The English version of an illustrated book about Taiwanese culture by prominent French author and illustrator Nicole Lambert was unveiled May 10. “Taiwan, Island of Treasures” is a pictorial work based on Lambert’s observations during a one-month visit in Taiwan at the invitation of the Egret Culture and Education Foundation...

Opinion: The killing of Osama bin Laden marks a unique melding of American hard and soft power, and a boost (with legs) for President Obama

Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi issued a joint statement calling on the European Commission to “examine the possibility of temporarily establishing internal border controls in the case of exceptional difficulties" in response to an influx of migrants from North Africa. This would be a fairly major adjustment to one of the EU's signature achievements, the Schengen Agreement, which grants free passage accross borders within the union.

[A statement] said the move followed a decision by French authorities not to send for exhibition in Tehran several items from the Louvres' collections, although Tehran has twice loaned items to Paris for exhibits as agreed under a 2004 accord.

In a sense, the surprise question in such a situation, and perhaps into the future, is whether France has stolen a march over the United States, perhaps in terms of public diplomacy, in trying to pull Japan out of its civil nuclear emergency.

France and South Africa are talking the “same language” on issues such as strengthening the Group of 20 (the world’s most important economies) and the reform of the UN Security Council, Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told The Africa Report.

With its aircraft in the skies of Libya and Ivory Coast, France has suddenly escaped diplomatic obscurity to find itself taking a leading role in two military ventures that have arguably tipped the scales on behalf of civilians. This comes after France was embarrassingly late in embracing pro-democracy protests that successfully ousted its old allies in Egypt and Tunisia.

No sooner did Libya's ragtag army of anti-Gadhafi insurgents retreat along the Mediterranean coast toward Benghazi than France's SSP 1 chartered a Falcon executive jet to meet with dissident leaders.