France 24 Television

France 24 (pronounced France vingt-quatre [fʁɑ̃s vɛ̃tkatʁ] on all three editions) is an international news and current affairs television channel based in Paris. Its stated mission is to "cover international current events from a French perspective and to convey French values throughout the world." It started broadcasting on 6 December 2006 under the presidency of Jacques Chirac and prime ministerial term of Dominique de Villepin.

The service is aimed at the overseas market, after the manner of BBC World News, DW-TV, NHK World and RT, and broadcast through satellite and cable operators throughout the world. During 2010 the channel started broadcasting through its own iPhone app.

Based in Issy-les-Moulineaux in the suburbs of Paris, the channel broadcasts world news. Currently it offers variants in English and Arabic in addition to French. The channel has since 2008 been wholly owned by the French government (via its holding company, l'Audiovisuel extérieur de la France (AEF), having acquired the remaining shares held by its former partners Groupe TF1 and France Télévisions. Its budget is approximately €100 million per year.

France (English ⁱ/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 sq mi).

Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.

Samuel Eto'o Fils (French pronunciation: [samɥɛl eto fis]) (born 10 March 1981) is a Cameroonian footballer who plays as a striker for Russian team Anzhi Makhachkala. He is also the current captain of the Cameroon national team. Eto'o trained at Kadji Sports Academy. He also holds a Spanish passport, enabling him not to count among the "foreign players" working in the European Union.

Eto'o scored over 100 goals in five seasons with FC Barcelona, and is also the record holder in number of appearances by an African player in La Liga. In 2010, he became the first player to win two European Continental Trebles following his back-to-back achievements with Barcelona and Internazionale. He is the second player to have ever scored in two separate UEFA Champions League finals and the fourth player, after Marcel Desailly, Paulo Sousa, and Gerard Piqué, to have won the UEFA Champions League two years in a row with different teams. He is the most decorated African player of all time having won the African Player of the Year award a record four times in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2010.

François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa ɔlɑ̃d]; born 12 August 1954) is the 24th President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He previously served as the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008 and as a Deputy of the National Assembly of France for Corrèze's 1st Constituency from 1988 to 1993 and then again from 1997 to 2012. He also served as the Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008 and the President of the General Council of Corrèze from 2008 to 2012.

He was elected President of France on 6 May 2012, defeating the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, and was inaugurated on 15 May. He is the second Socialist President of the Fifth French Republic, after François Mitterrand who served from 1981 to 1995.

Hollande was born in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, Upper Normandy, to a middle-class family. His mother, Nicole Frédérique Marguerite Tribert (1927–2009), was a social worker, and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande, an ear, nose, and throat doctor who "had once run for the extreme right in local politics." The surname "Hollande" is "believed to come from Calvinist ancestors who escaped Holland (the Netherlands) in the 16th century and took the name of their old country." Hollande was raised Catholic but quietly rebelled against the strict religious brothers chosen by his father to educate him. The family moved to Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, when Hollande was 13.

Martin Schulz (born on 20 December 1955 in Hehlrath) is a German politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, since 2004 leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament (formerly called the Party of European Socialists group and since 2009 called the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats). Martin Schulz has a secondary level of education, he attended high school Heilig Geist Gymnasium in Würselen. He is the current President of the European Parliament.

After four years at primary school, from 1962 to 1966, Schulz attended the Heilig-Geist (Holy Spirit) grammar school in Broich (now Würselen), a district of the town of Broichweiden, for nine years, leaving without his Abitur (A-levels). From 1975 to 1976 he then trained to be a bookseller .

Over the next five years he worked for a number of publishing houses and bookshops, and in 1982 he opened his own bookshop in Würselen, which he ran until 1994.

Besides German, he speaks French and English and understands Dutch.