Even though opinion polling has taken a battering — Cameron, Brexit, Trump, etc — those who cling to the idea that the European Union, for all its myriad faults, still offers the best prospect for stability and prosperity will be cheered by the news that, for the first time, a poll predicts that Emmanuel Macron will beat Marine Le Pen in both rounds of France’s presidential election.

Two men thought to be connected to the militants who carried out the Paris attacks in November have been extradited to France from Austria.

As investigators hunt for leads in Europe’s worst terror attack in a decade, the Paris prosecutor laid out how three teams of assailants managed to kill at least 129 people in and around one of the world’s most heavily policed capitals.

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras had a conference call last night with the leaders of France and Germany to discuss progress in the talks between Athens and its lenders, officials said.

France’s finance minister said yesterday that Paris had not restricted the use of HSBC client data it passed on to UK authorities to help pursue tax evaders, contradicting comments by a senior British official.

Media leaks on HSBC accounts held in Switzerland “are only the tip of the iceberg”, Herve Falciani, the former HSBC employee who supplied information on the bank’s clients and their tax situation, has told French daily Le Parisien.

A woman hunted by French police as a suspect in the attacks on a satirical paper and Jewish supermarket in Paris left France several day before the killings and is believed to be in Syria, Turkish and French sources said.

Paris made the Charlie Hebdo journal an honorary citizen and the creator of Asterix offered to draw for it as support poured in for the satirical publication decimated by Islamist gunmen for mocking the prophet Mohammad.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has accused France’s justice system of trying to “humiliate” and “destroy” him, after he was charged in a corruption probe that could spell trouble for his future political ambitions.

In Brazil, another generation of France’s mix of ‘black, blanc, beur’ (black, white, Arab) will try to unite the country through football, writes Eoin O’Callaghan.

A Spanish newspaper published a document that it said shows the National Security Agency in the US spied on more than 60m phone calls in Spain in one month alone — the latest revelation about alleged massive US spying on allies.

France has summoned the US ambassador to explain why American spies secretly checked millions of French phone records.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde is facing questions at a special Paris court today over a controversial financial deal that she oversaw as French finance minister.

Millions of emails and leaked records from offshore tax havens have exposed the identities of thousands of holders of offshore accounts, including the family of the president of Azerbaijan and French president François Hollande’s former campaign treasurer, The Guardian and Le Monde newspapers reported.

A Paris appeals court has rejected two of three charges against the former head of France’s domestic intelligence agency over allegedly illegal monitoring of a journalist’s phone conversations.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former IMF chief, has agreed to pay $6m (€4.6m) to settle a lawsuit brought by a Manhattan maid who accused him of sexual assault.

Lance Armstrong was “warned before all planned doping controls”, an adviser to the French anti-doping agency AFLD has said.

Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras, who will take his plea for more time for the Greek economy to Paris and Berlin this week, has suggested his government could sell or lease some of the country’s islands to help revive a state-asset sales plan central to receiving international funds.

UN special envoy Kofi Annan has acknowledged that the international community's efforts to find a political solution to the escalating violence in Syria have failed.

French President François Hollande named a government dominated by moderate left-wingers yesterday after Socialist Party boss Martine Aubry, overlooked for the post of prime minister, said she no longer wanted to be part of the new cabinet.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a last-ditch appeal to far-right voters after failing to land a knockout blow in a heated televised debate with Socialist rival François Hollande before Sunday’s presidential run-off.

French presidential front-runner François Hollande headed into the last round of his battle with Nicolas Sarkozy with both of the candidates threatened by the shadow of scandal.

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.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy will announce his bid for re-election tonight, setting the stage for what he hopes will be a dramatic comeback against his poll-leading Socialist rival, a source in his office said.

TWO of the eurozone’s six triple A-rated countries, France and Austria, were downgraded from AAA to AA last night by credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s.

Nearly every media outlet in the world had an opinion on Bobby Sands, the hunger strikes, the situation in the North and the British response. And most media were not on the side of Margaret Thatcher, writes Ryle Dwyer

THE European summit deal to strengthen budget discipline in the eurozone failed to restore financial market confidence yesterday.

World Cup winner Patrick Vieira has declared himself shocked at reports that France boss Laurent Blanc and other coaches were seeking to introduce quotas limiting the presence of ethnic minority players in the national set-up.

GOT out of jail?

THE teenage waitress disappeared one night after her shift. After a police hunt that gripped France, her severed limbs and head were found in the waters of an abandoned quarry.

INTERNATIONAL attention turned to the possible hiking of Ireland’s low corporation tax rate and movement towards an expected deal with European authorities and the IMF over Ireland’s battered banks.

THE EU is not seeking to interfere with Ireland’s corporate tax rate, officials of Dublin Chamber said yesterday.

IN the event of political interference, the French Football Federation can rely on Federation International de Football Association (FIFA) to defend it, according to Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president.

French newspaper Le Monde is to take its controlling ownership stake out of the hands of editorial staff and sell it to an outside buyer.

There was plenty of sympathy for the Republic of Ireland in the French media this morning after the controversial extra-time goal that denied them a place in next summer’s World Cup finals.

Signals detected by search teams looking for wreckage from the Air France Flight 447 disaster in the Atlantic are not from its black box flight recorders, officials said today.

Signals from the black boxes of Flight 447 have been detected in the Atlantic by military ships, French newspaper Le Monde said today.

Iraqi forces today arrested an al Qaida-linked member of a Sunni paramilitary group who was believed to be a mastermind of the assassination of a prominent Sunni politician in Baghdad, officials said.

THE horrific scale of the abuse carried out against children made headlines around the world.

A French university has been accused of awarding diplomas to Chinese students in exchange for bribes.

France’s human rights minister tonight denied a report that quoted her as saying President Nicolas Sarkozy would boycott the Olympic opening ceremony unless China releases political prisoners and starts talks with the Dalai Lama.