Rogue French financier Jerome Kerviel was convicted of history’s biggest trading scandal, jailed for three years and ordered to pay a massive €4.9bn in damages today.

RECORDINGS of L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt’s conversations about political dealings and Swiss bank accounts may play a key role at a trial over whether the 87-year-old was manipulated into giving a friend about €1 billion in gifts.

The defence lawyer for Continental Airlines challenged court experts, the prosecutor, the judge and the plaintiff – Air France – today as a French court wrapped up a trial into the crash of a Concorde supersonic jet 10 years ago.

CONTINENTAL Airlines and five men went on trial yesterday for their alleged role in the crash of an Air France Concorde that killed 113 people in 2000 and ended an era of luxury supersonic travel.

A court today finally began to decide who was to blame for Air France’s 2000 Concorde crash, an accident that killed 113 people and hastened the end of the world’s only supersonic airliner.