According to French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, the Tuesday night negotiations for Ivory Coast ruler Laurent Gbagbo’s surrender have failed, and opposition leader Alassane Ouattara’s militia forces are launching new attacks against him. The talks had been centering around offers of safety guarantees for Gbagbo, who remained in office after a hotly disputed November election against Ouattara.... 

German Chancellor and leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Angela Merkel and Stefan Mappus, top candidate of the CDU in the Baden-Wuerttemberg state election (not pictured), hold a news conference after a party meeting in Berlin on March 28. Germany’s antinuclear Green Party won control of a state government for the first time in local elections Sunday. In France, Le Pen’s right-wing... 

China’s President Hu Jintao Wednesday warned French leader Nicolas Sarkozy that air strikes on Libya could violate the “original intention” of the UN resolution authorising them if civilians suffer. The tough talk from Hu came during a meeting at the start of Sarkozy’s mini-tour of Asia, which will include a G20 meeting on global monetary reform and a stop in disaster-struck... 

Polls have shown Marine Le Pen could beat Nicolas Sarkozy in the first round of next year's presidential election. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front party was predicted to have made significant progress in the first round of local elections in France, while Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party fared badly. The French local elections, for part of the cantons in the country’s 100... 

Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Marine Le Pen might defeat President Nicolas Sarkozy if a French election were held now, a poll showed. Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a Socialist Party member, would win 33 percent in the first round, according to the Ipsos-LogicaBusiness Consulting poll for Le Monde and Europe 1 radio. Le Pen, leader of the National Front party,... 

Nicolas Sarkozy of France pays five-six-hour short visit to Turkey as a President of G-20. Turkish “CnnTurk” news service informs that Sarkozy gave interview to a famous Turkish journalist and columnist Mehmet Ali Birand before his visit to Turkey. Turkish journalist was granted a unique chance to address written questions to the French President, who answered them again in a written form. “CnnTurk”... 

Christine Lagarde wants changes on world's finance system. France will help the transition to a global financial system based on ‘several international currencies’, the French Economy Minister said today. France, as current head of the Group of 20 countries, will help the transition to a global financial system based on ‘several international currencies’, French Economy... 

Charlotte Cassez, mother of Florence Cassez, sentenced in Mexico to 60 years in prison for kidnapping, gives a press conference in Lille, northern France. A Mexican court on February 10, upheld the conviction of a French woman who is serving a 60-year prison term for kidnapping. Diplomatic relations between France and Mexico deteriorated into a crisis Friday, after a Mexican court upheld a 60-year... 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has censured multiculturalism a failure, joining other western leaders that have already rejected the notion despite boasting freedom as a founding principle. Sarkozy declared in a televised interview on Thursday that “I don’t want a society where communities coexist side by side” and that “France will not welcome people... 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy speaks during a media conference at an EU summit in Brussels. Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to strip certain foreign-born criminals of their French nationality has been thrown out by politicians – with one likening it to the Vichy regime in France that collaborated with the Nazis. The proposal intended to deny nationality to people naturalised as French citizens... 

The French government and the automaker Renault SA are trying to avert a standoff with Beijing over reports that a Chinese industrial espionage ring stole details of Renault’s electric vehicle technology. The carmaker suspended three executives Jan. 3 on suspicion of involvement in leaking information. It filed a criminal complaint on Thursday, alleging that it was the victim of “organized... 

French president Nicolas Sarkozy Calls for the end of the US Dollar while US president Barack Obama calls France “biggest ally”. There’s little doubt that the world’s superpowers are now fighting a new war. It’s not a cold one, or a hot one. No tanks, bombs or poison gas. At least not yet. But open hostility between Europe, Brazil, China, India and the United States blanket the headlines... 

Most of the children will be in France in time for Christmas with their new families. Some 200 Haitian orphans are being brought to France to be with their adoptive families for Christmas. On Wednesday, a plane carrying the first group of more than 100 children arrived in Paris from Port-au-Prince. Another flight carrying another 80 children is expected on Friday. More than 300 adopted children are... 

French riot police and students fired tear gas and petrol bombs at each other while truckers blocked roads and almost 3,000 petrol stations ran dry, as nationwide protests intensified. Despite claims that it had petrol provision “under control”, the government said it had activated an emergency crisis cell charged with maintaining fuel supplies. The opposition Socialists criticised François Fillon,... 

Brigitte Bardot has often been in the spotlight for her controversial views on immigration and homosexuality Brigitte Bardot, the Sixties sex symbol has announced she may run for president in France’s next elections as the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, “took me for an imbecile” over animal rights pledges. Miss Bardot, once a screen icon now an animal rights campaigner, said she had...