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French railways operator SNCF said there will be disruption to trains arriving at and departing from Marseille over the coming days after a high-speed train from Paris derailed, without causing injuries, on its low-speed approach to the Mediterranean port city for reasons that remain unexplained.

A vegan festival due to be held in the centre of Lille in north-east France in early September has been called off by the City Hall for 'safety' reasons after a butchers' federation announced they would hold a nearby counter-barbeque for carnivors in anger at vanadalsim of several butchers' shops in the region allegedly by vegan acitivists.

The future of French culture minister Françoise Nyssen has been thrown into doubt after prosecutors opened an investigation into how the publishing compnay she led before joining the government carried out building work in 2012 to substantially enlarge its offices in a listed Paris building without planning permission or informing the tax authorities, one year after it allegedly similarly enlarged its head office in Arles without planning permission.  

Rival French rap stars Booba and Kaaris, who were placed in preventive detention after they and their entourage engaged in a fist fight inside an Orly airport terminal earlier this month, causing tens of thousands of euros of damage and delays to flights, have been released on bail ahead of their trial in September.

A knife-wielding 36-year-old man described by France's interior minister as suffering from 'serious psychiatric problems' was shot dead by police on Thursday after murdering his mother and sister and severely wounding another woman in the town of Trappes, south-west of Paris, in an attack which the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for.

French President Emmanuel Macron held a post-holiday cabinet meeting of ministers ahead of challenging months ahead when he faces stern opposition to his planned reforms of the pensions system, an overhaul of the public healthcare system and a shake-up the highly unionized public sector, amid forecasts that economic growth is slower than expected.

An anti-discrimination association is preparing legal action against property owners advertising holiday homes online who a French radio investigation has found turned away potential renters with North African names for no reason other than their Arabic names, a practice described by one journalist as affecting 'tonnes of people each day'. 

Under threat of US sanctions Total has officially halted its multi-billion-dollar investments into a gas production project in Iran, while carmakers PSA, Renault and Daimler are also among those to suspend or drop plans to invest in the country, along with Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Telekom.

Authorities in France's south-east Hautes-Alpes region said more than 50 cows, sheep and horses have died from an outbreak of anthrax, which can spread to humans and is deadly in its rarest forms, after it spread spread to 28 farms in the area since June.

Recent data shows the UK’s manufacturing sector being starved of investment funds and losing momentum as uncertainty persists surrounding the the UK’s relationship with the EU from next year.