Angelique Chrisafis

Editors say Nicolas Sarkozy is using the French secret service to spy on journalists.

Three African leaders and their families are to be investigated in Paris for allegedly embezzling state funds to acquire vast assets in France.

The €100-million restoration of the massive 19th-century parlour is Paris's art event of the year.

In his first newspaper interview since his high court victory, Max Mosley tells why he'll never change his sexual habits.

The world's most visited museum will have Europe's biggest purpose-built exhibition space for an Islamic art collection.

For the past seven days Ingrid Betancourt has engaged in an extraordinary frenzy of tarmac reunions, presidential meetings and public addresses.

Beleaguered French President Nicolas Sarkozy hopes to use a prime-time TV appearance this week to claw back public support after polls showed a majority of French people think his first year in office has been a failure. The anniversary has been marred by government infighting, policy U-turns and record low opinion polls.

French MPs on Tuesday approved a groundbreaking law against the promotion of anorexia, making it illegal to publicly incite excessive thinness. The Bill would bar any form of media, including websites, magazines and advertisers, from promoting extreme thinness, encouraging severe weight-loss or methods for self-starvation.

Seven doctors and pharmacists went on trial on Wednesday over the deaths of more than 100 people from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) that occurred years after the victims were treated, while still children, with tainted human-growth hormones. Two hundred relatives of the victims packed a Paris courtroom.

Jerome Kerviel, an introverted young city trader, lived on a tree-lined street in Neuilly-­­sur-Seine, a wealthy Paris suburb. Its yuppies live by Nicolas Sarkozy's mantra "work more to earn more". So when a handsome, well-dressed but solitary young banker rose at dawn every day for work and returned late at night to his one-bedroom flat, neighbours thought his dedication was to be encouraged.

Couscous could now provide the surprise recipe that saves France from cultural decline.

Part of the cosmetics giant L'Oréal was recently found guilty of racial discrimination after it sought to exclude non-white women from promoting its shampoo. In a landmark case, the Garnier division of the beauty empire, along with a recruitment agency it employed, were fined â,¬30 000 each after they recruited women on the basis of race.