Paris  - The European aerospace concern EADS said Wednesday it was disappointed at the decision by the US Defence Department to cancel a 35-billion-dollar competition to build the next generation of Air Force tanker refuellers.

EADS had won the contract in partnership with US aviation concern Northrop-Grumman only to see it put on ice after a congressional oversight agency upheld a protest by rival bidder Boeing.

"We have a contract and we are striving for an appropriate fulfilment of this contract, EADS chief Louis Gallois said.

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, will welcome Pope Benedict XVI when he arrives Friday at Paris's Orly Airport for a four-day visit to France, Sarkozy's office announced on Wednesday.

Sarkozy will then host the pope at the Elysee Palace for talks, which are to be followed by a reception at which both men will deliver speeches.

Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to spend two days in Paris before travelling to the pilgrimage site of Lourdes.

Paris - The International Energy Agency (IEA) said Wednesday that it has revised downward its forecast of global oil demand for this year and 2009.

In its Monthly Oil Report, issued in Paris, the IEA said the reason was that the global economic slump and high crude oil prices during the summer caused weaker-than-expected oil deliveries in industrial nations.

"The data suggest that the demand impact of weaker economic conditions and high prices during the summer - when oil prices reached an all-time peak - was more marked than expected, notably in the United States," the IEA said.

"Furthermore, the effects of the ongoing hurricane season on US demand are subject to considerable uncertainty."

Paris  - French President Nicolas Sarkozy defended on Tuesday his diplomatic approach to Russia after its war with Georgia and spoke out in favour of Ukraine's territorial integrity at a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, in Paris.

"Our prosperity and security depend on prosperity, stability and security (in Eastern Europe). We, Europe, want peaceful relations with Russia," Sarkozy said less than a day after negotiating the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia.

Paris - European aerospace giant EADS has expanded its Power 8 cost-saving programme to counteract the weakness of the dollar against the euro, the French daily Le Monde reported Tuesday.

Unlike the original plan, which was created in response to losses suffered by the EADS subsidiary Airbus because of problems with its A 380 superjumbo, the new "Power
8 plus" programme involves the entire company and is to save it 1 billion euros (1.41 billion dollars) beginning in 2010.

Dubai, Paris- UAE carrier Emirates said Tuesday it had suspended for a few days its flights using the A380 superjumbo manufactured by Airbus after "minor" electrical faults were discovered in the aircraft.

Once the problem was cleared up, the company planned to operate two instead of three flights a week on the Dubai-New York route, a spokesman said from Emirates' headquarters in Dubai.

Some of the passengers booked on the A380 flights would be carried on Boeing 777 aircraft, the spokesman said.