France

Excavators near a village in northern France began work Tuesday unearthing the remains of as many as 400 long-lost Australian and British soldiers who perished in World War I. The remains, buried in a cluster of mass graves discovered last year, are to be individually reinterred in a cemetery being built near the site.

Radioactive particles spewed from a pipe at a French nuclear reactor, slightly contaminating 100 employees, a spokeswoman for the national electric company said. It was the fourth recent incident at a French nuclear site and the second in five days. Caroline Muller, a spokeswoman for Electricite de France, said 100 employees were affected at a reactor complex in Tricastin. She said the radiation was less than 1/40th the regulation limit. The reactor involved had been shut down for refueling, she said.

Despite the poor economic times, the H1N1 virus and the advent of new austerity, buyers and press did indeed show up to see the spring-summer 2010 men's collections at the runway shows that wrapped up here Sunday. But the designers? They seemed to be thousands of miles away: tramping around the Egyptian desert (John Galliano), soaring above the clouds (Paul Smith) and even getting ready for a lunar landing (Alfred Dunhill).

If this story turned up on daytime TV, audiences would never believe it: The reformist president of France, on the rebound from his October divorce, is about take a new wife -- an Italian tire heiress and former supermodel who looks a lot like the ex, and who dated Eric Clapton, whom she dumped for Mick Jagger when he was still married to Jerry Hall, and who later married a long-haired French intellectual nearly 10 years her junior after living with his father, nearly 20 years her senior.

The president of France did not say he was going to get married to his new love. But he did not rule it out. What President Nicolas Sarkozy did confirm Tuesday was that his relationship with Carla Bruni, a former supermodel turned folk singer, was "serious," and that if they were to marry the news media would not be involved. "There are strong chances you will learn of it once it's done," Sarkozy told nearly 600 journalists during the annual New Year's news conference at the Elysee Palace.

If France ever decides to call off its revolution and go back to having a king, the line to the throne could begin at the doorstep of a genial, plump Indian man with a name as outsized and incongruous as the massive fleur-de-lis over his porch. Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon would answer the doorbell, and the call of duty, if the French nation needed him. A restoration of the monarchy in France is, of course, improbable.

A federal judge on Wednesday approved U.S. plans to send former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to France to face money-laundering charges, finding the French government had given sufficient assurances it would continue to treat Noriega as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Paul Huck followed three other court decisions approving extradition.

He married her; he married her not. He married her; he married her not. He married her? France's rumor de jour is that First Bachelor Nicolas Sarkozy has done just what he said he'd do if he decided to marry his fetching former-supermodel girlfriend, Carla Bruni: He'd keep it a secret. "There are strong chances you will learn of it once it's done," Sarkozy told 600 reporters at a news conference a week ago after acknowledging that he'd gotten "serious" with his girlfriend of two months.

In what would be the largest fraud of its kind by a rogue trader, a junior employee at French banking giant Societe Generale cost the company $7.2 billion by making disastrous bets on European stock prices through a series of unauthorized and wildly outsized transactions, the bank said Thursday. The alleged fraud by 31-year-old Jerome Kerviel staggered Societe Generale, France's second-largest bank.

Mariam, a 28-year-old retail chain employee, went to great lengths to get fired. Knowing she would be ineligible for unemployment payments if she simply quit, Mariam asked her company to fire her, but she was turned down. Then she simply stopped showing up for work. Her wish was granted at last -- she was fired, went on the dole and found a new job six months later. Soon, such convoluted yet surprisingly common schemes may be a thing of the past.