Paris

Perhaps it's time for a moratorium on movies where the trajectories of various people intersect, often portentously, across the tableau of a big city. Michael Winterbottom did it with wrenching effectiveness 10 years ago in Wonderland (the city: London). Paul Haggis' Crash connected the dots, and the racism, of Los Angeles. There have been many others, with the lives of strangers and friends, rich and poor, happy and sad, colliding on the streets. And now there is Paris . Directed by Cédric Klapisch with a roving camera and an obvious affection for his town, Paris isn't bad. But like the relationship that takes off between a more-than-middle-aged history professor (Fabrice Luchini)

WASHINGTON - It's hard to keep up with David McCullough at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. "I think it's one of the real treasures of the capital city, really of the country," says the 77-year-old historian during a recent afternoon interview, excited as a schoolboy as he walks quickly along hallways, up and down stairs, from room to room. "Here's the painting I wanted to show you," he says, stopping in front of an oil portrait by Abraham Archibald Anderson of a pensive, bow-tied Thomas Edison.

"Scum," French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called the rioters who have seized control of many working-class "suburbs" around Paris every night since Oct. 27, when two teenagers died in an accident that many blame on the police. Sarkozy plans to run for the presidency next year, and he wants to seem even tougher on crime and on immigrants (two separate issues that he regularly conflates) than his main rival, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. But his conviction that the policy of multiculturalism has failed has become the new popular wisdom in France, where right-wing commentators refer to the riots as the "Paris intifada" - as if the rioters were all Muslims.

French Premier Jacques Chirac has been forced to withdraw the university reform bill that sent hundreds of thousands of protesting French students into Paris streets over the past three weeks. The student protests no doubt evoked memories of the student riots in France in 1968 for Mr. Chirac and others, but there was a fundamental difference. To confuse them is to misunderstand the students' anger. Unlike their radical predecessors who tried to topple bourgeois society in the heady demonstration days of May 1968, these young people are afraid they won't be allowed to enter it. The reform bill would have raised the current minimal tuition costs and allowed universities to tighten entrance requirements, which are very loose at present.

The question was squarely before me. Did I want a coupe simple, or a coupe transformation? Transformation had a nice ring to it, but when you're talking haircuts - and you're talking them entirely in French - there's a risk that something might be lost in the translation. Marie Antoinette, for example, underwent what could be described as a coupe transformation. So I opted for a plain old haircut. "I think you should go for the bronzage, too," my husband said as we left the salon where I had made an appointment to return two days hence.

Springtime in Paris: A harsh winter, with unusually heavy snows, is abating. People on the streets are shedding their heavy togs for cooler, lighter-weight clothes. But for designers and followers of the fashion world, springtime in Paris means the return of wool, tweeds and fur, for spring is when fall ready-to- wear collections are unveiled. And for hundreds of designers, buyers, reporters and fashion devotees, it is the best time to be in Paris. It appears that French designers, like their Italian counterparts who showcased designs in Milan earlier this month, are calling for shorter skirts and more subdued silhouettes than they did last fall.

Paris during the banquet years before 1914, Paris during the glorious decades between the world wars. Glittering city of light, art and love, metropolis of modernism, magnet to avant-gardists such as Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and James Joyce, who regarded the city on the Seine as their mistress and muse. Alas, this romantic picture, popularized in literature, film and nostalgic memoir, is incomplete. For, as we're reminded in the lovely documentary Paris Was a Woman, Hemingway required the inspiration of American expatriate Gertrude Stein.

Without warning and with no apologies to Edith Piaf, the Philadelphia Orchestra's first tune Thursday onstage at the Th??tre Mogador was "La vie en rose" in a lovely, lilting arrangement - for four Wagner tubas. The French horn section played the merry prank at a rehearsal, preparing for the first concert of the orchestra's European tour that night. "A little something to make us feel more comfortable playing Bruckner in Paris," co-principal hornist David Wetherill told his colleagues.

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was one of the first American-born Impressionist painters. Though we often associate her with Philadelphia, she was born in 1844 in Allegheny City, Pa. (now part of Pittsburgh), and lived most of her life in Paris. Cassatt spent much of her youth in Europe. Her Philadelphia connection began in the 1860s, when she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She was one of a group of female students who helped to introduce "life" classes - those dedicated to drawing from live models - by posing for one another.

PARIS - France legalized gay marriage Tuesday after a wrenching national debate that has exposed deep social conservatism in the nation's heartland and triggered huge protests in Paris from both sides of the divide. Legions of officers with water cannon braced outside the National Assembly for possible violence on an issue that galvanized the country's faltering right. The measure passed easily in the Socialist-majority Assembly, 331-225, just minutes after the president of the legislative body expelled a disruptive protester in pink, the color adopted by French opponents of gay marriage.

LOS ANGELES- "Simon Killer" is an amoral tale, and a cautionary one, that reminded me my mama was right when she said, "Never talk to strangers" and "Looks can be deceiving. " What is so disturbing about this contemporary noir is that Simon could easily be mistaken for just another American college boy wandering around Paris on break, one of those troubled, slightly broken intellectual types that women are forever trying to save. The truth takes shape over time, like a shadowy figure slowly emerging from the darkness.

A recent poll conducted by travel-dating website MissTravel.com showed a 22 percent increase in the number of members joining in search of a travel companion to accompany them on their business trips. But where is the best place to close the deal, and a date? Here is the site's list of Top 10 Destinations for Business and Romance. 10. Miami 9. Paris 8. Rio de Janeiro 7. Beijing 6. Barcelona, Spain 4. Las Vegas 3. Dubai 2. New York City 1. San Francisco

PARIS - Three female Kurdish activists were shot dead in what authorities called an "execution" in central Paris, prompting speculation that the long-running conflict between insurgents from the minority group and Turkey was playing out on French shores. The slayings - including reportedly of one of the founding members of the Kurdistan Workers Party - came as Turkey was holding peace talks with the party, which seeks self-rule for Kurds in the country's southeast, to try to persuade it to disarm.

Helene Kozak, 91, of Palmyra, a Jew who witnessed the Nazi invasion of her native France, died Wednesday, Dec. 26, of sepsis in Marlton. Born in Paris in 1920, Mrs. Kozak lived in the Pletzl, the Jewish quarter of the Fourth Arrondissement. Her family had moved into a Christian quarter of the city before German forces invaded. Mrs. Kozak's Christian neighbors kept the family's secret during the occupation, as soldiers lived in barracks nearby. When Allied forces liberated the city, a U.S. Army captain looking to buy perfume for his wife sought local help to avoid price-gouging.

FONTAINEBLEAU, France - The single line of Napoleon's secret code told Paris of his desperate, last order against the Russians: "At three o'clock in the morning, on the 22nd I am going to blow up the Kremlin. " By the time Paris received the letter three days later, the Russian czar's seat of power was in flames and the diminished French army was in retreat. Its elegantly calligraphic ciphers show history's famed general at one of his weakest moments. "My cavalry is in tatters, many horses are dying," dictated Napoleon, the once-feared leader showing the strain of his calamitous Russian invasion, which halved his army.

The City of Light shines year-round, but Paris has a special appeal in winter. Sure, the weather can be cold and rainy (the average high in January is 43), but if you dress in layers, you'll keep warm and easily deal with temperature changes as you go from cold streets to heated museums and cafes. Slow down and savor your favorite museums and monuments - spending one-on-one time with Mona and Venus is worth the extra clothes you had to pack. Attend a cooking demonstration, take a short course in art or architecture, or dabble in a wine-tasting class.

BEIRUT - A Syrian military helicopter crashed in a ball of fire Monday after apparently being hit during clashes between government forces and rebels in the capital Damascus, activists said, in a sign of the fighters' growing abilities as they struggle to topple President Bashar Assad's regime. A video posted on the Internet showed the chopper engulfed in flames and spinning out of control shortly before it hit the ground amid bursts of gunfire near a mosque. Rebels shout "Allahu Akbar!"

In 2 Days in New York , a follow-up to 2 Days in Paris , Julie Delpy is once again Marion, a neurotic, impulsive French ex-pat who can't quite get her life in order. In the 2007 release, she takes her American beau, played by Adam Goldberg , to Paris to try to put their relationship back on track. Visiting her colorfully eccentric parents and running into old boyfriends - lots of them - doesn't exactly help. In 2 Days in New York , which opened Friday at the Ritz Five, Delpy's character - a photographer of the artsy, self-reflecting kind - now lives in Manhattan.