UK driver in French crash
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• French police released a British lorry driver at the weekend after questioning him over his role in a motorway accident that killed 17 and left nearly 50 injured. Melvin Ashworth's vehicle triggered the mayhem after he pulled over on the hardshoulder of the Paris-Bordeaux motorway, around 60km north of Bordeaux. He had been attending to a fire that spread from a lyre to his trailer. Ashworth has been freed without charge.
A Polish truck stopped to help the Weston-super-Mare driver but tragedy struck when smoke from the fire obliterated the scene and a French tanker smashed into the pair. Both dirvers have been charged with involuntary homicide.
The French company, Bourgey Montreuil, a subsidiary of the French railways SNCF, says its tanker was empty and the main fire was caused by cars ploughing into the vehicles.
Four British people were among the 47 injured.