IT is said “God made the world but the Dutch made Holland”.

Part of a sports centre collapsed in high winds today in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona, killing four children and injuring 16 other people, officials and witnesses said.

Manchester United defender Mikael Silvestre admits he could be tempted by a move to Bordeaux, provided the French club can meet his salary demands.

AGRICULTURAL workers are more than doubling their risk of developing brain tumours due to the high levels of pesticides they are using.

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.

At least eight people were killed when a bus and a van crashed on a main road in southwest France today, officials said.

At least one person has died after violent storms swept across south-western France, knocking down trees and causing dozens of injuries.

A butcher went on the rampage in a village in south-west France today, knifing six people, four of them children.

FRANCE'S Atlantic coast could be swamped with oil from the sunken tanker Prestige within days after high winds tore up an oil slick out at sea, authorities said yesterday.

A 68-year-old man was mistakenly declared dead and refrigerated for five hours at a funeral parlour before a worker noticed he was alive, a Bordeaux hospital said today.

Officials have issued warnings after seven people drowned off the south west cost of France over the weekend.