Paris - The auction of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's art collection achieved a record price for a piece of 20th-century furniture when an Art Deco Eileen Gray armchair fetched 21.9 million euros (27.9 million dollars).

The bid on the brown leather chair by an anonymous collector Tuesday night in Paris was also the second-highest price ever paid at action for a piece of furniture, Christie's auction house said.

The chair by the Irish designer, considered one of the most important designers of the 20th century, was made between 1917 and 1919 and features dragon heads sculpted onto its wooden arms.

Its sale price substantially overstepped Christie's pre-auction estimate of 2 million to 3 million euros.

Paris  - Prior to the official European sales start of the Peugeot 308 CC in March, the French car maker is offering a special open-air edition limited to 100 units in black metallic and exclusive

Paris  - The struggling French economy provided some unexpected good news on Tuesday as the government's statistics office Insee reported that household spending on manufactured goods had increased by 1.8 per cent in January.

The rise was especially marked in durable goods, with a rise of 5.7 per cent over January 2008, sparked by a 7.8 per cent jump in spending on automobiles, Insee said.

However, another measure of the mood of French consumers declined in February as the index of consumer confidence fell across the board, Insee said.

Paris - The trial opened Monday in the southern French city of Toulouse of the former head of the fertilizer manufacturer AZF, for his responsibility in the 2001 explosion of an AZF chemicals factory that killed 30 people and injured some 2,500.

Also on trial in the worst industrial accident in post-war France is a subsidiary of the oil giant Total, which owned the factory. All the accused face charges of manslaughter.

The explosion of 296 tons of ammonium nitrate on September 21, 2001, was so powerful that it registered 3.4 on the open-ended Richter scale and left more than 70,000 people homeless.

Paris - Art collectors and museum curators from all over the world are expected to fill the 1,200 seats in the Grand Palais in Paris later Monday when the 733-piece collection that belonged to the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent goes under the hammer.

Billed as the "sale of the century," the three-day auction organized by Christie's offers works by such giants of modern art as Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian as well as Art Deco masterpieces, ancient Egyptian and Roman sculptures, German silver beer steins and a wealth of other artworks and artifacts.

Brussels - The foreign ministers of France and the Czech Republic said Monday they would be holding regular talks following extensive media reports suggesting strong disagreements between the former and current presidencies of the European Union.

"We were sometimes very surprised to discover in the press that we were in a bad mood, Karel (Schwarzenberg) and I. This is not true at all," said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.