Paris - French shares were holding on to gains in early trading Monday but banking and environmental stocks were losing ground.

The Paris Bourse's CAC 40 blue-chip index was up 1.12 per cent, to 3,367.25, at mid-morning, with advancing issues outpacing fallers by 3 to 1.

The winners were led by three energy stocks, with energy suppliers GDF Suez and EDF up by 7.32 and 5.4 per cent, respectively, and oil giant Total gaining 5.28 per cent, on rising oil prices.

Veolia Environnement was down more than 16 per cent and Suez Environnment had lost 10 per cent because the finance crisis and imminent recession were dissuading European countries from undertaking planned ecological measures.

Paris - Sister Emmanuelle, the unorthodox and popular Belgian-born French nun who spent her life aiding the poor, has died at age 99, French media reported on Monday.

According to the Association Soeur Emmanuelle, which she founded, she died in her sleep early Monday in a nursing home in the southern French town of Callian.

Sister Emmanuelle was born Madeleine Cinquin to a French father

and Belgian mother in Brussels, on November 16, 1908.

She earned a degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne, then took her vows in 1929 and became a nun.

Paris - The head of the French bank Caisse d'Epargne has resigned after taking responsibility for a trading loss of 600 million euros (811 million dollars), French media reported Monday.

Charles Milhaud, who had led the Caisse d'Epargne since 1999, resigned late Sunday after a special meeting of the bank's board of supervisors. Milhaud said he would ask for no severance payment.

In addition, his chief executive officer, Nicolas Merindol, and the board member in charge of finances and risks, Julien Carmona, also resigned their posts.

Paris (dpa) - French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has asked the
government's bank oversight authority to look into the country's
second-largest banking group, Caisse d'Epargne, after it announced a
loss of 600 million euros (804 million dollars) in a derivatives trade,
French radio reported Friday.

The loss, which the bank described as a "market incident," occurred
during the week of October 6, when the Paris Bourse's CAC 40 index lost
22 per cent of its value.

The Caisse d'Epargne, which controls some 358 billion euros in
savings deposits, said Friday in a statement that the loss was caused
by "the extreme volatility of the markets and the stock market crash of
the week of October 6."

Paris, Oct 17 : Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) are getting closer to unraveling the origin of Mars'' larger moon, Phobos, thanks to a series of close encounters by ESA''s Mars Express spacecraft.

So far, observations by the Mars Express have found that the moon looks almost certain to be a ''rubble pile'', rather than a single solid object.

However, mysteries remain about where the rubble came from.