Julien has had girlfriends, it's just that he has never felt any desire for them. Men don't do it for him either. Instead, the 27-year-old Frenchman says he has found happiness by coming out as asexual. It may seem odd in a country known for love and seduction. But according to studies on the subject, people who have no or little sexual appetite could make up one percent of the global population.

New York wants to become the first major US city to raise the age for buying cigarettes from 18 to 21. The city council is to vote on the proposal May 2. Backing it is its speaker, Christinne Quinn, who is running for mayor. All it needs for passage is a simple majority. A spokesman for Quinn said she is confident it will get the green light. "Too many adult smokers begin this deadly habit before age 21," said Quinn in a statement.

When France finally holds its first gay wedding in just over a month's time, it will be Vincent and Bruno who will be exchanging vows in Montpellier, a southern city known to homosexuals as the "French San Francisco". For the French couple, it will be a legal union culminating a relationship of more than five years. For France, it will be a highly mediatised symbol of changing social mores, won in the teeth of months of fierce -- and sometimes violent -- opposition from conservative groups and homophobic backlash.

An angry uncle of the two Boston bombing suspects pleaded Friday with one nephew still on the run to "turn yourself in and ask forgiveness" from victims of the worst US terror attack since 9/11. In an impassioned 10-minute interview with reporters outside his Maryland home, Ruslan Tsarni said his nephews "put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity" and expressed a desire to apologize personally to the victims.