2006
In order to be better heard on the international stage, France has got herself a new television station : France24, which will be broadcast in French and English to begin with, and soon in Arabic and Spanish.
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With a few months to go to the election of the President of the Republic, the environment and global warming have entered the campaign agenda.
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If you're looking for a region of France to visit, Champagne comes highly recommended. With its châteaux, its self-catering homes, its relaxation centers and its fine restaurants, there's everything you need to have a great time. The tourist office has even invented a name to evoke the experience that awaits you: Marnothérapie.
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-I lost someone close to me to lung cancer. I don't think anyone should smoke, precisely to avoid this curse. -If you're a smoker I think you can at least make the effort to try to put yourself at a distance a little, to smoke outside and then come back inside afterwards. As Sartre put it, One person's freedom stops where another one's starts.
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Every year, brave young people leave their families to become Companions in Duty and learn a crafts person's trade. Many also choose to do a tour of France, to learn their trade with different employers in different regions. Florence Maître reports.
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- It's going to be a lot harder than Italy. But I've got confidence in you. I've got confidence in you because you are soldiers liberating your country. The French people have put their destiny in our hands. They're looking at us with eyes full of hope. This evening we've got to get up there. And even if we're dead, we'll get there! Even dead!
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The TGV number 6622 from Lyon Perrache and heading for Paris-Gare de Lyon - departure time 15.00hrs - is entering the station on platform B. Stand clear of the platform edge please.
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Is it true there's a universal education system in France? Studying costs more and more...
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During 6 days, from the 20th to the 25th of September, La Rochelle hosted the 34th edition of the Grand Pavois, a yacht show launched by a group of professionals in 1973. This year the exhibition ranged over 57 000m2, with twelve thematic zones. To a certain extent it's the symbol of French success in the nautical industry. And it's a place where passions meet. Florence Maître reports.
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France has taken a lead in helping the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Lebanon. Why France? Francesco El Khoury, a member of Lebanon's Christian Maronite community, tells us the story behind French influence in the region.
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Au sein d'une centrale nucléaire française
A generation of nuclear power stations is reaching the end of its working life and governments are having to decide whether to reinvest in the technology. France is particularly concerned, being one of the countries in the world that's most dependent on it: around 75 per cent of her electricity needs are provided by nuclear power.
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Le festival d'orgues de Barbarie
Every year at the beginning of September in the little village of Oingt in the heart of the Beaujolais region, lovers of barrel organs from the world over gather to share their passion...
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There are some 20 000 families with young children living in France without residential visas. The government has decided to expel those who don't fulfil strict acceptance criteria. Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy argues that laws need to be respected, and that future would-be immigrants need to be dissuaded from arriving in the country with false expectations. But for the families facing expulsion a desperate drama is being played out. Katia Bitsch reports.
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Je suis malheureux sans ma montre
We spend the year dreaming about going on holiday but do we really manage to relax when we get them? Loic Dupas went to Lacanau Océan village on the Atlantic coast to find out.
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The older ones are carved in stone; since 1938 they're white with a blue background; street names are part of the French landscape. Florence Maître investigates their origins.
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Les Français et les congés payés
It was under the Popular Front - the centre left coalition in power from 1936 to 1938 - that paid holidays were introduced in France. This decision was celebrated as the beginning of a new era for society. Today, summer holidays are a well established part of our culture. Holiday making habits from yesteryear and today with Elodie Barreau.
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The film director Roman Polanski was born in France in 1933, and though he was raised in Poland he has maintained strong ties with the country of his birth throughout his career. Indeed, after he won international acclaim for his début feature film Knife in the water, it was to Paris that he returned to pursue his career.
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She's been making the headlines in all the newspapers, she comes top in lots of opinion polls. France has never seen a candidate better placed to become the first female President for the country and the result is a media frenzy around Sélogène Royal that goes beyond national borders.
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France has a particularly close relationship with Armenia - the country received some three quarters of a million Armenian emigrants in the early decades of the twentieth century. The first wave came as a result of the genocide of the Armenians (1915-1923) in Anatolia; a second wave came as economic migrants - France encouraged immigration at the time to boost the country's working population.
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Il faut que le tableau soit en face de moi comme un être vivant
Jean Revol is a major artist. His paintings by knife and his drawings are testimony to great spritual and intellectual strength. His technical mastery is the fruit of 60 years dedicated to art. But he's also a man who hates compromise and who has chosen to stay away from the society trappings of the modern art world in order to remain true to himself. An interview with Jean Revol.
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On the 10th of May, France will commemorate the abolition of slavery with a national day of remembrance. France's link with the slave trade has long been a taboo subject, but in port cities such as La Rochelle many fortunes were founded on it. Florence Maître reports.
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Marseille, une ville d'histoire
More than 2500 years old, Marseille is the oldest town in France. An excursion with Katia Bitsch.
Regional theatres play a central part in French cultural life - in even small towns you'll find at least one venue offering a varied programme of shows throughout the year. Working in theatre may seem like a dream come true for many people. But finanically these establishments cannot survive without state funding and a lot of grind goes into creating the moments of artistic happiness. To investigate life in the contempoary theatre, Elodie Barreau met theatre directors Pierre Grafféo from the Sémaphore in Port-De-Bouc and Bruno Rapin from the Théâtre Ducourneau in Agen. But she begins her report talking to Anne Joubinaux from the theatre company "à cours & en corps".
Le combat du Contrat Première Embauche
In the end, it was the street that won it over the government. Having resisted for several weeks against demonstrations that became larger and larger, the Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin with drew the Contract for a First Job - a new measure which would have introduced special conditions to employ young people under 26. But who was right and who was wrong? A look back on one of the most important social conflicts seen in France for several years : Katia Bitsch and Richard Good.
Dans le temple des francs-maçons
A mirror of the different reactions it provokes, a patchwork of opinions, a kaleidoscope of individuals... freemasonry has almost five million members worldwide, around 140,000 of whom in France. Whether it secretly attracts or openly repulses, Freemasonry remains steeped in an aura that attracts the severest rumours and the wildest fantasies. Much more than a simple meeting point for thinkers, much less than a dreadful entity that rules the world, freemasonry revolves around a ritual and a symbolism that have been kept going for nearly 300 years. Three hundred years based on one ideal: to make mankind better. And to head towards that goal, freemasonry wants to be a broad-based movement.
Wherever you are in France, if you ear is sufficiently alert you can notice different intonations and turns of phrase : the accents of France. What are their origins? Is it possible to define what is normal. Céline Authemayou and Elodie Barreau investigated.
Pour lutter contre la grippe aviaire
Anticipation is the best way of avoiding panic. Everyone has to be in their place. Everyone has to know their mission and my own responsibility is to orchestrate the whole. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin puts his troops in combat order to face up to bird flu. The discovery in the Ain department of a wild duck that had died from the virus H5N1 was the first alarm signal. Almost immediately afterwards, a bred turkey died as well from the feared virus.
The atmosphere wasn't exactly upbeat for the party that's just taken place in Brussels to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Belgian constitution. Reportage Laetitia Cordonnier
He was great writer from the romantic movement, a celebrated author of travelogues. And François-René Chateaubriand (1768-1848) also left behind a botanical heritage. A guided tour in the Valley of the Wolves with Florence Maître.
You should know that, in the case we're concerned about, major judicial errors arise when an investigating magistrate becomes a champion of his own case, whereas an investigating magistrate should never become a champion. When there's not systematic doubt, he becomes dangerous. I think it was Nietzsche who said that certainty is a bigger enemy of the truth than lies. And it's true.
People often speak of old age with sadness if not anguish. And yet it's possible to take advantage of life at any age. The key to success? Love as usual. As Henri says, "It helps..." Loïc Dupas reports.
Le festival de Bande Dessinée à Angoulême
Angoulême is a small medieval city perched on a rocky spur inside a loop of the Charente river. Angoulême is normally a calm town with a population of around 46 000 but during this icy end of January, 200 000 will pass through in four days for the ritual gathering of comic fans. It's a story that's been going for 33 years...
Mémoires de François Mitterrand
"To the think of the dead is to guarantee the survival of those we have loved, in anticipation of the time when others will do the same for us." Those were the words that François Mitterrand wrote in his book "Memoir in Two Voices". Words that he wrote a few months before his death. The only socialist President of the 5th Republic died ten years ago on the 8th of January 1996. He ruled over France for 14 years.
Une visite aux égouts de Paris
The ground beneath Paris is like Gruyère cheese. It contains a network of sewers whose paths follow the exact layout of the city above. It was around 1850, thanks to Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann, that the sanitisation of the water was organised. Public visits begin opposite 93 quai d'Orsay in the 7th district. Katia Bitsch chose a guide.
Forbidden on French territory, cock-fighting is nevertheless tolerated in Martinique as an ancestral tradition. Axel May reports.
