She’s out of the maternity ward and into a Cabinet meeting, dressed in elegant black and stiletto heels – five days after giving birth at age 43.

AN EU-wide missing child alert system will not be established because member states do not have such a process in place.

France’s justice minister has received a severed finger in the post.

THE mother of French President Nicolas Sarkozy does not want him to marry again and told a French magazine she has “had enough of brides”.

Nicolas Sarkozy made a minor gaffe on his first US visit as France’s president by wrongly suggesting that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has recent immigrant roots.

Nine French people charged with kidnapping over their involvement in trying to fly scores of children out of Chad could face trial in their own country.

DRUNKEN vandals broke into a Paris museum on Sunday and punched a hole through a priceless Monet painting.

France’s new government was holding its first Cabinet meeting today, taking up a first batch of planned reforms, as President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to move fast on changes now that a new government is in place.

Former lawyer Christine Lagarde was named finance minister and Jean-Louis Borloo, her predecessor, took over as the environment and energy minister in a reshuffle today of France’s month-old government.

FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right allies won a solid majority in yesterday’s parliamentary election, but failed to secure a widely expected landslide, poll forecasts showed.