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| | France (Site not responding. Last check: ) |
 | | Metropolitan France covers 551,695 Square kilometres (213,010 sq mi) and possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to mountain ranges of the Alps in the south-east, the Massif Central in the south-central and Pyrenees in the south-west. |
 | | France uses a civil legal system; that is, law arises primarily from written statutes; judges are not to make law, but merely to interpret it (though the amount of judge interpretation in certain areas makes it equivalent to case law). |
 | | France is also a member of the United Nations, the WTO, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), the Indian Ocean Commission (COI), and is a partial member of NATO where it contributes troops and arms but has withdrawn from the joint military command. |
| www.askmore.net /en/France.htm (6935 words) |
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