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A Paris police patrol, who last weekend opened fire on the occupants of car whose driver had refused the officers' oders to pull over, and who fatally wounded a woman passenger, 'could have acted differently' according a friend of the victim who was also present in the vehicle.

The defendants, from France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, are accused of mounting a pan-European trafficking scam of horsemeat unfit for human consumption which they sold to wholesalers and butchers.

First-hand accounts of the dangerous bottlenecks of thousands of supporters at the Liverpool versus Real Madrid Champions League cup final in Paris on May 28th, and the violent abuse and robbery of them by local gangs, continue to prompt outrage and to fuel criticism of the government from political opponents.   

The young man had reportedly joined a foreign defence unit in Ukraine and was involved in fighting around the north-east city of Kharkiv.

Sonia Rolland, 41, who won the Miss France title in 2000, is accused of benefiting from the ill-gotten gains of Omar Bongo, the late president of Gabon, who gifted her with a major stake in a 1-million-euro apartment in Paris.

French interior minister Gérald Darmanin, who has been strongly criticised over the policing arrangements for last Saturday's Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, when thousands of fans were caught for hours in a mass crush outside the Stade de France, has defended the handling of the event despite numerous complaints of police brutality and inadequate access to the stadium.

The British government has announced the launching of a detailed investigation into the drowning last November of 27 people, three of whom were children, during their clandestine crossing of the Channel from France to England, following legal action by lawyers acting for several of the victims' families who suspect 'serious failings' in rescue operations.

The 'shambles outside the ground' of the Champions league final on Saturday between Liverpool and Real Madrid was  'a PR disaster for the French state, which may explain its attempt to shift the blame on to fans in a buck-passing exercise that was instantly derided and disproved' writes the chief football writer for The Times.

Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, 32,  was accompanying the evacuation of civilians from a zone in eastern Ukraine on Monday when what was reportedly a bomb from Russian artillery fire struck the vehicle he was travelling in.

French interior minister Gérald Darmanin on Monday said the potentially dangerous bottleneck of tens of thousands of Liverpool fans on Saturday trying to enter the Stade de France for the Champions League cup final of their team against  Real Madrid was due to 'industrial scale' ticket fraud, which he said 'only seems to happen with certain English clubs'.