The French meat wholesaler Spanghero is to blame for fraudulently labelling horsemeat as beef, a minister says.

Companies in Romania, Cyprus, the Netherlands, and France have now been implicated in the horsemeat saga that has seen huge percentages of horse being sold as beef in ready-made meals.

A FRENCH novelist will file a criminal complaint today accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of attempted rape, her lawyer said, throwing fresh uncertainty into a fierce national debate about whether the former International Monetary Fund chief can return to his country’s presidential race.

FRANCE’S President Nicolas Sarkozy remained defiant yesterday after massive street protests against his plan to raise the retirement age from 60, vowing to push on with an “essential” reform.

French Cabinet ministers were to meet today to authorise curfews aimed at stopping rioters after the country’s worst civil unrest in decades raged for a 12th night.

France's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organisation, the Union for Islamic Organisations of France, has issued a fatwa, or religious decree, in a bid to help quell riots which have seen nearly 1,000 arrested in recent days.

FRENCH President Jacques Chirac yesterday promised arrests, trials and punishment for those sowing “violence or fear” across the country.

French President Jacques Chirac called a security meeting of his top ministers tonight after urban rioting spread – with arsonists striking from the Mediterranean to the German border and into central Paris for the first time.

Riots which have rocked France for the past 10 days reached central Paris for the first time today in an orgy of destruction and violence.

France was hit by a 10th night of rioting as the urban unrest reached Paris for the first time.

A FOUR-DAY-OLD girl who was cut from her strangled mother’s womb was in “remarkably good” condition yesterday, a hospital spokeswoman said, and the alleged attacker faced an initial court appearance.