FRANCE

French film star Gerard Depardieu met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea town of Sochi and obtained his Russian passport, the Kremlin said on Sunday, after he left his homeland to avoid a new tax rate for millionaires.

France became the first European power to recognize Syria's new opposition coalition as the sole representative of its people and said on Tuesday it would look into arming rebels against President Bashar al-Assadonce they form a government.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Monday his country can help Libya tackle security...

Factory closures and spending deficit have fuelled voters' doubts over ability of president to lead country to recovery

Saddam Hussein deposited £840,000 in a Swiss bank account belonging to the father of the British engineer murdered with his wife and mother-in-law in the Alps, it has been claimed.

The European Union, Britain and France on Friday criticized Israel’s approval of a plan to construct hundreds of additional apartments in a Jerusalem neighborhood situated south of the 1967 Green Line.

Twitter has agreed to remove a flood of anti-Semitic tweets circulating on its service in France.

French authorities say a group of suspected radical Islamists posed the biggest danger to France in years and were planning to join militants in Syria.

Was Mossad behind the Alps murders? The slaughter of a Surrey family has been blamed on everything from a bitter family feud to a shady business deal. But is there a more sinister explanation?

France’s Interior Ministry has threatened to expel any Muslim who, as Paris claims, undermines security and poses “a threat to the country”.

Socialist President Francois Hollande unveiled higher levies on business and a 75-percent tax for the super-rich on Friday in a 2013 budget aimed at showing France has the fiscal rigour to remain at the core of the euro zone.

Germany and France are heading for a clash over Ireland’s bank debts as divisions deepen over the scope of a plan to use the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund to rescue stricken banks.

France plans to close its embassies, consulates, cultural centers and schools in 20 countries Friday as a precautionary measure after a French satirical magazine published cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad.

France stepped up security Wednesday at its embassies across the Muslim world after a French satirical weekly revived a formula that it has already used to capture attention: Publishing crude, lewd caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Paris's famed Louvre museum this week opens a new wing of Islamic art in a bid to improve knowledge of a religion often viewed with suspicion in the West.

Father named as Saad Al Hilli, a Baghdad-born businessman who lived with his family in Claygate, Surrey, UK.

French power utility company EDF has denied reports that a fire broke out at its Fessenheim nuclear plant in Alsace, eastern France, claiming a steam leak set off the fire alarm.

The French foreign minister yesterday levelled a scathing tirade at the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after meeting with refugees, calling for his regime to be "smashed fast".

The UK, US and France rounded on Russia and China following the veto of a UN draft resolution on fresh Syrian sanctions, lambasting the move as "inexcusable" and accusing Moscow of buying time for Bashar al-Assad to "smash the opposition".

Was Mohamed Merah a French secret service informant? So says a former head of an intelligence agency here in France. Also, an Italian paper says Merah travelled to Israel in 2010 - with the support of French spy agencies.

See a video report by James Creedon of France 24  (27 March 2012)

The arrest of Muammar al-Gaddafi’s spy chief in Mauritania last week was the culmination of a carefully planned French intelligence operation, which was secretly aided by the Mauritanian government

Four people, three of them children, were killed when a gunman opened fire outside a Jewish school in southwest France on Monday, the local prosecutor said, raising a previous toll of three dead.

“He shot at everything he could see, children and adults, and some children were chased into the school,” Michel Valet, the local prosecutor, told journalists, saying the death toll stood at four dead, including three children. He said the children were aged three, six and 10.

The French police watchdog is being investigated for rigging an investigation into an alleged trafficking ring within the police to discredit policemen close to the Socialist Party.