Paris - The diplomatic row between the European Union and China escalated Thursday when Fr

Paris  - Giro d'Italia and Vuelta champion Alberto Contador of Spain won the prestigious Golden Bike award for the second straight year on Wednesday.

Contador received 72 votes as he beat Olympic time trial champion Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland (47) and Tour de France champion Carlos Sastre of Spain (36) in the poll among the cycling media conducted by France's Velo Magazine.

Contador, 25, won the Tour in 2007 and completed his collection of major race wins this year at the Giro and Tour of Spain. He was unable to go for a second Tour de France title because his Astana team was not invited in 2008 over its doping-tainted past.

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy is drawing up a plan to relaunch the country's economy that will cost about 20 billion euros (25.9 billion dollars), the online edition of the daily Le Monde reported on Wednesday.

Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told Europe 1 radio that Sarkozy was thinking of a plan that would require funding worth about 1 per cent of France's GDP.

"That would mean about 19 billion euros," she said. "I know the president has in mind 1 per cent (of GDP), perhaps a little more."

Rome - Rome's Cafe de Paris, a symbol of the Dolce Vita as immortalized by filmmaker Federico Fellini, has been bought by a Calabrian mafia crime family, a newspaper reported Wednesday, citing a police report.

The Alvaro-Palamra clan of the 'Ndrangheta gained control of the celebrated watering hole after paying six million euros in cash (7.7 million dollars) Rome-based daily, La Repubblica, reported.

The establishment's purchase is part of the 'Ndrangheta's expansion from its southern Italian heartland into the real estate market of Rome, but also Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil, Repubblica said, quoting the anti-fraud police report.

Paris - Despite a bitter defeat in the vote to head the French Socialist Party, former presidential candidate Segolene Royal is apparently preparing to stand for the
2012 presidential election.

In a video available on Wednesday on the internet, Royal tells her supporters, "I need you, I need your ideas, because we are continuing - 2012 is soon, 2012 is tomorrow,
2012 is in three years."

On Tuesday, after four days of bitter infighting, the Socialist Party declared that Royal lost last Friday's party leadership election to Lille Mayor Martine Aubry by only 102 votes out of 135,000 cast.