The operator of the rail tunnel linking Britain and France says services were disrupted early Saturday after around 150 migrants tried to storm a French terminal in an attempt to board a Britain-bound freight.

Eurotunnel says freight services were disrupted for a few hours after migrants tried to enter restricted areas port of Calais at about 2 a.m. local time. Some passenger services were also affected.

The French government, reacting to a letter from Julian Assange, said Friday it would not give the WikiLeaks founder asylum, only for his lawyers to claim he had never sought it in the first place.

"France cannot act on his request," President Francois Hollande's office said in a statement, responding to a letter from Assange that was widely interpreted as asking for asylum.

A French court on Thursday canceled the suspension of Jean-Marie Le Pen from the far-right National Front after he was booted out of the party he founded in a bitter spat with his daughter.

The court ordered the party to "restore" Le Pen's membership and position as honorary president two months after he was ousted by his daughter Marine, who now leads the party.

A French court jailed a housewife for nine years Thursday for killing eight of her newborns after a dramatic trial in which she lied about having an incestuous relationship with her father.

Dominique Cottrez, a 51-year-old former health worker, was found guilty of suffocating eight of her babies between 1989 and 2000, shortly after secretly giving birth to them. 

Two French special forces soldiers accused of sexually abusing children in Burkina Faso returned home Thursday and have been taken into custody, said a legal source.

The men, accused of sexually assaulting two girls aged three and five at a hotel swimming pool, were repatriated after being questioned by French and Burkinabe military police in the capital Ouagadougou.

Two French soldiers have been suspended over child sex allegations in the west African country of Burkina Faso, France's defense ministry said Tuesday.

After he was informed about the allegations, Defense Minister Jean-Yves le Drian had "immediately alerted the competent judicial authorities," it said, adding that a "probe has been launched by the Chief of Army Staff."

A French prosecutor confirmed Tuesday that the man who beheaded his boss and tried to blow up a gas factory had a "terrorist motive" and links to the Islamic State group in Syria.

Yassin Salhi, 35, confessed to the crime but has maintained it was purely for personal reasons and had nothing to do with his religious beliefs, even though it bore all the hallmarks of a jihadist act.

The U.S. wiretapped two of France's economy ministers and spied on the country's largest companies, French media reported citing WikiLeaks documents, just days after it emerged the U.S. had spied on three of the country's leaders.

Pierre Moscovici, former minister of the economy under French President Francois Hollande and now a European commissioner, and Francois Baroin, minister for budget and then for the economy under Nicholas Sarkozy, were both reportedly targeted by the U.S. National Security Agency.

France's top administrative court said Monday that border controls on migrants at the Italian frontier were legal and did not violate the Schengen agreement that created Europe's passport-free zone.

The court dismissed a complaint by three organizations in support of scores of migrants stranded at the border between France and Italy since mid-June.

France wants a new international group made up of the United States, European powers and Arab countries to be set up to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Monday.

"It could be a sort of Quartet-plus," Fabius told reporters, referring to the foursome led by former British prime minister Tony Blair that included the United States, Russia, the European Union.