It is now a criminal offence to insult the French flag or national anthem.

BBC: French MPs pass tough anti-crime law

Embryologists in the past spent a lot of time worrying about something they called the French flag problem.

ECONOMIST: Genetic engineering

One features the silhouette of a man sporting the colours of the German flag, the second those of the French flag.

BBC: Dane bans tourists over Iraq

As a boy, he made himself red epaulets, wore baseball pants and ran around with a French flag his mother made for him.

WSJ: Complex Napoleon Rivalry Heads for Its Waterloo

In Berlin the French flag will fly beside that of Germany.

BBC: Europe: A week of speeches and symbolism

The tribunal in Paris awarded the assets on the condition the shipping company operated under the French flag and Eurotunnel leased the ships to a workers' co-operative.

BBC: SeaFrance ferry

Their idealised version of this question was to ask how two signal chemicals, starting from opposite ends of an embryo, could result in a pattern that looked like the French flag (ie, three different coloured vertical stripes).

ECONOMIST: Genetic engineering

The Assassin's Creed video game series -- beyond its trademark murderous historical fiction -- is known for arriving in annual installments. 2013 is no exception, with French publisher Ubisoft recently revealing Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, a pirate-centric next entry in the long-running franchise.

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