LE MANS:- Spain's championship leader Marc Marquez will start on pole in Sunday's French MotoGP on the Bugatti circuit at Le Mans after coming out on top in Saturday's qualifying. Marquez, on a Honda, claimed the 30th pole position of his career, his second in the sport's elite category, by coming ...

PARIS - President Francois Hollande holds a key press conference Thursday, a day after his first anniversary in office was marred by news that France had fallen back into recession amid plummeting economic indicators.The Socialist leader, who is the most unpopular post-War president according to ...

PARIS : European Union Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier, the EU’s top financial regulator, called on the French government to pursue its planned reforms despite the Commission allowing two more years to meet its budget deficit target. Olli Rehn, the European monetary affairs ...

Paris (WO): Actress Keira Knightley is a married woman after exchanging vows with rocker James Righton in the South of France on Saturday. The Pirates of the Caribbean beauty wed The Klaxons star during a low-key ceremony in front of just a dozen friends and family members in the town hall of ...

LOS ANGELES: Woody Allen is to make his next movie in the south ofFrance, starringBritain’s Oscar-winning Colin Firth andUSactress Emma Stone, the project’s producers announced Tuesday. The as-yet-untitled film, to be shot this summer, will be the second set inFranceby the 77-year-old ...

REIMS, France : Two people died and 14 were injured Sunday when part of an apartment block in the French city of Reims collapsed after a suspected gas blast, just three weeks after a similar tragedy not far away. French President Francois Hollande sent his “condolences to the families of the ...

PARIS  - The number of unemployed jobseekers in France surged by 36,900 in March to hit 3.224 million, beating a record set in 1997, the labour ministry said on Thursday.The previous unemployment record in France, the eurozone's second-largest economy, was in January 1997 when there were ...

ISTRES  - An apparently deranged teenager shot three men dead after opening fire on cars and passersby in a residential part of the southern French town of Istres on Thursday, police said after arresting him.A woman was injured after a bullet grazed her ear and police found a Kalashnikov ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - France intends to set up a currency swap line with China to make Paris a major offshore yuan trading hub in Europe, competing against London, the China Daily on Saturday cited Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer as saying.Yuan deposits in Paris amount to 10 billion yuan ...

PARIS (AFP) - France’s Grand Rabbi - the country’s leading Jewish religious figure - said Thursday he had resigned, after he was rocked by a plagiarism scandal. Gilles Bernheim resigned with immediate effect, the body governing France’s Jewish congregations announced, after ...

PARIS (AFP) - French ministers lining up to publicly declare their personal assets are sparking a revolution in political thinking in France, where experts say it is often easier to talk about sex than money.Under new measures aimed at restoring public confidence in politicians after a major tax ...

PARIS - France has withdrawn its first batch of soldiers from Mali, the army said Tuesday, as it begins to pull out troops sent to battle Islamist fighters in the west African nation. Paris - which sent 4,000 troops to Mali in January to block a feared advance on the capital Bamako from the north ...

GAO, Mali  - A French force of 1,000 soldiers has begun a sweep of a valley thought to be a logistics base for Al Qaeda-linked Islamists near the Malian city of Gao, an AFP journalist accompanying the mission said.Operation Gustav, one of France's largest actions since its intervention in its ...

New Delhi  - India’s negotiations with France’s Dassault Aviation on a $12b deal for Rafale fighter jets have stalled due to disagreements over the production of the planes in India. The defence deal, one of the biggest ever, was to see the manufacture of the first 18 of the jets ...

PARIS - What looked like being a fairly straightforward assignment in Kazakhstan for Davis Cup holders the Czech Republic has turned into a quarter-final minefield following the late withdrawal of top player Tomas Berdych.The towering Berdych, who led the Czechs to glory in the team competition ...

GAO, Mali (AFP) - France bombed militants’ targets in northern Mali on Monday following a string of guerrilla attacks by the extremists a month after Paris launched an offensive to drive them from its former colony.In a pre-dawn attack, witnesses said a French army helicopter destroyed a ...

PARIS - A French company obtained Romanian horsemeat masquerading as beef for frozen lasagne meals through a Cypriot dealer who had subcontracted the sale to a trader in The Netherlands, a French official said. Poujol, the company of meat-processing firm Spanghero, “acquired the meat from a ...

PARIS  - France has trimmed its record trade deficit, Trade Minister Nicole Bricq said on Monday in a press interview, thanks to resistant exports of agricultural, aeronautical, pharmaceutical and luxury products.Asked by the conservative daily Figaro if the 2012 trade deficit would be smaller ...

SIALKOT - French Ambassador in Pakistan Mr Philippe Thiébaud said that his country would make an all-out effort to give the Sialkot-based surgical instruments manufacturers and exporters an access to the French markets.Talking to a delegation of Sialkot based surgical instruments ...

BERLIN (AFP) - France and Germany on Tuesday agreed to hammer out joint proposals for strengthening the crisis-battered eurozone as they marked 50 years since a treaty sealing their post-war reconciliation. Setting past tensions aside, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President ...

BAMAKO (AFP) - The French air force on Sunday struck the northern Malian city of Gao, which had been controlled by the Al-Qaeda offshoot MUJAO, destroying their bases and forcing the insurgents to flee, residents told AFP."There were dozens of strikes in and around Gao. All Islamist bases have been ...

PARIS/BAMAKO  - France’s armed forces began a military intervention in Mali on Friday to help the government stem a push south by Islamist rebels who control much of the north, President Francois Hollande said.“French forces brought their support this afternoon to Malian army units ...

PARIS - France will reallocate 2 billion euros (1.62 billion pounds) from its 2013 budget to help finance state-aided job creation, Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac said on Sunday.With the unemployment rate at a 15-year high and rising, President Francois Hollande has promised to turn things around ...

VAL-DE-REUIL, France  - The French state will not take over insolvent Swiss refiner Petroplus’ oil refinery in Normandy, but could help the plant financially once a suitable buyer is found, President Francois Hollande said on Saturday.About 500 jobs at the 161,000 barrels-a-day ...

BRISBANE - France's Gilles Simon began his fine-tuning for the Australian Open with a hard-fought win over Colombia's Alejandro Falla in the second round of the Brisbane International on Wednesday. In temperatures as high as 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) on one of the Queensland Tennis ...

PARIS  - France would extend its full help and cooperation to Pakistan to meet its energy requirements. Addressing a joint press conference following their talks at Elyse Palace, French President Francois Hollande and President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday said that they discussed regional ...

NIJRAB BASE  - France ended its combat mission in Afghanistan on Tuesday, withdrawing troops from a strategic province northeast of Kabul as part of a speeded-up departure from the war-torn country. Paris has said all French combat soldiers will leave the country next month, two years before ...

DAMASCUS - France raised the prospect on Thursday of providing Syria’s rebels with defensive weapons as Turkey joined it and the Gulf Arab states in recognising the newly unified opposition.France said it would discuss its proposal to ease the European Union arms embargo on both sides in the ...

TOULOUSE  - A massive cleanup was under way in the French pilgrimage town of Lourdes on Sunday as firefighters pumped water from its famed Catholic sanctuaries after flooding forced the evacuation of hundreds of pilgrims.The waters from days of nonstop rain in the region had begun to recede ...

PARIS  - French authorities vowed Tuesday to show zero tolerance for anti-Semitism as new details emerged about suspects detained in a crackdown on extremists, who allegedly targeted the Jewish community.Videos of the suspects show the alleged leader of a militant cell rapping about the ...