Despite claims of exaggeration, government reports insist a new generation of extremists will soon launch a wave of sabotage and bombings

It has long been the stuff of dreams, of bestselling books and sometimes even of profit. The British love of France has led tens of thousands to cross the Channel in search of a better quality of life, a ruin to renovate, or simply to snap up a cheap second home.

France will deploy hundreds of extra police at busy public places in its main cities after dynamite was planted in a Paris department store, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on Wednesday.

The gradual rolling out of France's 26 billion euro ($33.76 billion) stimulus package will raise the country's budget deficit to around 70 billion euros in 2009, Budget Minister Eric Woerth said on Wednesday.

Amid deepening economic gloom, the tale of the voodoo doll of Nicolas Sarkozy has provided some needed light relief for the French.

Twice, the French president asked the courts to ban the sale of a figurine made in his image. On Friday, an appeals court dealt him the latest rebuff: not only can the doll remain on sale, but the judges ordered that it be sold with a bright-red banner on the packaging entitled "Judicial Injunction" and a warning that sticking needles into the doll affronts Sarkozy's dignity.

Nicolas Sarkozy has not been at all happy that there is a voodoo doll made in his image. He’s been trying to get the doll banned, but has lost yet another court case to have it banned. Even worse, in the latest attempt to have the doll banned, the court ordered that the Nicolas Sarkozy voodoo doll be packaged with a bright red banner with black block lettering declaring that sticking pins in the doll is insulting to the French President.

Bloomberg reported that French industrial production fell in September 2008 for a second month, led by declining automobile output, as French economy slid into recession.

Plans for a partial privatisation of France's state-owned post office operator La Poste will not go ahead for the moment given the current market turmoil, a senior adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Sunday.

Air France-KLM, Europe's biggest airline, issued a profit warning yesterday against a background of sharply deteriorating international air traffic and forecast losses for the global industry.

France's banks won some respite from the ravages of the financial crisis through a 10.5 billion-euro ($13.91 billion) state cash injection, although analysts said the banks may yet need more help.

Nicolas Sarkozy risked blowing apart the European consensus over how to deal with the financial crisis by proposing today that each country launch sovereign wealth funds to take stakes in key industries to stop them falling into foreign hands.

Frankly, I don't know how it is that a MAJOR French newspaper reports such news and it is not headlines all over the world... We have been saying in this blog that Sarkozy has Zionist 'preferences'... We were saying that Sarkozy was a Zionist agent...

Societe Generale, the French unit of Barclays and two other banks are to face trial in Paris on charges that they abetted a money laundering operation between France and Israel, judicial officials said yesterday.

The drug-taking habits, sexual appetites and even the face lifts of some of France's most senior politicians have been revealed in eye-watering detail after the secret notes of an intelligence chief were leaked.

The son of a former French president, an Israeli-Russian billionaire and a tycoon with ties to Arizona's jet set were among the headliners yesterday as 42 defendants went on trial in Paris, accused in a worldwide web of trafficked arms to Angola, money laundering and kickbacks.

France heaped pressure on Gordon Brown last night by floating an ambitious plan for a €300 billion (£237 billion) bailout fund to rescue crippled banks across Europe.

"France wasn't in the eye of the storm and the center from which the toxic waste came," said Daniel Cohen, a professor of economics at the École Normale Supérieure. "But we're going to get a fair amount in the face. And Europe may at the end of the day be hit worse than the United States."

A senior diplomatic source close to the Turkish-mediated talks between Israel and Syria said the United States has been persuaded that it should take part in the talks, but that France has "pushed itself" into Syria; and French President Nicolas Sarkozy's participation in talks in Damascus have led the U.S. to cancel its decision for now.

The findings of Le Parisien poll came amid growing debate over France's role in the Nato force in Afghanistan, with Mr Sarkozy being accused of entrenching his country in an unwinnable conflict.

Rwanda has accused France of playing an active role in the genocide of 1994, in which about 800,000 people were killed.

An independent Rwandan commission said France was aware of preparations for the genocide and helped train the ethnic Hutu militia perpetrators.