Aboard the Hermione, a former French warship bearing a message of peace

Every year in France, thousands of heritage sites are put up for sale and get a second life thanks to slightly eccentric owners. We meet some of the people who have decided to make these monuments their home, from an abandoned lighthouse to a deconsecrated chapel.

Women have long been left to bear the responsibility of contraception. But more and more young men seem willing to share or even take on this burden. Some 37 percent of French men aged 18-30 would be prepared to use a free male contraceptive pill and 22 percent would agree to have a vasectomy, according to a recent study. Yet male contraception remains a taboo. The French medical community shares little information about existing methods, while scientific studies to broaden the spectrum of options are almost non-existent. Our team reports.

In France, brasseries are an institution. They offer simple, tasty dishes in the style of traditional home cooking. Brasseries were born more than a century ago with the "bouillons" of Paris. Today, their decoration has changed little, but their success is still intact. FRANCE 24 gives you a taste of this timeless constant in French gastronomy, from Paris to Lyon via Saint-Tropez.

Several local protesters were injured after French soldiers fired warning shots into a civilian blockade. Anger against France's military intervention has been growing in the African country.

A black diamond on the plate: Sniffing out the secrets of French truffles. The truffle is a luxury fungus that's become a delicacy in French gastronomy. Being a truffle farmer requires years of patience and hunting for the "black diamond" cannot be done without the unrivalled sense of smell of man's best friend.

Crowd problems put future of French football at risk, says minister

France's popular, government-regulated tax-free savings account scheme, known as the "Livret A", is likely to raise interest rates in February after recording the biggest deposit outflow since 2014.

French far-right pundit Eric Zemmour has officially launched his bid for president with a 10-minute video clip on YouTube that looks like a crash course on replacement theory – immigrants supposedly taking over, violently – all to the dramatic sound of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. We ask our panel about the unorthodox campaign launch.

France's prominent Le Petit Robert dictionary, considered a linguistic authority in the country, recently added a new pronoun to its online edition. The word is "iel", a gender-neutral merging of the masculine "il" (he) and the feminine "elle" (she). This new pronoun, intended for those who identify as neither male nor female, is already used online and by younger generations. But the move to include it in the dictionary provoked a backlash from politicians and linguists. One vocal critic of the new pronoun is French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer. He says it's the latest expression of "wokism" which, he claims, threatens France's universalist model. We take a closer look.

French fashion businesses here in France tend to go one of two ways: either they fail, or they thrive, before being bought up by a powerful luxury group. But some companies do manage to resist that fate – weathering economic crises, the challenges of a globalised economy and now the pandemic, all on their own. So how exactly do they do it and what makes them tick? We went to meet independent shoemakers Arche in the Loire Valley and Paris-based Weston to find out.

Anti-racism campaigners were physically attacked and far-right Eric Zemmour put in a headlock as the presidential candidate's campaign got underway.

France's 2022 presidential race "heats up a notch" after Valérie Pécresse becomes the right's first-ever female candidate and far-right Eric Zemmour holds a "sickening" first political rally. European papers hail Pope Francis for "forcing Europe to face its contradictions" in its failure to help refugees. There's anger and disgust in the US after a Republican poses with guns, just days after a school shooting. Finally, French oysters are to get vaccinated... against herpes!