France is suspending all flights to and from Brazil to curb the spread of a new Covid-19 variant found in the South American country, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Tuesday.

President Emmanuel Macron extended light lockdown measures from 19 areas including Paris to all of mainland France from April 3 for 4 weeks at a televised address on the resurgent Covid-19 pandemic on Wednesday.

Tough-talking politicians from the right are accustomed to demanding “exemplary” punishments. This week, they did not appreciate the judiciary making an example of their champion, Nicolas Sarkozy, venting their fury at a special prosecutor’s office tasked with cleaning up French politics.

French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in jail, two of them suspended, for corruption.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday that French actor Gerard Depardieu was charged in December with rape and sexual assault after authorities revived a 2018 investigation that was initially dropped.

France on Friday recommended that people who have already recovered from Covid-19 receive a single vaccine dose, becoming the first country to issue such advice.

France's Pasteur Institute said on Monday it was ending development of a Covid-19 vaccine with US pharmaceutical company Merck after clinical trial results proved disappointing.

Prosecutors in the graft trial of French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday called for him to be sentenced to a prison term of four years of which he should serve two.

France will require online technology giants to pay a new "digital tax" on their 2020 earnings, the finance ministry said Wednesday, breaking a truce with Washington over the long-running tax fight that could prompt a round of punitive US tariffs on French goods.

Three people have been “butchered” in a suspected terror attack in Nice, France, as ‘simultaneous’ attacks were reported elsewhere.

A knife-wielding attacker beheaded two of the three victims at the Notre Dame church in the center of the French resort city of Nice, First Deputy Mayor Anthony Borré told RT France.

French media have released the first details about the suspect in an attack that killed three people at a church in Nice. The facts are yet to be confirmed by officials, who launched a terrorist investigation into the case.

At least two people have died and up to 20 are still missing after a powerful storm hit south-eastern France and north-western Italy.

France's top appeals court ruled Wednesday that alleged Rwandan genocide financier Félicien Kabuga should be transferred to a UN tribunal in Tanzania to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

France has reported a record daily increase in coronavirus cases as the country struggles to contain a fresh surge in infections.

People in Beirut have expressed anger at the government over what they say was negligence that led to Tuesday's huge explosion.

French authorities opened a criminal investigation into a major fire that broke out in the cathedral in the western French city of Nantes on Saturday. The blaze blew out stained glass windows and destroyed the grand organ in the 15th-century building.

Between January and December of 1960, no fewer than 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa gained independence from European colonial powers, including 14 former French colonies. FRANCE 24 takes a look back at a watershed year in the modern history of the continent.

A court has launched an inquiry into the French government's handling of the coronavirus response.

France begins a second phase of easing lockdown rules on Tuesday as official figures show the novel coronavirus outbreak continuing to diminish in the country following an initial loosening of restrictions that began on May 11.