Most recent development has the French facing ordeal (6)
I believe the answer is:
latest
'most recent' is the definition.
('late' can be similar in meaning to 'recent')
'the french facing ordeal' is the wordplay.
'the french' becomes 'la'.
'facing ordeal' becomes 'test' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'la'+'test'='LATEST'
'development has' is the link.
This may not be right. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for latest that I've seen before include "coming after all the others" , "style of today" , "Most recent, hot off the press" , "Up-to-the-minute" , "News update" .)