Costume rental shops in Paris start their season before Christmas. For New Year’s Eve, who wants to dress like Austrian Princess Sisi or wear a Scottish kilt?

Even the Chinese agree with French astronaut Jean-François Clervoy: the great wall of China is NOT visible to the human eye from space, not even from a low orbit. Chinese astronaut Yan Liwei, who orbited the earth fourteen times in a Chinese spaceship, couldn’t see it either.

While no one denies that the Queen Mary 2 rightfully flies the Union Jack, she was built in France and this is where she sails when feeling homesick. As she comes to drop anchor on French shores, proud spectators come out to welcome her ashore.

Like the SATs for Americans, or A level in the UK, the baccalauréat exam, or le bac, creates more than its fair share of stress in students, especially on the day when they find out the results, the culmination of an entire school career. Students meet outside the school where exam results are posted, and share the emotion of knowing whether they and their friends succeeded or not.

Julio Iglesias tours France for the first time in 27 years and is very warmly received, especially by the ladies. Julio not only sings a few songs in French, but can speak it as well, and proves as much during an on-camera interview.

French movie star Agnès Jaoui talks about playing a French movie star in the film Le rôle de sa vie. The film, which explores relationships between movie stars and average folk, is the directorial debut for François Favrat, who may become a celebrity in his own right if the film is a success.

Virtual service providers hope to provide a cheaper alternative to the French mobile phone market. Debitel, a German company, hopes to reach would-be cell phone users who have not yet purchased a phone.

“What’s in a name?” asks Shakespeare’s Juliet. Apparently quite a lot for the French, who consistently pass over job candidates whose names aren’t “ethnically French” – particularly those of African origin.

French scientists study 740,000-year-old Antarctic ice samples and find clues that point to a relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming. It is feared that the record high carbon and methane levels of today will cause severe climatic change in coming years.

Joëlle Aubron, who died in 2006, was freed in 2004 after more than sixteen years in prison. She was a member of Action Directe, a movement which was responsible for a variety of violent events in the 1980s, most notably the assassination of the head of Renault in 1987.

The Malgré-nous (Despite Ourselves) are the roughly 130,000 young Alsatians from Lorraine, many of them recruited by force, who served under the Nazis during World War II.

The Oradour-sur-Glane massacre took place over a half a century ago, but France still remembers.

Sixty years after the disappearance of literary great Saint-Exupéry, a commemoration is held on the Mediterranean Sea at the spot where his airplane fell.

The Three Musketeers is one of the greatest tales of brotherhoood in the Western canon, but this new movie from José Daillant shifts the focus to a female character, Milady, the story’s femme fatale. Look for the lovely and inimitable Arielle Dombasle in the starring role.

Two hundred sheep jumped to their death in the French Alps. Even though no predator was seen, wolves in the Alps have been causing a lot of controversy lately. Should we just allow Mother Nature to maintain the circle of life? Or should wolves be hunted and killed to protect the sheep and their shepherds?