EARLY indications suggest the plane that crashed in Venezuela, killing all 160 people on board, may have experienced engine trouble.

A plane carrying holidaymakers crashed today in western Venezuela after reporting engine problems, killing all 160 people on board, officials said.

Authorities plan to triple the number of surveillance cameras at Paris airports, France’s transport minister said today as he inspected security systems at the capital’s main international hub.

ANIMALS are for the first time to get an official status of their own under France’s 200 year-old civil code.

Extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was facing prosecution today after saying the Nazi occupation of France was not particularly brutal.

France will hold a referendum on the European Constitution in the spring, President Jacques Chirac announced today, calling on government ministers to work for a yes vote.

A YOUNG mother who claimed to have been the victim of a train attack that stunned France was yesterday detained by police as doubts were raised about the truth of her story.

A Muslim cleric who favours wife-beating under certain circumstances faces prosecution in France.

Foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, a relentless critic of the US war in Iraq, will head the Interior Ministry under a major French government shake-up.

FOREIGN Minister Dominique de Villepin, a relentless critic of the US war in Iraq, will head the Interior Ministry under a French government shake-up announced last night.

Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, a relentless critic of the US war in Iraq, will head the Interior Ministry under a major French government shake-up announced tonight.

FRENCH police are hunting a suspected al-Qaida operative who had booked on an Air France flight to the US on Christmas Eve but failed to turn up.

French authorities are searching for a suspected al-Qaida member who failed to turn up for a scheduled Air France flight on Christmas Eve, France’s justice minister confirmed today.

EUROPEAN Union justice ministers yesterday agreed to sign a landmark extradition deal with the United States after a year of talks, despite criticism from human rights campaigners and fears over the death penalty.

An armed gang opened fire on guards and blew holes in a prison’s walls in eastern France today, freeing an accused killer.

French football hooligans will be met with a “very firm” response as part of a new anti-crime initiative, the country’s interior minister vowed today.

THE French government is studying possible avenues to overturn a court decision to free Maurice Papon, the Nazi-era collaborator whose sudden release from prison provoked howls of outrage.

The French government is studying possible avenues to overturn a court decision to free Maurice Papon, the Nazi-era collaborator whose sudden release from prison provoked howls of outrage.

WARTIME collaborator Maurice Papon, convicted of sending French Jews to Nazi death camps, was jeered as he walked out of a Paris prison yesterday after an appeal court ordered his release.

France’s mainstream right has won a solid victory in a first-round parliamentary vote, putting newly re-elected president Jacques Chirac on course to push through his pro-business, tough-on-crime agenda.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin tonight named France’s first centre-right Cabinet in five years, selecting a veteran diplomat to lead the Foreign Ministry and for the first time a woman as head of defence.

French President Jacques Chirac will announce his bid for re-election in early March, a member of his conservative party said today.