President Mary McAleese will leave for a major five-day state visit to Latvia and Lithuania this weekend.

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 announced plans yesterday to impose curfews on rundown suburbs hit by violence to try to halt almost two weeks of unrest in which one man has been killed, police said yesterday.

France will impose curfews “wherever it is necessary” and call up police reservists to stop rioting that has spread out of its suburbs, the prime minister said today, calling a return to order “our No. 1 responsibility”.