Paris - Because of the worsening economic outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Friday revised downward its global oil demand for 2009.

If the forecast contained in the IEA's monthly Oil Market Report is confirmed, it would mean that demand for oil around the world would shrink for two consecutive years, the first time this has occurred since 1982 and 1983.

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.

The six doctors and pharmacists on trial belonged either to the Pasteur Institute or the association France Hypophyse, which was in charge of collecting the glands containing the growth hormone from human cadavers.

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.

The new information confirms this particular object as one of an extremely rare class of stellar zombie - each one the dead heart of a star that refuses to die.

There are just five so-called Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters (SGRs) known, four in the Milky Way and one in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

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 - Sixty-three people were reported injured Saturday in clashes between police and demonstrators who turned violent in central Algiers late Friday.

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.

Tintin, the ageless boy reporter, whose adventures have delighted children and adults all over the world, is celebrating his 80th birthday on Saturday, and the globetrotting teenager with the remarkable blonde forelock has never been more popular.