France's Hollande outlines sweeping new taxes for recovery France's Socialist President Francois Hollande pledged 30 billion euros in new taxes and savings to balance the budget and fund a turnaround in two years, and rejected criticism of dragging his feet.
10 September 2012
'Noses' hone senses at Paris perfume school Bent over strips of blotting paper, senses primed and notebooks in hand: this is how generations of "noses" have honed their art at the world-famous Givaudan perfumery school near Paris.
08 September 2012
French, Korean, US films tipped to win Venice festivalMovies from France, South Korea and the United States are tipped by critics as the favourites to win this year's Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival due to be announced on Saturday.
08 September 2012
Louboutin wins appeal over red soles fight with YSL French shoemaker Christian Louboutin can trademark his famous red soles, a US court ruled Wednesday, reversing a ruling that would have allowed rival Yves Saint Laurent to paint its outsoles scarlet.
08 September 2012
All eyes on France after Alps massacre: British press The horrific massacre of a British-Iraqi family in the French Alps dominated the front pages of Britain's newspapers on Friday with the performance of French investigators coming under the microscope.
Moody's downgrades EU rating outlook to 'negative' Moody's on Monday lowered the European Union's long-term issuer rating outlook from stable to negative, saying the move reflected credit risks of the bloc's key budget contributors.
04 September 2012
Rihanna gets worked up over-enthusiastic French fans Pop star Rihanna let rip in a series of foul-mouthed Twitter posts, saying she had to fight her way out of a Paris train station after a crowd of French fans gathered to greet her.
France says air exclusion zone in Syria possible France indicated Thursday that it would consider supporting a partial no-fly zone over Syria, turning the screws on President Bashar al-Assad's regime as fighting rages in Damascus and second city Aleppo.
Limbless Frenchman swims between US, Russian islands Quadruple amputee Philippe Croizon swam between islands in the icy Bering Strait Friday to cross from America to Asia in the final part of a quest to link all continents.
19 August 2012
Arrests, breasts, chainsaws: Punk world backs Pussy Riot A topless Ukrainian feminist felled a cross with a chainsaw, balaclava-clad New Yorkers braved arrest to picket an Orthodox church and Bulgarian punks re-decorated a war memorial.
18 August 2012
Quadruple amputee prepares for Bering Strait swim Two silhouettes cut through the water a few hundred yards (metres) from a rainy, windswept beach bordering the flat grasslands near the small Inuit community of Wales, in the far west of Alaska.
New vigour in quest for Higgs boson Heartened by a glimpse of what may be the Higgs boson, scientists at the CERN physics lab are smashing particles with new vigour in a quest to understand why matter has mass and other riddles of the natural universe.
01 August 2012
Climate change prompts French ski area to mull downsize A modest ski area in the French Alps is ready to unbolt its chairlifts and rope off slopes as the local mayor concludes that climate change means the trails ahead will be rocky.
01 August 2012
Small breakthroughs offer big hope of AIDS 'cure' Small but significant breakthrough studies on people who have been able to overcome or control HIV were presented Thursday at a major world conference on ways to stem the three-decade-old disease.
28 July 2012
Pierce Brosnan among fans at Paris Madonna concert Irish actor Pierce Brosnan, star of Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" and a former James Bond incarnation, was among some 2,700 fans cheering US pop icon Madonna at her Paris concert Thursday.