After months of anticipation, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a dip in the Seine River, fulfilling a promise to show the river was clean enough to host open swimming competitions during the 2024 Olympics.

French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra has taken a symbolic dip in the Seine in a bid to ease concerns about water quality before the start of the Paris Olympics.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen appeared to be nearer to power than ever last week after her National Rally party triumphed in the opening round of legislative elections.

French voters face a decisive choice in the runoff Sunday of snap parliamentary elections that could produce the country’s first far-right government since the World War II Nazi occupation.

French voters are called to the polls this weekend for an exceptional moment in their political history.

President Emmanuel Macron has started the first state visit to Germany by a French head of state in 24 years.

The era of France’s arm-twisting interventionism in Africa may finally be over.

The decorated French general in charge of the ambitious, big-budget restoration of fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has died.

Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has taken the spotlight in Russia by posing a direct challenge to Russia’s generals over the war in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron has laid out his vision of a bold, assertive European future, but not before simmering anger at his domestic pension reforms boiled over once more as he began his speech in the Netherlands.

Ukraine’s wartime leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy has now been bestowed with France’s highest medal of honor.

Kremlin-connected businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin kept a low profile over the years, but he has been increasingly in the spotlight recently.

French President Emmanuel Macron has decried his Nazi-collaborator predecessors and vigorously vowed to stamp out Holocaust denial.

Emmanuel Macron saw off the far right’s Marine Le Pen in April’s presidential election, but now the French president is facing a threat from the other end of the political spectrum in the fight for parliamentary power.

After winning reelection, French President Emmanuel Macron intends to go back to work straight away.

One of the headlines from the presidential election in France is that the far-right has come out of the cold and gone mainstream.

Disgruntled left-wing voters whose candidates were knocked out in the first round of France's election are the wild cards in the winner-takes-all runoff on Sunday.

France is displaying 26 looted colonial-era artifacts for one last time before returning them home to Benin.

Angela Merkel is still Germany's Chancellor and might be still when the European Union leaders meet again, yet they have given her a farewell party at Friday’s EU summit.

Countries’ foods are also windows on their souls.

The verdict is expected in a landmark corruption and influence-peddling trial that has put French former President Nicolas Sarkozy at risk of a prison sentence if he is convicted. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)PARIS – A Paris court found French former President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling on Monday and sentenced him to a year in prison. The ruling marks the first time in France’s modern history that a former president has been convicted of corruption — and given a prison term. The court found that Sarkozy and his co-defendants sealed a “pact of corruption,” based on “consistent and serious evidence”. AdIn one phone call with Herzog, Sarkozy said of Azibert: “I’ll make him move up.

FILE - In this Aug.9 1969, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, left, as Finance Minister and Jacques Chirac as Secretary of State to Finance leave Elysee Palace, Aug. 9, 1969. (AP Photo, File)PARIS – Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the president of France from 1974 to 1981 who became a champion of European integration, died on Wednesday. Giscard d’Estaing was hospitalized last month with heart problems, but remained vigorous deep into old age. Young Giscard d’Estaing studied at the prestigious Polytechnical Institute and then the elite National School of Administration, before mastering economics at Oxford. Giscard d'Estaing “made France be proud," he said.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives at the courtroom, Monday, Nov. 23, 2020 in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)PARIS – The trial of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy for corruption and influence peddling was suspended Monday less than two hours after it started, to allow a medical report on one of the defendants. This is the first trial for the 65-year-old politician, who has faced several other judicial investigations since leaving office in 2012. He stands trial in a Paris court along with his lawyer Thierry Herzog, 65, and the magistrate, Gilbert Azibert, 73. They face a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a maximum fine of 1 million euros ($1.2 million.)

That's the question a French court weighed Wednesday in an emotionally charged trial centered around a Congolese activist campaigning to take back art he says was plundered by colonizers. However, the lawyer for the French state did not ask for prison time, demanding only modest fines. He choked up when talking about the skulls of Algerian 19th century resistance fighters long held as trophies in a French museum and returned to his native Algeria this year. A 2018 study commissioned by Macron recommended that French museums give back works that were taken without consent, if African countries request them. So far, France is preparing to give back 26 works of African art — out of some 90,000 works believed held in French museums, most in the Quai Branly.

PARIS A Paris court has found French former prime minister Francois Fillon guilty of having used public funds to pay his wife and children for work they never performed. The work had brought the family more than 1 million euros ($1.08 million) since 1998. Fillon, who was Frances prime minister from 2007 to 2012, then left French politics. A Paris court is set to give or may postpone a verdict in the fraud trial of former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon on Monday. Fillon, once the youngest lawmaker at the National Assembly at the age of 27, served as prime minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 to 2012.

Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesPARIS - Former French President Jacques Chirac, known for a carefully crafted "everyman" image but whose later years were dogged by allegations of corruption, has died at the age of 86. Chirac volunteered for the French Army in 1956 during the Algerian war. But he was driven by an interest in politics, and at age 35 he became one of the youngest government ministers in France under President Charles DeGaulle. Chirac clearly understood the political value in the job: Being mayor of the capital was a perfect springboard to national power. Chirac was tried and convicted of putting his political party workers on the city's payroll, and was given a two-year suspended sentence.