At least 15 people have been killed and 12 are missing after flash floods caused by powerful rainstorms in south-east France, regional officials said today.

A TEENAGE skier from the Nepalese national team who went missing while training in the Alps has been found wandering the streets of Paris thanks to a Facebook campaign, his team said yesterday.

A drunken father of three who crashed his car into two French tourists who had arrived in Ireland hours before causing them catastrophic injuries which killed them instantly has been given an eight-year sentence.

INTERPOL sought public help yesterday in identifying a suspected paedophile, revealing a technique to unscramble digitally altered images to show the face of a man seen in internet photos sexually abusing young boys in Vietnam and Cambodia.

The French government confirmed today that the H5N1 bird flu virus struck a turkey farm, in the European Union’s first outbreak of the lethal strain in commercial poultry.

The French parliament gave its final approval to extending a state of emergency, even as the country was returning to an “almost normal situation” after three weeks of rioting and unrest.

French President Jacques Chirac remained hospitalised for a third day today with a blood vessel problem as the head of his political party said no one would stop his quest for the presidency in two years’ time.

A Basque terror leader, wanted for seven killings and a kidnapping, has been captured in south-east France.

Surging flood waters killed three men and swept a woman off a bridge in storms that lashed southern France, closing schools, roads and power plants and causing dozens of people to flee their homes.

Surging floodwaters swept a woman off a bridge in storms that lashed southern France, closing schools, roads and power plants and forcing the evacuation of dozens of people.

Three climbers fell to their deaths today while scaling the Alps in south-east France.

French and Italian passenger trains collided head-on in an Alpine tunnel in south-east France today, killing two people and injuring four seriously.

French President Jacques Chirac today denounced the country’s high traffic accident rate as a “national scandal” at a funeral for five firefighters killed by a speeding car.

A French guide and two Swiss clients were found dead today after being buried in an avalanche near the Megeve ski station in France, police said.