France

In 2013, the General Assembly voted for a resolution sponsored by Solomon Islands to re-inscribe the territory on the UN decolonisation list but Paris has all but ignored the decision.

France has said it won't buy into the UN decolonisation process and also ruled out holding an immediate independence referendum as requested by the territorial assembly.

Speaking at the UN in New York, Sogavare has urged France to change.

That was announced by President Francois Hollande at the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, in a bid to leverage more action.

The host nation of this December’s critical Paris climate summit will also increase the amount available as grants, and not as loans, he said.

“We need developed countries to take on financial commitments… we have to make sure that emerging economies, developing countries can be sure they will be helped.”

Hollande noted that the developed world had yet to deliver on its promise to raise US$100 billion of climate finance in 2020.

The overseas ministry says Paris is invoking its rights under the organic law after the Congress leadership rejected a bid by the territorial government to debate the issue.

A court in Noumea has upheld a Congress complaint that the government's call for a meeting was formally flawed.

However, the French government says this is not the time for a useless extension of a legal debate.

It says it is now time for a quick resumption of a substantial dialogue with all the political forces in New Caledonia.

In a bill going to France's lower house of Parliament next week, the government detailed for the first time the agreement reached with Russia last month.

The "only condition" laid down by Russia is to receive the money "as soon as possible," the legislation said. The amount includes all advances paid by Russia, but no penalties or compensation payments.

France will be able to sell the warships to another country.

One of the main projects for the force's Tropic Twilight exercise is the relocation and rebuilding of the fuel depot on Penrhyn.

New Zealand's Foreign Minister Murray McCully says improving fuel storage will enable better use of the patrol boat Te Kukupa to carry out fisheries surveillance around the islands.

The force's engineers will also upgrade buildings on Manihiki.

The exercise will involve China, the United States, the UK and France and is aimed at testing the force's abilities to provide disaster relief and humanitarian assistance.

This is a new joint police command to target human traffickers and 10 million euros ($11.2 million) in new British government money to help asylum seekers and send others back home.

The measures are aimed at overcoming diplomatic and economic tensions around the French port of Calais, a flashpoint in a European summer marked by unusually large waves of migrants.

Isabelle Prime, 31, had been working in Yemen for the World Bank for about a year when she was kidnapped.

Smiling and wearing a blue cap and sunglasses, Prime stepped out of a French government jet around 1710 GMT and was met by French President Francois Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, as well as several friends and family members.

Malaysia's prime minister announced that a plane wing section that washed up on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean was "conclusively confirmed" to be from Flight 370, saying he hoped the news would end "unspeakable" uncertainty for relatives of the 239 people aboard. 

The announcement was in line with the Malaysian conclusion that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, killing all aboard.

French authorities have imposed extraordinary secrecy over the 2-meter (6-foot) long piece of wing, putting it under police protection in the hours before it left the island of Reunion en route to the French military site.

Reporters were being kept outside the facility, where French aviation experts will try to establish whether wreckage was part of the Boeing 777 which disappeared March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.

Several uniformed officers loaded a large wooden crate into a van that drove with a police escort from the main wing of the Roland Garros airport to a separate hangar.

French authorities have imposed extraordinary secrecy over the 2 meter (6-foot) long piece of wing.

If from the Malaysia Airlines jet missing for 16 months, the wreckage could have drifted thousands of kilometers (miles) across the Indian Ocean to this French island off the east coast of Africa.