A French court ordered Marine Le Pen to submit to a psychiatric evaluation as part of its investigation into her decision to post images of Islamic State executions on Twitter, the far right leader said on Thursday and denounced the order. The investigation is one of a series that have distracted Le Pen's National Rally, formerly known as the National Front, as it seeks to rebuild after her loss to President Emmanuel Macron in the second round of an election last year.

Two and a half million tickets at €15 a piece were sold for the heritage lottery drawn on Friday, September 14. The €15-20 million collected will subsidise the restoration of 269 endangered French heritage sites. Eighteen sites designated as “iconic” by the minister of culture will receive priority funding. They will receive immediate funding from the Fondation du patrimoine – enough to begin the first stages of construction and restoration. Here are some of the top sites.

Despite centuries of efforts to make standardised French the language of all of France, Occitan, which is intrinsically tied to the local culture, could not be suppressed.

Emmanuel Macron also recognises role of state in 1957 death of dissident Maurice Audin

More than 18,000 people marched Saturday in Paris as part of an international mobilisation to show popular support for urgent measures to combat climate change ahead of a San Francisco summit.

Art school Émile Cohl in Lyon, France formally apologized after students noticed that a group photo on the school's United States promotional web site had been manipulated to make several of the people appear to have dark skin. The manipulated photo is at the very top of this post. Below it is another image, without the alterations, from the same series of snapshots.

A new report reveals today how the French State and several French companies have participated in the bloody Egyptian repression of the past five (...)

Monday is the first day that French schoolchildren under 15 cannot use their cellphones at any point during the school day, thanks to a new nationwide law. The ban, passed in July following a campaign pledge made by French President Emmanuel Macron, will affect elementary and junior high schools across the country as they return from the summer break.

A royal from Saudi Arabia has claimed she had €800,000 of jewellery stolen from her bedroom at a chic Paris hotel, it’s emerged. The woman, an unnamed princess, said the items were taken from the Ritz in Place Vendome, police said on Monday. The incident happened on Friday and the jewellery stolen was not in the bedroom’s safe at the time of the theft, she told police.

A ban on five neonicotinoid pesticides enters into force in France on Saturday, placing the country at the forefront of a campaign against chemicals blamed for decimating critical populations of crop-pollinating bees. The move has been hailed by beekeepers and environmental activists, but lamented by cereal and sugar beet farmers who claim there are no effective alternatives for protecting their valuable crops against insects.

A Russian satellite "with big ears" cozied up to a French one last year in an apparent effort to eavesdrop on secure military communications, France's defense minister alleged Friday. In what she said amounted to a "Star Wars" above the Earth, Florence Parly named the Russian satellite as Louch-Olymp. She said it approached the Athena-Fidus, a French-Italian satellite launched in 2014 and used for secure military communications and the planning of operations.

For the tourists thronging the streets and pavement cafes of Chamonix, the neck-craning view of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, is as dazzling as ever. But the mountaineers who climb among the snowy peaks know that it is far from business as usual – due to a warming climate, the familiar landscape is rapidly changing. “Global climate change has serious and directly observable consequences in high mountains,” says Vincent Neirinck from Mountain Wilderness, a campaign group that works to preserve mountain environments around the world.

TV star Richard Hammond and his wife were gassed before they were robbed in their holiday villa in the South of France. The host of Amazon Prime’s popular show The Grand Tour and his wife Mindy were floored by anaesthetic gas before a team of robbers stole from them and their 15 guests who were all staying together in a San Tropez villa.

French aviation authorities are to open a new investigation into the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, days after a report effectively cleared the pilots of any deliberate act to bring the plane down. The SR-GTA — the research section of the Gendarmerie of Air Transport — wants to re-examine the satellite data or "pings" that led earlier investigators to conclude the plane crashed somewhere along an imaginary arc in the Indian Ocean, after veering off-course on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.

President Emmanuel Macron also recognised the French state was responsible for the death of a dissident mathematician in Algeria in 1957, admitting for the first time to systematic torture by the French military during Algeria's independence war.

A man has driven his car into a crowd of people outside a bar in southern France while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” according to witnesses. The suspect is believed to be a local man, aged 32, who drove his white Peugeot car towards a crowd of about 50 people around 1 am Thursday in the town of Nimes, eyewitnesses told AFP. More than one witness said that the man shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he drove. However, the car ran into crowd-control barriers crowds set up for a popular annual festival in the town.

French actor Gérard Depardieu has been accused of rape and sexual assault by a 22-year-old woman, a spokesman for the Paris prosecutor told CNN on Thursday. "The Paris public prosecutor's office is making a preliminary investigation on counts of rape and sexual assault," the spokesman said. In the French judicial system, Depardieu would be placed under formal investigation if officials find grounds for pursuing the matter further.

Donald Trump will visit Ireland in November, it was confirmed on Friday. The president will also visit France to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war. The exact timing of the European trip was not announced. The leader of the Irish Labour party promised to oppose the visit. In a statement, the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said Trump’s time in Ireland would “renew the deep and historic ties between our two nations”.

One in five French people can't afford three meals a day or eat healthily, a new report reveals, as the government gets set to present its long-awaited poverty plan on Thursday. The survey, carried out by the Secours Populaire (French Popular Relief) -- a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting poverty and discrimination -- contains some shocking figures.

France plans to introduce a penalty system that would increase the costs of consumer goods with packaging made of non-recycled plastic, part of a pledge to use only recycled plastic nationwide by 2025, an environment ministry official said Sunday.

More than 800 road bridges in France are at risk of collapsing within a few years, according to a survey carried out for the Transport Ministry that has raised alarm following the Genoa tragedy.

France's Government has introduced a plan to bring back national service for all 16-year-olds, a move it says will give the country's teenagers a sense of national unity and civic duty. President Emmanuel Macron initially proposed the idea of national service during his presidential run in 2017.

Police have cleared the largest illegal refugee camp in Paris that has become a focal point in France’s immigration debate. The evacuation of more than 1,000 migrants came a day after President Emmanuel Macron awarded honorary citizenship and a job to a Malian immigrant who climbed the outside of a building to save a boy dangling from a balcony. Mamoudou Gassama, who scaled four floors to pluck the child from danger, was given a medal for courage and has been nicknamed Spider-Man.

France won the World Cup, with their stars Antoine Griezmann, Paul Pogba and Kylian Mbappé on the scoresheet, but Croatia will feel very hard done-by, thanks to an own goal, and VAR.

The Chateau de la Mothe-Chandeniers has had many owners since its construction in the 13th century. Now more so than ever. Over 13,000 strangers have recently banded together to save the fairytale home—which features turrets, towers, and a sizable moat—from decay and destruction. A crowdfunding campaign running on the French site Dartagnans has raised more than €1.1 million ($1.3 million) to date for the structure’s preservation, with every contributor becoming a part owner of the historic home.

A French skier who went missing more than 60 years ago has finally been identified after details of a probe into his disappearance were posted on social media, Italian police said Sunday. Human remains and ski equipment were found in 2005 more than 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) up the Cime Bianche in the Valtournenche valley of the Aosta region near the Swiss border in northern Italy.

French lawmakers on Monday passed a law banning schoolchildren from having smartphones and other internet-enabled devices at schools. The ban applies to smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and other connected devices, which must be turned off or left at home.

France voted to outlaw sexual harassment on the streets, leaving cat-callers and aggressively lecherous individuals facing potential on-the-spot fines of up to 750 euros as part of tougher legislation to fight sexual violence.

A bill approved Wednesday by French lawmakers outlines steep fines for gender-based harassment on the country's streets and public transportation. The law will allow for fines of 90-750 euros, roughly $104 to $868, for sexual or sexist comments. That definition also includes behavior that is degrading, humiliating, intimidating hostile or offensive.

France’s high-profile environment minister unexpectedly announced his resignation live on national radio Tuesday, lamenting the government’s lack of decisive action on green issues. The move deals a stinging blow to the environmental credibility of President Emmanuel Macron. Clearly emotional, Nicolas Hulot said he’d not even told his wife, let alone Macron or the prime minister, of his decision to stand down. The long-time environmental advocate lamented France’s slow pace of progress on green issues and his own lack of power to force change.

The Histoire mondiale opens the door to that most alluring of prospects: a genuinely universal republican vision of Frenchness. By Sudhir Hazareesingh.

rance is to impose a total ban on pupils using mobile phones in primary and secondary schools starting in September 2018, its education minister has confirmed. Phones are already forbidden in French classrooms but starting next school year, pupils will be barred from taking them out at breaks, lunch times and between lessons.

France's parliament has approved a law banning all exploration and production of oil and natural gas by 2040 within the country and its overseas territories. Under that law that passed a final vote on Tuesday, existing drilling permits will not be renewed and no new exploration licenses will be granted. The French government claims the ban is a world first. However, it is largely symbolic since oil and gas produced in France accounts for just 1 percent of domestic consumption. The rest is imported.

France’s parliament has passed into law a ban on producing oil and gas by 2040, a largely symbolic gesture as the country is 99% dependent on hydrocarbon imports. In Tuesday’s vote by show of hands, only the rightwing Republicans party opposed, while leftwing lawmakers abstained. No new permits will be granted to extract fossil fuels and no existing licences will be renewed beyond 2040, when all production in mainland France and its overseas territories will stop.

The last few months have been filled with statements from financial regulators warning about the potential risks associated with trading and investing in cryptocurrency.