Influence pedallers: The best cities for bicycle rides.

When you’ve strolled around the City of Love visiting icons like the Lourve, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and eaten more than your share of fresh baguettes and gooey cheese, here are five off-the-beaten-track things to write home about.

A number of doctors had been killed, some of them deliberately. The burned bodies of three were found a few days after their arrest by the Mukhabarat, Syria's secret police, a month previously in June.

Swimming 20km through alligator-infested rivers and killing an anaconda are just part of the job for a young New Zealander who ran away to join the French Foreign Legion.

Even in the event of a no-show, one might have expected some fireworks, some apocalypse-grade hallucinations, as the credulous coaxed their fevered brains to provide what the universe had so signally failed to.

The southern port of Marseilles is unlike other French cities. That becomes apparent as soon as the visitor steps from the train at Saint-Charles terminus, high above the city.

If you're keen for a shopping fix overseas this holiday season here are the best streets around the world to fill up the suitcase with goodies.

Election stalemate and fraud accusations as centre-right party rips itself apart.

Among Burgundy's mosaic of modest vine plots, one may produce dense and silky wine; another just a few metres away may make something more fruity and feminine, Caroline Berdon discovers.

The oldest brother of the Toulouse scooter killer, Mohamed Merah, denounces his own father, mother, sister and brother in his book published tomorrow.

The cyclist who died in the Alpine massacre which also claimed the lives of three members of a British family may be the key to the mystery.

The British-Iraqi man killed in last month's quadruple Alps shooting had access to a bank account linked to Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein.

Treasures often remain hidden - at the bottom of the sea, for example, or perhaps in some musty cellar. In Bastia, one often only needs to walk through the streets, eyes wide open, to discover them.

A battle is raging on Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Denis, a shabby Paris street where hip bars are sprouting like mushrooms, and it's part of a wider war in the city pitching sleep-starved residents against nocturnal revellers.

Former NZ diplomat Warren Searell called Damascus home until the Arab spring made life far too dangerous. This is his story.

Away from its glamorous tourist centre, Marseille's drug war is spiralling out of control.