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An Iraqi court has sentenced to death three French men who it found guilty of having joined the ranks of the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, where they were among 12 French citizens captured by US-backed forces and transferred to Iraq.

A Paris court will next week try in absentia Ian Bailey, 62, a British expatriate living in west Cork, Ireland, who is accused of the 1996 murder there of French filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier which Bailey denies committing but says he will 'almost certainly' be convicted of.  

The Cannes Film Festival closed on Saturday with its top Palme d'Or award going to South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's raucous social satire 'Parasite', while the second-place award went to French-Senegalese director Mati Diop's feature-film debut, 'Atlantics', a regard on the migrant crisis, and the third-placed jury prize shared by French director Ladj Ly's feature-film debut 'Les Miserables' about grim life and police violence in a poor Paris suburb, together with Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho's 'Bacurau' about a rural Brazilian community defending itself from a hard-to-comprehend invasion in President Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil.

On the 28th rolling Saturday of demonstrations by the so-called 'yellow vest' anti-government movement protesting falling living standards for low- and middle-income earners, and demanding greater say in policy-making decisions, the interior ministry said nationwide turnout had plunged to 11,500, the lowest so far, while the movement claimed 35,000.

French police have issued images from CCTV footage of the man thought to have placed and triggered a nail-bomb device on a busy pedestrian street in the south-east city of Lyon on Friday, which wounded 13 passers-by but for which no-one has claimed responsibility.

Italian-US carmaker Fiat Chrysler and France's Renault are in talks to consider forming an industrial partnership, according to several sources cited in media reports.

Eye witnesses reported seeing a man leave a package outside a bakery store on a pedestrian street in the city of Lyon, south-east France, shortly before an explosion that wounded 13 passers-by, including a child.

Nasser al-Khelaifi, president of Paris Saint-Germain football club and chairman of the beIN Media Group has been placed under investigation for "active corruption" over payments a company of his made to officials from the International Association of Athletics Federations during Qatar's bid to host the  world athletics championships.

A 102-year-old woman is the chief suspect in the killing of a 92-year-old woman found to have been beaten and strangled in her bed in the care home for the elderly where both of them lived, in a village about 70 kilomertres east of Paris.

The French domestic intelligence service, the DGSI, has summoned for questioning Ariane Chemin, a senior reporter with French daily Le Monde, over her investigations into the relationships of President Emmanuel Macron's security aide Alexandre Benalla, bringing to five the number of journalists the spy agency has recently summoned following reports embarassing the government.