wife and two youngest children.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson took to Twitter to counter French President Emmanuel Macron's attempts to attract Indian students to France where, he said, 'you gain access to Europe' in a thinly veiled comparison to the situation of post-Brexit Britain.
