PARIS (Reuters) – A French court sentenced flamboyant Marxist militant Carlos the Jackal to another life prison term on Thursday for bomb attacks that killed 11 people nearly three decades ago.

The Venezuelan defendant, 62, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, has been locked up in France for almost 20 years serving a life sentence in a separate case for killing two police officers and an informant in Paris in 1975.

Sentencing Ramirez to an additional life term, the special terrorism court in Paris made up of seven magistrates said he should serve a minimum of 18 years in jail.

The verdict could push back the date on which he can apply for conditional release, currently set for 2012.

Defense lawyers called the decision a scandal and said their client would file an appeal.

Ramirez was accused of masterminding four separate attacks in France on two trains, a train station and a Paris street that killed 11 people and wounded nearly 200.

Prosecutors said the bombings were his answer to the police seizure of two of his gang, including his lover, and had argued that he remained a danger to the public.

PARIS (Reuters) – Calling himself a “living martyr,” Marxist militant Carlos the Jackal defended his innocence in a French courtroom on Thursday, seizing the limelight on the final day of his trial for a series of bombings in the early 1980s that killed 11 people.

Once one of the most wanted international criminals, the Venezuelan-born defendant, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, addressed the court in a five-hour monologue, alternately rambling, vitriolic and poignant, as he prepared to hear a verdict expected for later Thursday night.

Ramirez, 62 — a self-dubbed “elite gunman” who has been lingering in a French prison since his capture in 1994 serving a life sentence for murder in a separate case — appeared resigned to a likely guilty verdict.

Death in prison, he said at one point, “is the role of a revolutionary.”

“I am in prison … condemned in a pre-decided case,” he told the court, his voice rising in volume. “I am a living martyr.”

Ramirez, a colorful figure recognizable at the height of his notoriety by his Che Guevara-style beret, sunglasses and Havana cigars, sealed his renown in a bloody hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers in 1975.

During the Cold War he received backing from Soviet bloc and Middle Eastern countries, staging attacks throughout Europe for more than two decades before being captured in Sudan in 1994.

PARIS (Reuters) – Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known to the world as “Carlos the Jackal”, pleaded his innocence of terrorism charges on Thursday during what is expected to be the last day of a trial in France.

The Venezuelan-born Sanchez, once one of the most wanted of all international criminals, denied any involvement in four bloody bombings that wounded nearly 200 people and left 11 dead.

“There is nothing…to connect me with these four attacks,” he told the court, making a zero sign with his thumb and index finger.

Ramirez, 62, a self-dubbed “elite gunman” who has been lingering in a French prison since his capture in 1994, serving a life sentence for murder in a separate case, was calm and casual as he took the floor to poke holes in the case against him.

Rambling on for close to two hours, and only occasionally raising his voice, he spoke on a range of subjects, from prison life to Zionist strategy, the French state, hashish and even the death penalty.

During a discourse about one of the opposing lawyers, he said he assumed “political and military responsibility” for the actions committed by his revolutionary organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and for the Palestinian cause. But he made no connection with the four attacks of which he stands accused, and for which prosecutors have requested he be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Notorious for a bloody hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers in 1975, Ramirez has been called a gun-for-hire by his opponents, and a cold-blooded killer by a former cohort turned witness against him.

PARIS, Dec 6 (Reuters) – Europe’s politicians can drone on about solutions to the euro zone crisis as much as they like, but the popular sentiment is clearly spelled out on the streets of Paris: “DEATH TO BANKERS”.

That message scrawled on a mail box in the fashionable Marais district of the French capital is part of a growing commentary cropping up on walls and streets, revealing deep-seated distrust and simmering disquiet as a euro zone crisis threatens to wreak yet more havoc with France’s economy.

As France gets sucked deeper into the crisis, Paris is catching up with Athens, where bankruptcy woes and austerity measures have spurred waves of graffiti and the finger of blame is pointing firmly in one direction.

“Thanks, bankers, for the loss of a few more billions,” says another scrawl near the Paris stock exchange .

Anger at budget cuts, concern over violent swings in financial markets and fear that the euro zone could disintegrate have all trickled down to the street level.

“Did you elect your banker?” read a stencil spray-painted on the seat of a public bench near the Bastille, a key target of the 18th century revolutionaries who chopped off the heads of a French elite that spent too much and paid too little heed to trouble brewing among the lower orders.

“Because the masses aren’t productive enough, France will lose its triple-A,” reads a sarcastic message on the side of the church which provided the religious tools needed for Louis XVI’s last Mass before his execution at the guillotine in 1793.

PARIS (Reuters) – More than one out of three French voters would like to bid adieu to the euro and return to the franc, with a majority viewing the euro as a “handicap” for their country’s economy, according to a poll.

Disenchantment with the euro zone’s common currency has grown in France and other member countries as the European sovereign debt crisis and the high price of bailing out its more profligate members has continued to spook financial markets and raise doubts about the euro’s staying power.

Some 36 percent of voters in France said they would like to exit the euro zone and reinstate the franc, according to the Ipsos poll published on Monday in Le Monde newspaper. Sixty percent said France should stay within the common currency bloc.

“Since the crisis, this is something fairly common. This idea is gaining traction because now there are 36 percent telling us they want France to exit the euro,” said Ipsos’ Vincent Dusseaux.

“That remains a minority opinion, but within some subgroups it’s the majority view.”

The bulk of French voters saying they wanted a pull-out of the euro were from the far-right National Front, where reinstatement of the franc is a major party platform.

More blue-collar workers also supported a pull-out than did white-collar workers, the survey found.

PARIS (Reuters) – All the world’s a stage for Carlos the Jackal, the veteran Marxist militant who since last month has reigned with imperious bluster over his trial in France on terrorism charges.

But while theatrical antics have been a daily feature of a trial now in its fourth week, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, once the most wanted international criminal looks out at a steadily dwindling audience from his caged-in defendant’s box.

Charged with four bloody bomb attacks in France in 1982 and 83 that killed 11 people and wounded nearly 200, the 62-year-old Venezuelan has cast himself as a revolutionary fighter with contacts in high places who has suffered “inhumane” conditions in a French prison since his capture nearly two decades ago.

Asked by a judge to clarify his position on the attacks, Ramirez responded, “There are three possibilities: I am innocent, I am guilty, or I’m saying, ‘Go screw yourself.’”

Three co-defendants are being judged in abstentia, with two of them fugitives and another in prison in Germany.

Interrupting judges, correcting lawyers and talking over speakers, Ramirez carries himself like an unfairly deposed head of state, rather than a convicted killer already serving life sentences for previous lethal attacks in France.

On Friday, a former comrade in the witness stand described his former boss as a cold-blooded killer with no scruples, sending Ramirez into a rage and provoking a quasi-avowal.

PARIS, Nov 24 (Reuters) – The French may scoff at British cooking and fashion, but retailer Marks & Spencer reckons France is yearning for its ready-made chicken tikka masala, gourmet chutney and sensible knickers.

The veteran British store opened a flagship store on Paris’s Champs-Elysees on Thursday after a decade’s absence from French soil, bringing the taste and feel of the British Isles to a city that sees itself as a world capital of food and fashion.

Britain’s biggest clothing retailer, known too for its home goods and upmarket food, sparked howls of protest in 2001 when it shut up shop in France to stem losses in mainland Western Europe and focus on its home turf, leaving British expatriates and anglophile Parisians bereft.

The return to France is part of a new international strategy to open stores and websites in a handful of countries, rather than the scattergun approach of the past. Goods at the Paris store will be priced around 10 percent higher than in Britain, but M&S said they would be competitive for the French market.

“I am impatiently waiting for the reopening,” said Karine, a French TV producer and blogger who preferred not to give her last name. “For me, it’s a little like Proust and his madeleine.”

While underwear is at the top of the list for many a female M&S shopper — “They’re the only ones to do super comfy underwear,” said Karine — food is also a major draw.

Karine’s list of remembered favorite foods from the 127-year-old retailer included “crumpets, scones, pies, chutney, Indian food” — foodstuffs rarely seen elsewhere in France.

ROME/PARIS, Nov 18 (Reuters) – Italy’s new government has announced far-reaching reforms in response to a European debt crisis that on Thursday pushed borrowing costs for France and Spain sharply higher, and brought tens of thousands of Greeks onto the streets of Athens.

Italy’s new technocrat prime minister, Mario Monti, unveiled sweeping reforms to dig the country out of crisis and said Italians were confronting a “serious emergency”.

Monti, who enjoys 75 percent support according to opinion polls, comfortably won a vote of confidence in his new government in the Senate on Thursday, by 281 votes to 25.

He faces another confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, on Friday, which he also expected to win comfortably.

“Only if we can avoid being seen as the weak link of Europe can we contribute to European reforms,” said Monti, who was sworn in on Wednesday as head of a government of experts after a rushed transition from the discredited Silvio Berlusconi.

In Athens, at least 50,000 Greeks joined a protest rally presenting the first public test for a new national unity government, also headed by an unelected figure, that must impose spending cuts and tax rises if Greece is to escape bankruptcy.

Police fired tear gas at black-clad youths as protest marchers beat drums, waved red flags and shouted: “EU, IMF out!”

MADRID/PARIS, Nov 17 (Reuters) – Greek police clashed with anti-austerity protesters and Italy announced sweeping reforms in response to a European debt crisis that on Thursday pushed borrowing costs for France and Spain sharply higher.

More than 30,000 Greeks took to the streets of Athens in a protest rally that marked the first public test for a new national unity government that must impose painful spending cuts and tax rises if the country is to escape bankruptcy.

Greek police fired tear gas against black-clad youths as protest marchers beat drums, waved red flags and shouted: “EU, IMF out!”

Italy’s new Prime Minister Mario Monti unveiled sweeping reforms to dig the country out of crisis and said Italians were confronting a “serious emergency”. Opinion polls show Monti enjoys 75 percent support but there were street clashes in the business capital of Milan and in Turin.

“Only if we can avoid being seen as the weak link of Europe can we contribute to European reforms,” said Monti, who was sworn in on Wednesday as head of a technocrat government after a rushed transition from discredited ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi.

The Spanish government was forced to pay the highest borrowing costs since 1997 at a sale of 10-year bonds, with yields a steep 1.5 points above the average paid at similar tenders this year, drawing descriptions from the market ranging from “pretty awful” to “dreadful”.

The euro fell in response. Paris fared a little better, but again had to pay markedly more to shift nearly 7 billion euros of government paper. Fears that the euro zone’s second largest economy is getting sucked into the debt maelstrom have taken the two-year crisis to a new level this week.

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s cost of borrowing over two and four years jumped by around half a percentage point at an auction on Thursday, reflecting growing concerns it may be dragged into the euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis.

The government sold 6.98 billion euros of medium-term BTAN notes at the auction on Thursday, at the top of its projected range, but borrowing costs rose for three out of four lines compared to previous sales.

Investors are increasingly eyeing France — the euro zone’s weakest triple-A rated sovereign — as the next domino to fall in a sovereign debt crisis that is already threatening to envelop Italy and Spain.

The French/German 10-year yield spread rose to more than 200 basis points on secondary bond markets on Thursday for the first time since the launch of the euro.

Debt management agency Agence France Tresor said it had placed 950 million euros, and 1.07 billion euros, respectively, of its 2.00 percent BTANs maturing September 2013 and July 2015.

The BTAN maturing September 2013 had an average yield of 1.85 percent — compared to 1.31 percent at the last auction a month ago. The note maturing July 2015 had an average yield of 2.44 percent versus 1.96 percent.

France is battling to hold on to its prized triple-A credit rating, which allows it to service its debt more cheaply, with and many investors having already priced in a cut.