French riot police and firefighters have cleared a Paris ring road at rush-hour.

FRENCH President François Hollande has won cautious backing from Berlin, Brussels, and financial markets for a centrist reform push that could be his last chance to get the eurozone’s second largest economy motoring.

Maurice Papon, a former Cabinet minister who became a symbol of France's collaboration with the Nazis for his role in deporting Jews during the Second World War, has died. He was 96.