PARIS (Reuters) – France will try again on Thursday to fix an annual day of remembrance for those who died in the 1954-62 Algerian war and independence struggles in Morocco and Tunisia that ended more than a century of French colonial rule.

The Senate is to vote on the bill, which has gathered dust for 10 years, to set the memorial date. This could be another step towards warmer relations with Algiers as Paris seeks its backing for an African-led military intervention against Islamist militants in northern Mali.

PARIS (Reuters) – It took some nerve for 10 engineers in a Paris basement to take on electronics giant Fujitsu for a $20 million contract to supply European planemaker Airbus with a new kind of data tag for its aircraft parts.

But Frenchman Bruno Lo-Re, who was 38 at the time, was sure his team had a headstart against the Tokyo-based company of 170,000 employees: he had already persuaded the French airforce to let him try them out on its fighter jets.

PARIS (Reuters) – A right-wing politician vying to head France’s opposition conservative party has raised a storm by suggesting Muslim youths tear pain au chocolat pastries from children’s hands during Islam’s fasting month.

The controversy has inflamed old strains over secular and mainly-Catholic France’s struggle to assimilate Muslim culture.

PARIS (Reuters) – Savoring a long lunch after a morning tending to baby quince and pear trees, the French Senate’s 78 gardeners are blissfully untouched by the economic crisis gnawing at Europe’s core.

They have jobs for life that pay 40 percent above the average French take-home salary and get “wet weather” bonuses when they work in drizzle, storms or snow.

PARIS, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Savouring a long lunch after a
morning tending to baby quince and pear trees, the French
Senate’s 78 gardeners are blissfully untouched by the economic
crisis gnawing at Europe’s core.

They have jobs for life that pay 40 percent above the
average French take-home salary and get “wet weather” bonuses
when they work in drizzle, storms or snow.

PARIS, Oct 3 (Reuters) – A quest by President Francois
Hollande to show he can halt industrial closures by rescuing two
mothballed blast furnaces in northeast France risks backfiring,
with industry experts doubting any buyer will come forward.

Hollande latched onto the furnaces during his election
campaign, holding them up as symbolic of industrial decline and
is now using them as a test bed for a planned law that would
force firms to sell troubled plants rather than close them.

PARIS, Sept 19 (Reuters) – French President Francois
Hollande’s Socialist-led government on Wednesday kickstarts
ratification of a European Union budget discipline pact it
grudgingly accepts as the next step out of the euro debt crisis.

Created in March by Hollande’s predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy
and 24 other EU leaders including Germany’s Angela Merkel, the
fiscal compact requires euro zone countries to slash their
public deficits or face legal action and possibly fines.

PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s royal family began legal action against a French magazine on Friday for a “grotesque” breach of privacy after it published topless photographs of Prince William’s wife Kate Middleton.

Celebrity gossip magazine Closer published a dozen shots of the Duchess of Cambridge on holiday in southern France as she slipped off her bikini top, relaxed on a sun lounger and at one point pulled down the back of her bikini bottoms while William rubbed sun cream on her lower back.

PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) – French magazine Closer unleashed a new media tornado on the royal family on Friday with a five-page splash of photos showing the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, sunbathing topless with Prince William in the south of France.

Closer, a weekly round-up of celebrity gossip, ran a dozen shots of the Duchess as she slipped off her bikini top, relaxed on a sun lounger and at one point pulled down the back of her bikini bottoms as William rubs sun cream on her.

PARIS/LONDON, Sept 14 (Reuters) – French magazine Closer
unleashed a new media tornado on Britain’s royal family on
Friday with a five-page splash of photos showing the Duchess of
Cambridge, Kate Middleton, sunbathing topless with Prince
William in the south of France.

Closer, a weekly round-up of celebrity gossip, ran a dozen
shots of the Duchess as she slipped off her bikini top, relaxed
on a sun lounger and at one point pulled down the back of her
bikini bottoms as William rubs sun cream on her.