The Swiss banking group could avoid trial over the alleged massive tax evasion it is accused of having helped among its French customers if it agrees to a settlement, but said it could never agree to a write-off of the 1.1 billion-euros it handed over three years ago as a bail bond, which its legal counsel claimed was "not at all the market price".
The final list of candidates qualified to stand in the French presidential elections that begin next month was announced by France's Consitutional Council on Saturday, made up of nine men and two women representing the full political spectrum.
Chief Paris public prosecutor François Molins said the man who attacked a military patrol at Paris' Orly airport on Saturday morning before being shot dead said he told the soldiers he wanted to die 'in the name of Allah' and that 'whatever happens, there will be deaths'.
Orly airport, where about 3,000 people were evacuated Saturday morning after a man who attacked a military security patrol was shot dead, began returning to normal sevice late in the day; the father and brother of the assailant, 39-year-old Ziyed Ben Belgacem, a French national with a string of convictions for violent crime and who the French authorities report became close to radical Islamist movements in prison, were taken into custody for questioning.
Orly airport was locked down Saturday morning when a 39-year-old man monitored by French anti-terrorsim services was shot dead after disarming a woman soldier on a security patrol in the 'South' terminal with two colleagues.
Police have excluded a terrorist motive for the killings in a building courtyard in central Paris where a man was arrested beside the lifeless bodies of his father and brother.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrive in Paris on Friday on an official visit and what observers regard as a diplomatic charm campaign as London prepares to trigger the process of leaving the European Union.
A heavily armed 17-year-old pupil of a secondary school in the town of Grasse, south-east France, was arrested by police after shooting four people including the school's headmaster who reportedly intervened to try and stop the attack.
A secretary at the European representation of the International Monetary Fund, located in central Paris, suffered burns and hearing disorder after triggering an explosive device contained in a letter addressed to the world lender's European representative Jeffrey Franks.
A heavily-armed gunman, carrying grenades and explosives and reportedly aged 17, shot and wounded at least three people, including a headmaster, at a secondary school in Grasse, close to Nice, in south-east France.
