France

French police questioned former interior minister Brice Hortefeux (photo) Friday, following a phone call he made to warn a friend who is a suspect in a campaign financing scandal.

A French appeals court has cleared former interior minister Brice Hortefeux of racism charges, overturning a previous conviction for remarks made in 2009 about a youth of Arab descent.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, who has made waves for a crackdown on Gypsies and is appealing a conviction for a racist slur, is under fire from the prime minister for criticising the “disproportionate” sentencing of seven police officers.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux announced early on Thursday that French police had arrested two men suspected of having links to terrorist groups and of possibly preparing a terrorist attack in France.

Radical elements and youths threw bottles and smashed windows in Lyon and Nanterre Wednesday as they joined the pension reform strikes much to the Unions dismay. Elsewhere, police were sent in to clear access to barricaded fuel depots.

French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said in an interview on Sunday that Saudi security services warned several days ago about an al Qaeda threat to "the European continent and in particular France".

French Socialist leader Martine Aubry, a vocal critic of the government’s policy of closing traveller camps and "repatriating" their non-French inhabitants, faces accusations of hypocrisy after ordering camps closed in Lille, where she is mayor.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon on Monday attends the inauguration of a large Algerian mosque near Paris, in a move seen as a public effort at a rapprochement with a religion whose relationship with the French state is at breaking point.

A French anti-racist organisation has accused Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux of “public defamation of a racist nature,” for remarks he made at last year’s summer conference of the ruling UMP party. His trial starts Friday.

In an attempt to demonstrate the importance of immigrants to the French economy, rights groups are advocating a “no work, no consumption day” on March 1. The message is being spread on the Web, but will it work?