Paris - French film director and producer Claude Berri died Monday in Paris at the age of 74, French media reported.
Berri, who was admitted to hospital late Saturday after suffering a stroke, produced some of the biggest recent box office and critical hits in French cinema, including Welcome to the Sticks, The Secret of the Grain and Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra.
He also produced a number of well-known international hits, such as Roman Polanski's Tess, Taking Off and Valmont by Milos Forman and Pedro Alomodovar's Everything About my Mother.
Berri's biggest successes as a director were arguably his film versions of two novels by Marcel Pagnol, Manon of the Spring and Jean de Florette.
Paris - Because of the worsening economic outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Friday revised downward its global oil demand for 2009. 
Paris - A Paris court on Wednesday acquitted six people accused of negligence in the deaths of 117 young people from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of Mad Cow disease, after being treated with contaminated human growth hormone in the 1980s.
Paris, Jan 14 : The XMM-Newton telescope has captured the fading glow of a tiny and rare celestial object, revealing its rotation rate for the first time.
Paris - He began life 80 years ago at the age of 15, and when his career ended nearly 50 years later, his creator said he was just shy of his 18th birthday.
