Recalling the 1745 victory on Fontenoy

Heavy snow has brought chaos across Europe with tairports, trains and roads all struggling to keep moving.

Troops are in control of Kidal airport in northern Mali, seizing a key position in one of three provincial capitals the Islamist militants took last year.

French and Malian soldiers have won control of the desert city of Timbuktu following the retreat of Islamist extremists,

Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria’s first president and a historic leader of its bloody independence struggle from France, died at his family home in Algiers today aged 95.

France’s prime minister has rejected suggestions that anti-terrorism authorities fell down on the job in monitoring a radical Islamist who gunned down seven people in a wave of killings that revolted the country.

Inspired by radical Islam and trained in Afghanistan, the gunman methodically killed French schoolchildren, a rabbi and paratroopers and faced down hundreds of police for 32 hours.

An Islamic extremist who boasted of killing seven people died today after jumping from his window, gun in hand, in a fierce shootout with French police.

The man suspected of carrying out an al-Qaida-linked killing spree, Mohammed Merah, is dead after a 32-hour siege in Toulouse, a police union official says.

WITH regard to Richard Bruton’s concern over state agencies doing more to support Irish goods and services through public procurement practice in Ireland, I feel that it will take a lot more than “concern” to move the civil servants who administer the tenders to think outside the box.

The head of the French army resigned today over the military show accident where a soldier shot 17 people.

Pirates have freed 30 hostages held on a tourist yacht off Somalia.

The former husband of French hostage Ingrid Betancourt said today that he fears she is dead after six years of rebel captivity in Colombia’s jungle, expressing doubts about a government offer to obtain her release.

IRISH troops will be on their way to Africa within weeks on a European Union mission to protect refugees fleeing bloodshed in the Darfur region of Sudan.

FRANCE’S best-known mercenary Bob Denard, who had a hand in numerous African wars and coups d’etat over 30 years, has died at the age of 78.

OFFICERS wept, families traced the steps of fallen relatives and church bells tolled across northern France over the weekend to mark the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, one of history’s worst bloodbaths.

UN peacekeepers battled attackers today before withdrawing from a western Ivory Coast town along with military observers and other UN staff.

PRINCE Rainier III, whose glittering marriage to Irish-American film star Grace Kelly endowed a reign that spanned more than a half-century with elegance and glamour, guided Monaco’s transformation from a sleepy retreat for the wealthy into a centre of finance and tourism.

French tanks were taking up positions at the home of Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo today, and his supporters feared an attempt to overthrow him.

FRENCH troops arrived in Congo yesterday to prepare the way for an international force charged with stabilising a region wracked by tribal fighting, a UN official said yesterday.