US ALLEGEDLY SPYING ON FRANCE.

France has summoned the U.S. ambassador  to protest allegations in Le Monde newspaper about large-scale spying on French citizens by the U.S. National Security Agency. The allegations that the agency was collecting tens of thousands of French telephone records risked turning into a diplomatic row just as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Paris for the start of a European tour over Syria. "I have immediately summoned the U.S. ambassador and he will be received this morning at the Quai d'Orsay.French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on the sidelines of an EU meeting in Luxembourg. Earlier, France's interior minister, Manuel Valls, said Le Monde's revelations that 70.3 million pieces of French telephone data were recorded by the NSA between Dec 10, 2012 and Jan 8, 2013 were "shocking." "If an allied country spies on France or spies on other  European countries, that's totally unacceptable". U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin however declined immediate comment on reports that he had been called in by the French foreign ministry but stressed that U.S.-French ties were close.