‘Turn Off the Red Light’ campaign aims to criminalise the purchase of consensual sex but is flawed in its assumptions, writes Mick Wallace.

Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald has condemned child beauty pageants as “the theft of childhood”, as a senator warned she would seek an outright ban if the events continue to be staged.

The French parliament has voted to ban beauty pageants for children under 16, in an effort to defend youngster’s rights.

Lance Armstrong has said he is “not surprised” that 18 top riders in the 1998 Tour de France have been named by the French Senate as having taken the blood-boosting agent EPO.

France’s inquiry into Google’s tax affairs is coming to an end and the results may be announced within the next six months, Technology minister Fleur Pellerin said yesterday.

UNITED NATIONS peacekeepers have surrounded the “last defenders” of Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo, after a week of heavy fighting to unseat him.

THE French Senate yesterday approved a hotly contested Bill raising the retirement age to 62, hours after riot police forced the reopening of a strategic refinery to help halt growing fuel shortages amid nationwide strikes and protests.

France’s Senate has approved a contested pension reform raising the retirement age to 62 despite months of nationwide protests and strikes.

Lady Gaga has cancelled her Paris concerts as nationwide protests continue in France in a standoff over a bill to raise the retirement age.

FRANCE will be plunged into more strike chaos today with the threat of fuel shortages, street protests, and disrupted public transport and air travel.

France will be plunged into more strike chaos tomorrow with the threat of fuel shortages, street protests, and disrupted public transport and air travel.

France's senate today approved raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 even as unions are promising new protests.

The EU is threatening to take legal action against France for targeting and deporting Roma migrants.

The French Senate today overwhelmingly backed a bill banning the wearing of the full Islamic veil in public.

A bill to outlaw the Islamic burka garment is to be voted on today in the French Senate.

FRENCH financial watchdogs slammed President Nicolas Sarkozy for spending €178 million on his country’s six months in charge of the EU — including €278,000 on a personal presidential shower that he never used.

France’s Senate has given final approval to a law that would punish people who download music and films illegally by cutting off their internet connections.

The French Senate set in motion yesterday an effort to raise the minimum age at which young women can marry for the first time since Napoleon ruled France, a move designed to discourage forced marriages.

An audiotape purported to be from Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri that aired on an Arabic television channel today criticised France’s decision to ban Islamic headscarves in schools as part of the West’s campaign against Islam.