Unaccompanied minors dispersed from the 'Jungle' refugee camp last month to France’s official reception centres have alleged that have been forced into unpaid work on farms to pick apples sold to French supermarkets, and some said they had not been given clean clothes since they arrived at the centres.
The original drawing in Chinese ink by Belgian artist Georges Remi, who wrote 'The Adventures of Tintin' under the pen name of Hergé, shows the fearless reporter, his white dog Snowy and his friend Captain Haddock in spacesuits, walking on the moon for the first time and looking at the Earth.
French budget minister Christian Eckert said 'audits have begun' on 560 people suspected of tax evasion after their identities were revealed in the so-called Panama Papers leaks of clients of Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.
Former French prime minister François Fillon, previously trailing in the conservative opposition party's primaries to elect it candidate for presidential elections next spring, has suddenly taken a neck-and-neck position against his two main rivals, Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppé, before voting begins on Sunday.
The main conservative opposition party's primaries to choose its candidate for the 2017 presidential elections, which begin Sunday evening amid more than usual interest because of the liklihood that the person chosen will reach the decisive second round next spring, is now a tight three-horse race.
French sweetmakers are locked in a trademark battle with Chinese manufacturer Ye Chunlin over global use of the name Calissons d'Aix, a traditional marzipan treat from Provence, which Ye Chunlin has claimed for its own with the Chinese intellectual property agency.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, attending an aceonomic forum in Berlin on Thursday, said a far-right victory was possible in France's presidential elections next year and that 'Europe is in danger of falling apart', and called for strong leadership from France and Germany.
More than 14,000 women in France were prescribed Depakine, the Sanofi drug firm's brand name for valproate, despite the potential risks to foetuses which became known in the early 1980s, and which associations representing victims say may have affected 50,000 people in the country.
Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum said the 126-year-old sketchbook that an art historian discovered in France, hailed as a major find, contains only 'monotonous, clumsy and spiritless' fakes of the Dutch artist's work.
