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Each day, French internet users download 450,000 movies illegally. In the first five months of the year, 62 million illegal film downloads took place, while the number of sold cinema tickets was 90 million. Two out of three downloaded movies are American, one in five is French. Top French downloads are Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis […]

Over 56 million French, or 88.1% of the population, own a mobile phone. In the last three months alone 300,000 new customers were registered. Two in three French chose a subscription over prepaid cards. On average, each French mobile phone users sends 48 SMS’s per month.
Source (in French)

In July, the number of detainees in France hit 64,250 people—the highest number since WWII, when jails were crowded with Nazi collaborators. Worse: the prisons are operating at 126 percent of capacity—far higher than the European average—with some French jails housing twice as many inmates as there is room for. Newsweek calls it Incarceration Nation.

The French are feeling the squeeze: 42% of them are not going on holiday this summer. In 2005, the number was still below 30%. One in two blame it on reduced spending power. Hotel reservations are down, and restaurateurs see more tourists sitting on a bench with a sandwich than behind a plate on their […]

The French can see goodbye to their traditional Christmas oysters this year. Up to 8 billion young oysters, or 80% of the total harvest, have died in just a few days. The probable cause is a virus, but there may be a link with global warming. The disease has hit ostriculteurs on both the Atlantic […]

In the twelve months since June 2007, fruit in France has gone up 18% in price, and vegetables 11%. Bad weather (frost and rain) has been the main culprit. Peaches and apricots have seen the highest rise: 24% and 54%, resp. Wheat and corn are also up, but the trend is slowing.
Source: Liberation

One in seven French women bathe with their mobile:

A survey (by mBlox) on the secret habits of French mobile phone users found that 14% of French women (compared to just 4% of men) take their mobile phones into the bathroom with them.
The survey also reveals that 18 to 24 year olds are the most […]

In 2006, 7,9 million French were officially living below the poverty line, having less than 880 euros per month at their disposal. One in three are single parents, mostly mothers. The French poor represent 13.2% of the population, which is below the average European level of 16%. The highest poverty level is found in Lettonia […]

Yesterday, the French have beaten a new record: 509 km (316 mi) of combined bouchons on the motorways. The longest individual bouchon was at Orléans: 41 km (25 mi). As usual, everybody in France goes to the same place at the same time, and they all pay the price. Last year’s peak was 401 km […]

In 2007, the French army fired 35 million bullets, an average of 300 bullets per soldier. 27 Million were live bullets, eight million were blanks. The army proudly claims there were only ten incidents or accidents. An “incident” is a malfunction, an “accident” refers to a situation where somebody gets hurt. Hence, the recent incident […]

Researchers at the University of Michigan have just ranked 97 nations in order of their population’s happiness. Denmark is the world’s most content nation, followed by Puerto Rico and Colombia. France comes in at 37th place, trailing all countries north of it, but scoring better than Spain, Italy, Portugal and some Eastern-European countries. Read all […]

According to Forbes, France counts 16 billionaires who together were worth 72.2 billion euros in March 2008, up from 69.7 billion last year. Their net average value is 4.6 billion euros, twice as much as the net value of billionaires wordwide. Two of these 16 French super-rich feature in the world’s top-20 list of richest […]

High oil prices are not bad news for everybody. Nouvel Obs reports that the skyrocketing prices earned the French government 120 million euros more than foreseen in the first quarter of the year. Most of the windfall comes from VAT on oil products.

It’s always hard to convert measurements into something understandable.
Thanks to SensibleUnits.com we now know that Nick Sarkozy isn’t really short.
With his 1.65 meter height he equals 32 AA Batteries end to end, 1.2 Alaskan moose antler spans, or 14 CDs side by side.
And since it’s the Euro 2008, you’ll be pleased to […]

For the first time, the French ministry of the interior has done a headcount of Muslims, and comes up with a total of nearly five million.

Among them, only 5% actually practice their religion regularly.
The largest Muslim group is of Algerian origin (1.5 million), followed by Moroccans (1 million) and Tunisians (400,000). Subsaharan Muslims account […]