Balck Italian footballer Mario Balotelli, now playing with French team Nice, bitterly denounced racist chanting against him by fans of Corsican team Bastia, who he says directed monkey imitations at him during the Ligue 1 match between the two sides.
Feminist groups have called for a boycott of the annual César awards ceremony in February over what one said was the 'shameful' decision to honour filmmaker Roman Polanski, 83, who is wanted in the US on charges of raping a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles in 1977.
TUV Rheinland, which in 2010 certified faulty breast implants made by French firm Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), has been ordered by a French court to pay 3,000 euros to each of the 20,000 women who received the potentially harmfull products.
Satff of the British low-cost carrier cited security problems when they prevented wheelchair-bound Joseph Etcheveste, 55, from boarding a flight in Biarritz in south-west France in 2010.
Stand-up comic Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, who has been previously prosecuted in France for anti-Semitic speech during his shows, was handed a two-month jail sentence and a fine by a Belgian appeals court for anti-Semitic comments during a performance in the country.
A new law due to be announced early February will replace 2003 legislation by which people under the age of 18 are automatically barred from seeing films 'with non-simulated sex scenes and extreme violence' in French cinemas.
The seven rivals to become the socialist candidate for this spring's presidential candidate concuded their three debates aired on national television on Thursday, with voting to begin this Sunday in a two round contest that many observers report will in reality define the candidate most likely to pick up the pieces of a landslide vote against the Left in this spring's presidential elections.
The 39-year-old French skipper beat the previous round-the-world solo race without assistance record by by 3 days, 22 hours and 41 minutes, followed by second-placed British sailor Alex Thomson, trailing by about 12 hours after more than two months of high-seas adventure.
Front National party leader Marine Le Pen, tipped by pollsters to reach the second round of France's presidential elections this spring, is making a French exit from the European Union one of her major campaign pledges, along with resinstating the franc as national currency within a euro-shadowing group of currencies with other nations disenchanted with eurozone policies.
Manuel Valls, who resigned in December to run in Socialist Party primaries to choose its presidential election candidate, was slapped to the face as he shook hands with a crowd of supporters in Lamballe, north-west France.
