A French court on Tuesday convicted the Church of Scientology and six of its members of organized fraud, but stopped short of banning the church.

Several armed men Thursday abducted a French national working for the Red Cross in Sudan's volatile Darfur region, the agency said. China has also become the biggest vehicle market in the world this year and car sales expanded an extraordinary 78 per cent last month from a year ago. Over the National Day holiday in early October, retailers say large flat-screen TVs flew off the shelves. Throughout the biggest external crisis to hit the Chinese economy in at least a ...

Chelsea are seeking to have the English club's worldwide transfer ban put on hold until an appeal is heard by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The London outfit have already lodged an appeal against FIFA's ruling, which prevents the club from registering any new players during the next two transfer windows. They had been found guilty of illegally inducing teenager Gael Kakuta to breach his contract with French club Lens two years ago. The CAS has now confirmed ...

Lyon snatched a dramatic last-gasp 2-1 victory at Anfield as Liverpool lost four games in succession for the first time since 1987 to leave the English giants' Champions League qualification hopes hanging by a thread. Liverpool came into the match struggling in the English Premier League, having already lost four of their nine matches this season. And their form in Europe has been no better, with Rafael Benitez's side slumping to a 2-0 defeat at Fiorentina in their last match. ...

In her two previous books, French author Mireille Guiliano instructs women on how to live their lives to the fullest by, ironically enough, not eating to the fullest. She insists that the French have the right answers, pointing to the French joie de vivre as one of the reasons why the country's women stay so infuriatingly thin. In her latest book, Women, Work & the Art of Savoir Faire: Business Sense & Sensibility, released in the U.S. last ...

The wisdom of business professors, once only available to MBAs and business students, can now be accessed by anybody with an Internet connection. Hundreds of universities, and a growing number of business schools, are making recordings of lectures, seminars and conferences available to the general public via Web sites such as iTunes and YouTube. Leading business schools including University of Cambridge Judge Business School, Fuqua School of Business, and Yale School of Management make course content available for ...

French security officials have long regarded the Algerian jihadist movement al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb as the most immediate terrorism threat to Europe. Those fears appeared to have been substantiated last week with the arrest of a French physicist who is suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in Europe on AQIM's behalf. However, in an indication of the many options now open to aspiring radicals who want to put their extremism into action, investigators say the scientist linked up with ...

Few things in France can provoke heated debate faster than moves to tinker with the country's vaunted public-education system, which embodies republican values that date back to the French Revolution. It's especially true when the changes involve an idea as capitalistic and nonegalitarian as paying certain students — the ones most apt to fail and drop out — to attend classes and get good grades. This is exactly what's happening in a pilot program that started this month at three vocational high schools in disadvantaged ...

Marian Cilic will face second seed Novak Djokovic in the final of the China Open on Sunday after handing world No. 2 Rafael Nadal his first defeat in Beijing. Top seed Nadal, who won the tournament in 2005 and also claimed the gold medal at the 2008 Olympics, lost 6-1 6-3 to the eighth-seeded Croatian wildcard entry to end his 14-match winning run in the Chinese capital. Djokovic defeated French Open finalist Robin Soderling 6-3 6-3 to set up a ...

Shortly after McDonald's' celebrated its 30-year presence in France, the fast-food chain is conquering one of the country's most valued cultural institutions --the Louvre. The restaurant will be serving its fast burgers in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall which lies under the main entrance of the museum and which still contains an ancient wall that was discovered during construction works. McDonald's plans seem to have caused more media attention abroad than in France, but for some ...