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The Count of Paris, Henri d'Orleans, who as head of the house of Orleans was the pretender to the French throne which last saw a king – briefly – in exercise in 1848, has died at the age of 85.

France's data privacy watchdog, the CNIL, on Monday announced it has brought a 50-million-euro fin against US technology and internet search engine giant Google for breaching the European Union's new General Data Protection Regulation.

A fire which swept rapidly through a building housing seasonal workers at the French Alpine ski resort of Courchevel on Sunday morning left at least two people dead and another 22 injured.

An alpaca walked in off the street into an opticians store in the small town of Hennebont, in Brittany, north-west France, where staff said it was 'not at all aggressive' as it browsed the rows of spectacles on show before its owner was finally found.

The French interior ministry estimated around 84,000 people took part in nationwide 'yellow vest' marches on Saturday in protest at falling living standards for low- and middle-income earners, the same amount as last weekend and a show of force in the face of government measures aimed at appeasing the movement.

Ahead of a planned visit to Egypt later this month by French President Emmanuel Macron, an Irish human rights NGO has highlighted the serious violations of the labour rights of Egyptian workers employed in the construction of French-designed battleships at naval yards where staff from France's Naval Group company have a permanent presence.

Emmanuel Macron led the second of a nationwide series of consultations with France's mayors on Friday, at Souillac in the south-west of the country, an initiative officially aimed as an exchange over citizens' complaints and aspirations which was prompted by the ongoing 'yellow vest' movement, supporters of which gave the president a rowdy reception as he arrived for the meeting.

The wife of Meng Hongwei, the Chinese boss of Interpol, the international police coordination body based in the south-east French city of Lyon, whose husband went missing after a visit to his home country in September, has applied for asylum in France and fears for the safety of herself and her children.

Alexandre Benalla, the disgraced former security aide to President Emmanuel Macron who last year was placed under investigation for assault and impersonating a police officer after video emerged of him beating people on the sidelines of May Day marches in Paris, was taken into police custody on Thursday for questioning over his alleged illegal obtention and use of diplomatic passports since leaving the Élysée Palace last August.

In a landmark move last year, President Emmanuel Macron recognised that communist mathematician Maurice Audin was tortured and killed by the French military in Algiers in 1957 during the bloody Algerian war of independence, lifting an official taboo on the case, but despite the president’s pledge to release confidential archives about the period, researchers question whether the truth will ever emerge about thousands of other unexplained disappearances.