Hamburg  - French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to stay away from celebrations of 60 years of NATO unless he was given a choice seat at the conference table, the German news weekly Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

It said Sarkozy objected to seating in alphabetical order of the member country's names and insisted that he must sit next to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer during the meeting in early April in Strasbourg, France and in nearby German towns.

Val d'Isere, France - Maria Riesch got gold at last at a big event when she won

Val d'Isere, France - Carlo Janka of Switzerland won the world championship giant slalom on Friday, exactly two months after getting his first World Cup win on the same hill.

Janka, 22, led the way after the first run and hung on to it in the second despite a mistake, winning in a combined total 2 minutes 18.82 seconds to take the gold after downhill bronze on Saturday.

Olympic champion Benjamin Raich gave the Austrian men their first medal in Val d'Isere, a silver in 1:19.53. Ted Ligety of the United States rose from ninth to third in 2:19.81 minutes.

Paris - The wife of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, journalist Christine Ockrent, is to become general director of the state-owned TV all-news station France 24, the online edition of the weekly Le Point reported on Friday.

Ockrent, who will turn 65 in April, will not answer to her husband's ministry, but will be directly under the office of Prime Minister Francois Fillon, the weekly reported.

Paris - State-owned French energy supplier EDF saw its profits fall by nearly 40 per cent in 2008 as it continued to expand its nuclear energy division abroad, the company said on Thursday.

Profits for last year stood at 3.4 billion euros (4.4 billion dollars), down 39.5 per cent from 2007, EDF said in a press statement.

The company said that part of the downturn was attributable to one-time costs linked to the opening of the French energy market to competition.

Turnover for the year rose by 7.8 per cent, to 64.28 billion euros.

Paris